justinkal
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So she's a typical shounen protagonist
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[NaNoWriMo] Part-Time Magica: Yulia Atyanas and the Magic of Fisticuffs
- Thread starter Master of Squirrel-fu
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Master of Squirrel-fu
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A bit worse. A Shonen protag will realize that it looks like a date but not that the girl wants that. Yulia isn't even aware it looks like a date in the first place. This only makes her actions worse.So she's a typical shounen protagonist
Scenario 1: Getting some icecream
Yulia orders the large couple's bowl filled with pink hearts and cute decorations because it's a discount if you get it for two. Doesn't seem to realize it's for couples, just thinks that Hearts=Girlly so it's okay for them to split it. Emmy gets some on her cheek and Yulia wipes it away and licks the icecream off her finger because it'd be a waste to use a napkin. Notices that Emmy is staring at the strawberry flavor on her side and offers her a spoonful.
Scenario 2: Going to the movies
Eat a late lunch at bistro nearby that's populated by couples because it's really close. Split a sandwich and a drink to save money for movie snacks. Go see the new scary movie that came out. Assume reason that Emmy is being so clingy is because she's scared or cold. On ride home Emmy falls asleep on her shoulder and Yulia puts and arm around her so she doesn't accidentally fall on the guy sitting on her other side.
And here's a doodle that will be useful for the next chapter.
Power Scale in Part-Time Magica:
justinkal
Connoisseur.
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*flashes back to Goku thinking that a wedding was a type of food*
Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
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Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
- Joined
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And a cuter style, also an art doodle.
Ministra Prealia Petra Pugno and Ministra Praevallora Ala Rosa
Ministra Prealia Petra Pugno and Ministra Praevallora Ala Rosa
Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
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The realization of being powerless what feelings it provoked in her were new to Yulia. She had long ago accepted the notion of being insignificant, of not really mattering in the grand scheme of the quite literally infinite world out there. It was actually kind of freeing, at least in so far as knowing that your mistakes would have no weight and that herd mentality that allowed one to think that the worst things would occur to others but never you. After all, there is only one of you and uncountable them. But that was different, however the two seemed on the surface.
Being insignificant doesn't protect you, it just makes you a smaller target. Just a few days ago she came face to face with this. When faced with something beyond her ability she'd been rendered helpless. She'd always believed her fate was like a grain of sand on a beach, that any thing that would try to scoop it up would not care if she slipped between the cracks of their fingers. That wasn't the case. The monster she'd faced held her life in it's hands, Yulia suspected that Kagehoshi may have likely stepped in if she were likely to be delt a killing blow like with Arya but in the moment it most definitely didn't feel like that. At that time she was completely helpless, her fate in the creature's meaty bloodsoaked claws. Even her salvation, a rescue by a superior, was ultimately something she had no hand in, if Kagehoshi decided against it Yulia would not be here to ruminate.
Ultimately she had come to realize that her continued existence was decided at the whims of monsters beyond her scope and breadth, her fate was not her own to decide, and she could not hide behind her comforting illusion of safety she'd deluded herself into believing before.
It was a painful thing to come to terms with. It hadn't been an immediate thing, rather like a screw or vice, slowly being tightened around her thumbs. During the fight and the immediate aftermath it hadn't quite sunk in. During the hours long trek back home it had only really just barely sunk in. It only the restless nightmare filled night when the idea had truly started sinking in. Hours of laying in the silent dark with brief interruptions of whatever horrors her subconscious could cobble together from the mess just before and her own normally ignored insecurities, the perfect setting to brood.
She had woken up the next morning feeling both physically and emotionally shattered, she'd been hoping to escape her thoughts in routine only to receive messages from her teammates that they'd not be available for the day. So came a full day of rumination only briefly broken by the few necessities of life. The second night was somehow worse than the first, as the still fresh mental wound had just been left to fester a bit before being picked at some more. The second morning had been a repeat of the first, and the third night had been when she'd finally broken and accepted the facts.
She was too weak to take control of her own life.
Yulia did not like this fact. She didn't think there was anything she ever hated more than that fact. It was something that burned deep and hot in the pit of her stomach. It was a first, before she'd never been one for passion of any kind, a hollow feeling with only small sparks interest to drive her forward.
But now she had something better. With her previous weakness as her tinder and that loathing as the fire she would forge herself a new tool to change that fact.
She called her friends that morning and told them to meet together at the Campus.
The first to arrive was of course the ever punctual Rus Kaf. The handsome girl did however look a fair bit more tired and irritable than normal. She said her greetings and sat on the opposite side of the table across from Yulia to wait for their third teammate saying nothing else.
Arya was late by about ten minutes and was openly displaying her displeasure at the abrupt summons. She started tapping her foot, arms crossed, and giving the pugilist a look that demanded answers.
"Okay, Atyanas, what did you want that you had to call me," She waved an arm to her stoic teammate, "And apparently Rus, here."
"Not yet there's still one more person left," Yulia answered as she rose from her seat and dusted off her lap.
The two reacted surprised by the news. Rus seemed bemused as she stood herself while Arya seemed to not really believe it.
"Don't worry," Yulia shook her head and interrupted the short girl before she had a chance to voice her annoyance at the latest aggravation, "She should be here any-"
Dropping from the air just behind the two a figure rose from it's croach arms spread wide behind the two other members and moved to grab both.
"Duckies!" The ninja quickly ducked below the fencer's surprised elbow strike to the face. Her right arm wrapped its way around her side to pin her arms to her side while she did the same on her left side to the shocked Arya. Using both her momentum and their stunned lack of resistance she dragged the two forward to snatch up the third to squish between the two.
"-Moment," Yulia finished as the woman lifted the three up, "Nevermind, she's already here."
The ninja dropped the three and took a hop back to avoid the spear of fabric that Arya's sleeve had become. The short girl seemed rather flustered, Rus as well though not quite as upset so much as embarrassed.
"You!" The blonde esper jabbed a finger at their superior, "What are you doing here? Atyanas' why is she here?"
A hand patted the girl on the head, much like how one would pet a yappy purse dog. The blonde glared hatefully at the smirking ninja.
"This One was just getting to that, that she was," Kagehoshi held out a handed over a bill which the ninja placed into her pocket with a smile, "Excellent, first answer this; what have you three been doing since your last mission?"
"Training," Answered Rus immediately.
"Training," Arya nodded.
"...Training," Yulia lied while keeping her gaze on the tree directly behind the ninja.
"Wrong!" Before any of the girls could react the ninja lashed out, flicking each in the forehead with enough force to knock them off their feet, "The correct answer is keeping your superior officer waiting zam!"
The three froze in their attempts to get back on their feet. As they looked back up on the ninja they found a older girl giving them something that could only be technically called a smile. The frightening sight pinning each in place.
"I'd assumed the three of you would recover a little quicker but I guess I assumed wrong," The chipper tone and slight accent were missing, instead a sickeningly sweet tone colored the woman's slightly lower voice, "I waited the last three days for you all to come back to pick up another mission just so I could surprise you all. But imagine how shocked I was when Yulia called me this morning and I learned you all have been avoiding each other..."
"Atyanas!" The blonde turned to glare at the girl in question, "You knew about this?"
"No, I swear! I called her to help with training I don't know what she's talking about!"
"Correct, as This One said, it was supposed to be a surprise zam," The intimidating air about the brunet cleared and the three breathed easier, "This One had thought you three would be back to taking missions in a day at the most, not moping about at failing a test, That she did not!"
"Fai- We almost died!"
"Posh, This One was looking out for you from the shadows, you were never in any danger zam," Despite being noticeably older than the other three present the young woman pouted and turned her head up. It was a remarkably petulant display, "This One never left your side the entire time."
"Even after the test?" Rus asked.
"...Except then, This One left you then," The ninja waved away the shocked and slightly betrayed looks of her subordinates, "Relax, there wasn't anything more dangerous than wolves and bears left in the woods zam."
By that point the girls had returned to their feet and most were contemplating the pros and cons of simply walking away.
"So why did you want to meet up with us?" Yulia asked, "And why did you ask for 20 ecu if you were just going to meet us anyway?"
Yulia was somewhat pissed about that second part, it was not an insignificant amount of money for a girl like her.
"For the first This One has some news for you, that she does. For the second, This One lost a bet because of you three and needed to recoup the losses," She patted the pocket she'd placed the bill in, "That vampire has been quite insufferable zam."
Ignoring the glaring girl Kagehoshi reached into her pouch and pulled out several papers and handed them out to the girls present. Each gave the documents a confused look.
"Sponsorship forms," The ninja answered before they could ask, "Just sign on the dotted line and you all will become Team Shadow Star, a subordinate team under myself, Magistra Magi Kagehoshi Degozaru."
Rus looked down at her paper in wonder, no doubt scarcely believing the B-class that had failed them earlier that week was taking a personal interest in her and her team.
Arya just gave a suspicious glare at the form, acting as if at any moment it would suddenly animate and attempt to assassinate her.
Yulia frowned and lowered her paper.
"Why?"
The ninja shrugged her shoulders, taking no offence at the girl's tone.
"There are a number of reasons," She waved her hand flippantly, "It could be that This One has developed an interest in you three and wanted to take a hand in your growth, or perhaps it could be the usefulness of having a team, even an inexperienced one, to have around, or-"
"It says here that half of what we make on missions is paid to you as an 'Apprenticeship Tax'," Arya read off from her sheet, deadpan.
"Or that, yes zam," She nodded, "It's a standard clause."
A sigh escaped Arya and Yulia who stood beside her. Rus just gave a serious look at her forms.
"But… You will train us correct?" She asked.
The woman smiled back confidently.
"Yes."
The fencer clenched her jaw and stared at her page, "...I'll agree."
She accepted the pen from the ninja to sign her paperwork as her team looked on concerned. Yulia looked down at the contract. It was a simple, clearly worded agreement. The three would become direct subordinates of the ninja themed Ministra, surrender half of all mission rewards to her, and essentially allow her to act as their manager.
It was a startling amount of control to give someone who was essentially a stranger. Yulia didn't feel comfortable handing that over to anyone. But two thing stopped her. The first being her new resolve. Training.
Whatever else the woman might be she was monstrously powerful. A star compared to the candles of Yulia and her team. The girl couldn't be sure of such things but she felt confident in assuming that the opportunity to be trained by one of the elite was something most Ministra would kill for. Even if it was just a cash grab it would probably open some sort of new possibilities that a normal D-rank would not have.
Her second reason was something a bit less selfish. Yulia turned an eye to where her taller companion was handing over her signed form. They'd only met less than a month ago, and few hours together they spent in each other's company was mostly focused on exterminating more dangerous than normal pests, but Yulia felt she could call the girl a friend. The same with Arya who, despite being vastly more aggravating to deal with, was still a friend to the lonely girl.
Yulia didn't have enough friends to just ninja swoop in and start carrying them off. She signed the paper as well and handed it over. And seeing her two less intelligent teammates sign themselves over to the supremely annoying ninja girl Arya reluctantly signed the form as well, grumbling about a certain girl's brand of idiocy becoming infectious.
"Very good little ducks!" Kagehoshi grinned down while checking the papers, "With this done I can get started, Meet me at Building G."
With that she disappeared in a cloud of dust, dashing off and out of sight in an instant.
Arya blinked, "Where'd she go?"
Yulia pointed to the administration building off in the distance where the Ninja had fled to.
"Hmm, I suppose that makes sense, she probably wants to file those as soon as possible," Rus mumbled.
Yulia shrugged and Arya just looked as if she'd just bitten into a rotten fruit. The three made their way towards their next meeting.
The journey wasn't too far, the large and expansive building located right in the center of the campus. Compared to the other buildings on campus, and really any building Yulia had ever seen the thing was huge. If seen from above it was a giant circle with several smaller circles merged to it's sides, taking up the entire center of the campus.
From the ground it looked like a giant slightly rounded wall of concrete that somehow managed to reach at least a hundred feet into the air. A stadium or amphitheatre of immense size, Yulia was pretty sure that it shouldn't even be able to stand under it's own weight, and in fact the tonnage should have crushed any foundation under it into powder. Of course with Magic and ExTech such trivialities were probably ignorable, but it was still fairly impressive, at least in terms of scale.
Yulia had only been inside of the building once before. As part of her physical testing they'd directed her to the building and led her to the room with the necessary equipment.
Building G, the Gymnasium. Where Ministra go to train in their off time. It wasn't free, at least not the better sections of it. A ministra could use the public workout rooms as they wished, but it was essentially just weights and machines placed everywhere. Mundane things you'd find in better quality and with less crowds at a local gym. No trainers, nothing specialized, and really crowded.
There were better facilities with better equipment and even personal trainers, but that cost money. The best facilities being reserved for the strongest Ministra and thus the most successful to be able to afford it. It seemed a bit unfair to newbies, but ultimately even the resources of the the financial colossus that was The Ministra Union was finite. And the best resources would be going to those that required it most or put forth the most effort to the cause to afford it.
Arriving the dissonantly humble entrance the newly dubbed team Shadow Star signed their names on the guest log and, when their licenses were swiped through the reader, were lead down a long hall to the room that their new sponsor had reserved.
The sight that greeted the three as they entered was a familiar brunette, now dressed in a tracksuit and carrying a bamboo sword, standing at attention in the middle of a large and rather impressive workout room.
"Girls," She nodded to the trio as they entered and stood before her, "This One would like to welcome you to her personal training room. B-rank, such as this one, can have one set up on permanent reserve. Provided they pay of course. It has everything needed to properly train, and it will be where we will begin whipping you into shape zam!"
She slammed her sword into the floor making the three jump at the sudden bang.
"Right now you girls are a sorry excuse for a team," She stated harshly, "Your performance the other day was pitiful, that it was. While the creature was stronger than you individually each of you should have been able to defeat it alone let alone as a group. But as a group you all still failed spectacularly despite your overwhelming advantage. What you all lack is not power or strength, but skill. In the simplest terms…
"You three just plain suck zam."
Winces all around, none of them could deny her words when put in that light.
"But that's not unexpected from a group with as little experience as you three," The woman's tone softened and her posture relaxed, "This One has taken a look at your records, less than a month active and none of you having any proper experience prior to that zam. In all honesty This One expected a much worse showing from a bunch of cocky D-listers, that I did. It wouldn't be going too far to say you all could each qualify as a C-rank in terms of ability though not so much as to compensate for you lack of skill and experience.
"In fact that same strength is probably why you three performed as bad as you did zam."
Confusion was clear on the faces of the three juniors. None of them really had any idea how she could come to that conclusion.
Kagehoshi shook her head and 'tsk'ed at their bemusement.
"Tut tut, it really should be obvious, that it should. Answer this, the three of you, when taking missions what is it you face? Goblins? Imps? Ghouls? Slimes? Do you notice a pattern zam?"
It was Arya who seemed the first to grasp it, "It's groups of pests, weak but numerous."
Smiling, the ninja gestured for her to continue. Arya frowned, either in annoyance or thought. It took a moment but she nodded.
"We're too used to fighting packs of weaklings we can take down ourselves," Her eyes widened, "We always split up to fight, we never had a reason to work together. We got too used to fighting by ourselves against weaklings we don't know how to fight as a team against anything that can pose a threat!"
"PAHFECTO!" Clapping her hands the ninja shouted out some gibberish joyously, "It's an important first lesson to learn, not all experience is good experience. When you're starting out it's very easy to pick up bad habits and train them, not knowing any better. This One has seen Ministra defeated by their own hubris because they became to accustomed to fighting a single opponent and couldn't compensate when faced with an unknown."
Yulia nodded, it made sense. Nearly all D-Ranked jobs were simply facing E-ranked threats en mass. And even the rare stronger monster was still easily dealt with by any of them, a punch from Yulia, a stab from Rus, or a cloth spear from Arya. They were too strong to train effectively against the normal monsters like normal D-ranked Ministra. But they were not quite good enough to face the stronger beasts.
Like putting all your points into attack, only to learn the mobs in the second dungeon can dodge. Complacency was probably an even bigger threat than weakness.
"More than strength, more than power, what a Ministra needs to be is smart," The ninja cautioned. Behind her was a chalkboard, grabbed in the interim, and she snatched up a piece of colored chalk, "There's a simple equation you can remember: Power is Aptitude and Ability multiplied by Skill and Experience. Raw stats like strength or special attack are are only worth as much as you are skilled in their use. One Hundred times zero is still zero, and the power to crush mountains won't matter if you can't even touch your enemy."
She turned and began to write more on the board under her calculation.
"As This One's sensei told her, a Shinobi, or in this case a Ministra, must be; Flexible to adapt to the unexpected, Attentive to spot the answers you seek, Skilled to face any enemy, and Thorough to prevent complacency from taking root."
As she said this she wrote down the first word of each virtue on the board vertically. It ended up with the word FAST written up in large bold letters. The acronym was probably intended, mnemonics existed for a reason after all.
"This is where we'll focusing," She slapped her hand to the board, "As long as you're FAST, nothing can touch you."
"That is a horrible pun."
"Actually that's just normal word play," Yulia corrected her blonde teammate, "It'd be a pun if, for example, she said that using her method we'd be eating monsters for breakFAST."
"...We're no longer friends."
"I didn't know we were that cloth."
Kagehoshi chuckled grabbed the collar of the smallest girl present to prevent her from strangling her smug teammate.
"So, are there any questions zam?"
Rus raised a hand dutifully. After a moment, having realized the tallest member of the team wouldn't speak until given permission, Kagehoshi nodded to her.
"You said the creature we faced was stronger than us, but that we all had a chance to defeat it, correct?" Rus asked and waited for the ninja to confirm before continuing, "I wanted to know how much stronger it was, and how we compared to it that we could defeat it."
It was an understandable question, the monster had made short work of each of them. None present were able to land a decisive hit until Arya had created an opening a mile wide, and even then the creature had survived. Paired with its monstrous strength, the deck was very much stacked in its favor.
The ninja thought for a moment the turned to the board. She erased what had been previously written on it to begin to scribble more down. In short order she finished with a nod and stepped aside to show a list labeled 'Power Levels'
It was divided into three. The first labeled as D and E class and with values from 0 to 25. Near the bottom were Civilians and wolves, low class enemies, and further up were Samurai and bears. Above that was labeled C-rank, with a power scale of 100 to 200. In the corner was a crude doodle of a Tank labeled 95 to use as a reference.
Yulia found her name near the bottom of that list, rated as 110. Above her was Arya with 130, something the blonde esper would no doubt gloat about. Surprisingly Rus was much farther up, the shock not coming from her superiority but rather just how far ahead she was with a score 167. At the top was the Urwsine Man, placed beside something called a Narshark for scale. Both being just over 200 points.
The girl felt it probably would have had more dramatic impact to learn where she stood were it not for the doodles of herself, her team, and the monsters placed beside each marker.
And lastly above them all, and subject to the greatest jump in points was the B-rank group. The range for it being 5000 to 20000.
With a score of 5.6k a doodle of their new teacher was near the bottom, while things such as a 16k Alien Ship and a 22k Ancient Dragon were added to apparently grant something to compare it against. But the most shocking thing was the last entry under the B-ranks.
"What? How is she on there?" Arya shouted and jabbing a finger at the poorly drawn visage of a familiar pink haired girl. And while her reaction wasn't quite so animated Rus was similarly surprised. Even Yulia was shocked, if not by the inclusion then by the position.
Emmy, with a score of over 9000 points. The girl was nearly twice as strong as their Magistra, who in turn was about 50 times stronger than them herself.
"Emmy's B-rank," Yulia answered, "Though she said she was 2305, but she still has a higher score than Miss Kagehoshi."
The ninja raised an eyebrow, "Huh, she told you that did she? But it is true zam."
She circled the doodle with her chalk.
"Emmy is on here because she's one of the rare few with both high enough statistics, and a powerful enough ability that she couldn't be put anywhere below B-class,"
She said, "That's not to say she isn't skilled or experienced, just not enough to normally enter B-class. This is compensated by just how high her base stats are and her having a, quite frankly, stupidly over powered Ability like Thaumcraft that scales with it zam."
"Thaumcraft?" It was the first time any of the three heard that phrase. It was Rus who followed up with, "Don't you mean Thaumaturgy?"
"No, Thaumaturgy is the science of what is considered magic, and limited to the manipulation of effects within The World. By it's nature it has rules, systems, and logic it can't break away from or ignore. Thaumcraft... doesn't."
The one who answered was not Kagehoshi, nor was it any of the girls. Rather a recognizable voice coming from behind them. Emmy walked through the door, dressed in a thick white shirt tucked into pair of rather small blue briefs. She blushed at the sudden attention and moved her gym bag to hide her legs.
"Good Morning Emi-chan This One is glad you could make it," Kagehoshi greeted and looked over the girl, "Cute bloomers, trying to show off zam?"
"Syble gave me a suitcase the other day and said I could only wear what was inside it for the rest of the week," The pinkette grumbled, "This was about the least embarrassing thing in there."
"Harsh," The ninja winced, "I thought she was just going to suck your blood or something for breaking that new phone of hers."
"So did I, but when I asked she just gave me this offended look and said she wasn't a that kind of villain."
The asian girl just nodded in understanding confusing not just her new team but Emmy as well.
"That's enough chit-chat," She clapped her hands together to gather the attention of the room, "It's time to start your training.
--------------------------------------------
"Keep your back straight!" Shouted the brunette, "Breath in and lower it, breath out and lift. Keep your wrists angled. Good, now give me another set of 10!"
Yulia laid on the bench feeling regretting every decision she'd ever made that led her to this point. Aching muscles, burning and sore were screaming at her to stop.
"F-four, haf Five!" Her arms were trembling as she tried to lift the weight again under the hawk-like glare of her trainer, She was panting like a dog and she could actually feel the heat of it with each exhale, "Ssssiiiiiiix, haf haf. Sev... Sev... Sev..."
Despite her struggles the girl couldn't lift the bar further than a few inches each attempt. Each try just making it descend a little more before being caught by the ninja acting as spotter. On her fourth try the weight lifted, but not by any merit of her own. Without even a grunt Kagehoshi lifted and deposited the bar back to its resting place as the girl under her rolled over to collapse on the floor.
"Well, this is good enough for a beginner. Three sets of ten, ten and six at twenty kilos," She leaned down to quickly wipe off the bench with a spare towel, "You know, given your... physique, This One had actually assumed you would do worse. Congrats on beating that low bar zam."
"Not… fat," Yulia managed to choke out into the padding while trying to catch her breath.
What the hell? The girl laid face down on the mat uncaring of her embarrassing pose. She didn't have the arm strength to push herself up fully, so they laid flopped down on the mat under her. Why was that so hard? How could it be so heavy, there was nothing on it!
"Never said you were, squishy," Yulia felt something poke into her side and weakly tried to move her arm in attempt to swat it, "Though you could definitely benefit from laying off the sweets zam."
The girl just groaned.
The ninja had run her, and the rest of the team through various hoops. She'd posited that she needed to start from the bottom to build them up, and at the very bottom was was proper physical training. She'd done some weird hand gestures and somehow summoned up two more copies of herself. The bunshin, as she called them, split up to each focus on a member of the team.
Yulia was at least happy she wasn't suffering alone, that there was at least one person worse off than her. Arya was in a similar position, lying half dead across from her. Both had been told in no uncertain terms that they were far below her standards in fitness.
Just because we don't have abs doesn't make us fat, she mentally complained. She never had any problems with her weight, she was well within the healthy range for her size. She flipped herself over to glare at the ninja's exposed and chiseled core, Toned body, perfect curves, excellent skin and silky hair. I've never really felt self conscious about my looks but this woman is too damn perfect, I feel like a wretch in front of her.
Yulia fell back with a sigh, defeated before she even made it to the starting line.
Her less than flattering thoughts were interrupted by a hand held out in to her by the ninja. With a bit of effort she grabbed it and was quickly pulled back to her feet and standing on wobbly legs.
"Whoa there," Kagehoshi caught her before she could fall back on her face, "Let's get you to the bench, This One thinks that's enough for now, that I do. This One will get you some of her village's special protein shakes to help you cool down zam."
The girl just nodded and let the ninja help her walk to the other end of the gym. Her body was pushed to its limits. Not simply from the bench press. No, that was merely the most recent exercise she'd done.
Sit ups, squats, lateral pull-downs, dragon flags, and running laps. She pushed herself as far as she could go and then moved onto the next after catching her breath. Some energy bars and mineral water provided by the ninja, who was taking her job surprisingly seriously, were a big help in keeping her going. But it seemed whatever was fuelling her had finally exhausted itself and she could barely even stand under her own power.
She knew she would be feeling this in the morning.
"You had surprisingly good form for a beginner," The ninja complimented, "You only started getting sloppy after your muscles got too tired. This One thought you didn't have previous training zam?"
Yulia shook her head, "I don't. I just copied Rus' form."
It wasn't that hard, she simply had to keep an eye out for the girl to see what she did. Then it was a simple as following suit. When she couldn't copy the fencer she just asked her trainer to demonstrate and copied that. It wasn't anything requiring great coordination, so Yulia didn't consider the feat a big deal.
Apparently her instructor thought differently if her impressed look was anything to go by.
"You must have a good eye, you got your form right the first time for every exercise."
Yulia just shrugged, accepting the complement but not seeing the reason for it.
When they reached the end of the gym Yulia took her seat gratefully as the bunshin left to mix up the drink it promised. The exhausted girl took the time to examine her teammates.
Arya was laying face down on her bench with her bunshin fanning her. The girl was so exhausted that even her ribbons she kept in her hair were laying limp on her head. The girl had dropped well before Yulia herself did. She was either more inactive than Yulia had been prior to starting her new career path or else Yulia had lucked out with having inherited some good genes.
On the other end was Rus, pumping iron looking hardly winded despite having been going non-stop since the beginning.
And at a higher difficulty setting too, Yulia noted. Where the pugilist could barely manage with a naked bar the fencer had hers fully loaded. It was at least 100 kilos that the girl was pistoning up and down. Given the the style of Rus' work out cloths it would be impossible to see the prominent, lithe not bulky, muscles under the girl's tanned skin work as moved. If the ninja made Yulia feel inferior as a girl than the fencer made her feel inferior as a Ministra. For someone on her level the girl seemed to be quite far ahead.
You're just too awesome Rus. I don't really compare.
"Now what's got you looking so down?" Yulia turned to see Emmy jogging up, fresh from her own work out. Smiling, she sat down and held out her water bottle to the exhausted girl, "Here, you look like you need this more than me."
With a weak smile the taller girl accepted the offer and started chugging the rather tasty, if oddly thick, drink. She wiped her mouth and handed the empty bottle back to it's owner.
"It's one of Kagehoshi-senpai's protein milk-shakes," Yulia answered the unasked question. She turned her gaze to match her friends, landing on the still active Rus, "You're only just starting out, it's not being fair to yourself to compare yourself to your friend."
"She's right you know," Chimed in the ninja, walking back two bottles, "Sorry to ruin the cozy mood you had going but This One really needs to nip such things in the bud as quickly as possible, that I should."
She handed another shake to Yulia who downed it like the first and gave the second to Emmy who drank hers more conservatively. Kagehoshi took her own seat on Yulia's other side.
"Be sure to always drink one within half an hour of exercising to get the best results," She commented off hand, "But yes, you shouldn't be comparing yourself to that one, few humans are able to match strength with a Hanyou, a crossbreed."
It was an eye opener for the girl. She hadn't known what the word the asian girl was using to refer to her friend by meant before. A crossbreed… Yulia couldn't guess at what the girl's parentage was, there were far too many possible non-human species to list them all.
Crossbreeds were essentially considered a type of Demi-human, even if they were usually classified as humanoid. There were many ways their parentage could affect them, but most common was improved physical abilities or esper-like powers. Some, like Dragonborn, were lucky enough to get both.
Yulia sighed, she was further behind than she thought.
"Ow!" She yelped as she felt a pinch on her side.
"We just told you to stop that," The diminutive pinkette scolded, "Everyone has their limits, and you're just starting out. Don't give up so quickly, or was that promise you made to me just a joke?"
"...Thanks," The girl was right, she needed to stop sulking, "Were you the same when you started Emmy?"
"Of course, I had to start somewhere," She rubbed her friend's shoulder. She somehow missed the widening eyes of her college and her sudden gestures at her to shut up, "I was only able to bench about 50 kilos for ten reps if you can believe that. But I've managed to work my way up to 200 kilos! What about you Yulia? ...Yulia?"
"...Twenty."
"Huh, what's that? I don't think I hear you right, was that a joke? Oh, did you mean the weights? You need to add that to the bar, so that'd be 40 then? I suppose that's-"
The ninja, seeing her friend wasn't going to stop unintentionally torturing her student, quickly covered the small girl's mouth before she accidentally broke the poor girl. With her other she waved it in front of Yulia to get her attention.
"...Well that can't be good," She said as the fist fighter didn't respond, "Damn, I don't think I've ever seen something so vicious. You didn't leave any of her pride intact, what did she do to piss you off that much Emmy?"
"Nothing! What's wrong with Yulia?"
"...It's fine, she just had her fragile self confidence shattered by the cruel words of her girlfriend zam," The ninja sighed.
"We're no-"
"No, please have mercy on the poor girl and spare her anymore of your barbed word!" The ninja begged on behalf of her student, she didn't know if she could repair the damage such a blow could do to the poor girl.
Emmy just gave her friend an impotent glare, redfaced.
The teasing was interrupted by a soft chuckled from the now responsive ministra. The two were hopeful for a second before it continued. It wasn't the lighthearted fare that would come from humor, but instead a dark and bitter sound.
"Heh, I really am just a weakling, I thought I'd improve myself but I guess it's pointless like this," The girl had empty eyes, resigned with loss, "I guess I'm just a joke…"
The two winced at the rapid decline.
"Crap, that doesn't sound good," Kagehoshi bit her thumb, "Emmy, you need to do something!"
"What can I do?" Emmy didn't have a lot a friends, she'd never had to deal with something like this before!
"I don't know, you broke her you fix her!" She shoved the pinkette forward, hiding behind her smaller form as if to use her as a human shield against her student.
Hesitatingly Emmy approached the taller girl, moving slowly trying not to spook the girl. With nothing else to fall back on, she leaned on her education for answers. The closest situation being dealing with wounded animals. So far it appeared to be working well.
"Yulia?" She reached forward carefully.
"Twenty," Yulia didn't look up.
"Huh?" Emmy stopped in confusion as to what that could mean.
"Twenty kilos," Yulia clarified, "That's what I was lifting. Twenty kilos for three sets of 10. I couldn't even finish that…"
It suddenly dawned on the tiny ministra just what had happened. And as soon as she realized what occurred she cringed.
Her attempt to cheer up her friend had the exact opposite effect. Without meaning to Àimyrhja had really hurt her friend with just some casual words. She pulled her hand back guiltily.
"If I'm this weak how can I possibly reach B-rank," Yulia continued, not seeming to recognize what was happening around her, "I guess it was just a joke, thinking I could make it that far. You-"
Any further words were cut off by 35 kilos of pink haired girl tackling her with a hug. Emotional pain was quickly forgotten in favor a physical as Yulia was forcibly reminded that all her muscles were rather displeased with her recent interest in them. She felt like crying for a very different reason than just a few moments ago.
"Emmy?" She tried to ask 'why' but couldn't quite manage to spit that out due to being unable to breath.
"It's not a joke!"
Yulia failed to see what that had to do with knocking the wind out of her.
"Your promise, it's not a joke," Emmy said, "I'd never laugh at you for trying. It doesn't matter if you're weak now, you'll make it if you keep working hard. I'll be with you the whole way."
"Emmy?" Yulia felt herself tearing up at those heartfelt words, "Emmy!"
She hugged the girl back with as much strength as she could manage.
"Yulia!" Emmy responded by tightening her own grip.
The scene lasted for several more minutes before being interrupted by a polite cough.
"I hate to interrupt such a touching scene but we're still in the middle of training," Kagehoshi reminded them. She actually didn't dislike interrupting them. For some reason the sight of the idiot couple acting so lovey-dovey just annoyed her. A certain vampire would say it probably had something to do with her own lack of a love life, but Kagehoshi was confident that it was merely her annoyance at having her training time disrupted.
"I think it's time for some actual live fighting practice."
Being insignificant doesn't protect you, it just makes you a smaller target. Just a few days ago she came face to face with this. When faced with something beyond her ability she'd been rendered helpless. She'd always believed her fate was like a grain of sand on a beach, that any thing that would try to scoop it up would not care if she slipped between the cracks of their fingers. That wasn't the case. The monster she'd faced held her life in it's hands, Yulia suspected that Kagehoshi may have likely stepped in if she were likely to be delt a killing blow like with Arya but in the moment it most definitely didn't feel like that. At that time she was completely helpless, her fate in the creature's meaty bloodsoaked claws. Even her salvation, a rescue by a superior, was ultimately something she had no hand in, if Kagehoshi decided against it Yulia would not be here to ruminate.
Ultimately she had come to realize that her continued existence was decided at the whims of monsters beyond her scope and breadth, her fate was not her own to decide, and she could not hide behind her comforting illusion of safety she'd deluded herself into believing before.
It was a painful thing to come to terms with. It hadn't been an immediate thing, rather like a screw or vice, slowly being tightened around her thumbs. During the fight and the immediate aftermath it hadn't quite sunk in. During the hours long trek back home it had only really just barely sunk in. It only the restless nightmare filled night when the idea had truly started sinking in. Hours of laying in the silent dark with brief interruptions of whatever horrors her subconscious could cobble together from the mess just before and her own normally ignored insecurities, the perfect setting to brood.
She had woken up the next morning feeling both physically and emotionally shattered, she'd been hoping to escape her thoughts in routine only to receive messages from her teammates that they'd not be available for the day. So came a full day of rumination only briefly broken by the few necessities of life. The second night was somehow worse than the first, as the still fresh mental wound had just been left to fester a bit before being picked at some more. The second morning had been a repeat of the first, and the third night had been when she'd finally broken and accepted the facts.
She was too weak to take control of her own life.
Yulia did not like this fact. She didn't think there was anything she ever hated more than that fact. It was something that burned deep and hot in the pit of her stomach. It was a first, before she'd never been one for passion of any kind, a hollow feeling with only small sparks interest to drive her forward.
But now she had something better. With her previous weakness as her tinder and that loathing as the fire she would forge herself a new tool to change that fact.
She called her friends that morning and told them to meet together at the Campus.
The first to arrive was of course the ever punctual Rus Kaf. The handsome girl did however look a fair bit more tired and irritable than normal. She said her greetings and sat on the opposite side of the table across from Yulia to wait for their third teammate saying nothing else.
Arya was late by about ten minutes and was openly displaying her displeasure at the abrupt summons. She started tapping her foot, arms crossed, and giving the pugilist a look that demanded answers.
"Okay, Atyanas, what did you want that you had to call me," She waved an arm to her stoic teammate, "And apparently Rus, here."
"Not yet there's still one more person left," Yulia answered as she rose from her seat and dusted off her lap.
The two reacted surprised by the news. Rus seemed bemused as she stood herself while Arya seemed to not really believe it.
"Don't worry," Yulia shook her head and interrupted the short girl before she had a chance to voice her annoyance at the latest aggravation, "She should be here any-"
Dropping from the air just behind the two a figure rose from it's croach arms spread wide behind the two other members and moved to grab both.
"Duckies!" The ninja quickly ducked below the fencer's surprised elbow strike to the face. Her right arm wrapped its way around her side to pin her arms to her side while she did the same on her left side to the shocked Arya. Using both her momentum and their stunned lack of resistance she dragged the two forward to snatch up the third to squish between the two.
"-Moment," Yulia finished as the woman lifted the three up, "Nevermind, she's already here."
The ninja dropped the three and took a hop back to avoid the spear of fabric that Arya's sleeve had become. The short girl seemed rather flustered, Rus as well though not quite as upset so much as embarrassed.
"You!" The blonde esper jabbed a finger at their superior, "What are you doing here? Atyanas' why is she here?"
A hand patted the girl on the head, much like how one would pet a yappy purse dog. The blonde glared hatefully at the smirking ninja.
"This One was just getting to that, that she was," Kagehoshi held out a handed over a bill which the ninja placed into her pocket with a smile, "Excellent, first answer this; what have you three been doing since your last mission?"
"Training," Answered Rus immediately.
"Training," Arya nodded.
"...Training," Yulia lied while keeping her gaze on the tree directly behind the ninja.
"Wrong!" Before any of the girls could react the ninja lashed out, flicking each in the forehead with enough force to knock them off their feet, "The correct answer is keeping your superior officer waiting zam!"
The three froze in their attempts to get back on their feet. As they looked back up on the ninja they found a older girl giving them something that could only be technically called a smile. The frightening sight pinning each in place.
"I'd assumed the three of you would recover a little quicker but I guess I assumed wrong," The chipper tone and slight accent were missing, instead a sickeningly sweet tone colored the woman's slightly lower voice, "I waited the last three days for you all to come back to pick up another mission just so I could surprise you all. But imagine how shocked I was when Yulia called me this morning and I learned you all have been avoiding each other..."
"Atyanas!" The blonde turned to glare at the girl in question, "You knew about this?"
"No, I swear! I called her to help with training I don't know what she's talking about!"
"Correct, as This One said, it was supposed to be a surprise zam," The intimidating air about the brunet cleared and the three breathed easier, "This One had thought you three would be back to taking missions in a day at the most, not moping about at failing a test, That she did not!"
"Fai- We almost died!"
"Posh, This One was looking out for you from the shadows, you were never in any danger zam," Despite being noticeably older than the other three present the young woman pouted and turned her head up. It was a remarkably petulant display, "This One never left your side the entire time."
"Even after the test?" Rus asked.
"...Except then, This One left you then," The ninja waved away the shocked and slightly betrayed looks of her subordinates, "Relax, there wasn't anything more dangerous than wolves and bears left in the woods zam."
By that point the girls had returned to their feet and most were contemplating the pros and cons of simply walking away.
"So why did you want to meet up with us?" Yulia asked, "And why did you ask for 20 ecu if you were just going to meet us anyway?"
Yulia was somewhat pissed about that second part, it was not an insignificant amount of money for a girl like her.
"For the first This One has some news for you, that she does. For the second, This One lost a bet because of you three and needed to recoup the losses," She patted the pocket she'd placed the bill in, "That vampire has been quite insufferable zam."
Ignoring the glaring girl Kagehoshi reached into her pouch and pulled out several papers and handed them out to the girls present. Each gave the documents a confused look.
"Sponsorship forms," The ninja answered before they could ask, "Just sign on the dotted line and you all will become Team Shadow Star, a subordinate team under myself, Magistra Magi Kagehoshi Degozaru."
Rus looked down at her paper in wonder, no doubt scarcely believing the B-class that had failed them earlier that week was taking a personal interest in her and her team.
Arya just gave a suspicious glare at the form, acting as if at any moment it would suddenly animate and attempt to assassinate her.
Yulia frowned and lowered her paper.
"Why?"
The ninja shrugged her shoulders, taking no offence at the girl's tone.
"There are a number of reasons," She waved her hand flippantly, "It could be that This One has developed an interest in you three and wanted to take a hand in your growth, or perhaps it could be the usefulness of having a team, even an inexperienced one, to have around, or-"
"It says here that half of what we make on missions is paid to you as an 'Apprenticeship Tax'," Arya read off from her sheet, deadpan.
"Or that, yes zam," She nodded, "It's a standard clause."
A sigh escaped Arya and Yulia who stood beside her. Rus just gave a serious look at her forms.
"But… You will train us correct?" She asked.
The woman smiled back confidently.
"Yes."
The fencer clenched her jaw and stared at her page, "...I'll agree."
She accepted the pen from the ninja to sign her paperwork as her team looked on concerned. Yulia looked down at the contract. It was a simple, clearly worded agreement. The three would become direct subordinates of the ninja themed Ministra, surrender half of all mission rewards to her, and essentially allow her to act as their manager.
It was a startling amount of control to give someone who was essentially a stranger. Yulia didn't feel comfortable handing that over to anyone. But two thing stopped her. The first being her new resolve. Training.
Whatever else the woman might be she was monstrously powerful. A star compared to the candles of Yulia and her team. The girl couldn't be sure of such things but she felt confident in assuming that the opportunity to be trained by one of the elite was something most Ministra would kill for. Even if it was just a cash grab it would probably open some sort of new possibilities that a normal D-rank would not have.
Her second reason was something a bit less selfish. Yulia turned an eye to where her taller companion was handing over her signed form. They'd only met less than a month ago, and few hours together they spent in each other's company was mostly focused on exterminating more dangerous than normal pests, but Yulia felt she could call the girl a friend. The same with Arya who, despite being vastly more aggravating to deal with, was still a friend to the lonely girl.
Yulia didn't have enough friends to just ninja swoop in and start carrying them off. She signed the paper as well and handed it over. And seeing her two less intelligent teammates sign themselves over to the supremely annoying ninja girl Arya reluctantly signed the form as well, grumbling about a certain girl's brand of idiocy becoming infectious.
"Very good little ducks!" Kagehoshi grinned down while checking the papers, "With this done I can get started, Meet me at Building G."
With that she disappeared in a cloud of dust, dashing off and out of sight in an instant.
Arya blinked, "Where'd she go?"
Yulia pointed to the administration building off in the distance where the Ninja had fled to.
"Hmm, I suppose that makes sense, she probably wants to file those as soon as possible," Rus mumbled.
Yulia shrugged and Arya just looked as if she'd just bitten into a rotten fruit. The three made their way towards their next meeting.
The journey wasn't too far, the large and expansive building located right in the center of the campus. Compared to the other buildings on campus, and really any building Yulia had ever seen the thing was huge. If seen from above it was a giant circle with several smaller circles merged to it's sides, taking up the entire center of the campus.
From the ground it looked like a giant slightly rounded wall of concrete that somehow managed to reach at least a hundred feet into the air. A stadium or amphitheatre of immense size, Yulia was pretty sure that it shouldn't even be able to stand under it's own weight, and in fact the tonnage should have crushed any foundation under it into powder. Of course with Magic and ExTech such trivialities were probably ignorable, but it was still fairly impressive, at least in terms of scale.
Yulia had only been inside of the building once before. As part of her physical testing they'd directed her to the building and led her to the room with the necessary equipment.
Building G, the Gymnasium. Where Ministra go to train in their off time. It wasn't free, at least not the better sections of it. A ministra could use the public workout rooms as they wished, but it was essentially just weights and machines placed everywhere. Mundane things you'd find in better quality and with less crowds at a local gym. No trainers, nothing specialized, and really crowded.
There were better facilities with better equipment and even personal trainers, but that cost money. The best facilities being reserved for the strongest Ministra and thus the most successful to be able to afford it. It seemed a bit unfair to newbies, but ultimately even the resources of the the financial colossus that was The Ministra Union was finite. And the best resources would be going to those that required it most or put forth the most effort to the cause to afford it.
Arriving the dissonantly humble entrance the newly dubbed team Shadow Star signed their names on the guest log and, when their licenses were swiped through the reader, were lead down a long hall to the room that their new sponsor had reserved.
The sight that greeted the three as they entered was a familiar brunette, now dressed in a tracksuit and carrying a bamboo sword, standing at attention in the middle of a large and rather impressive workout room.
"Girls," She nodded to the trio as they entered and stood before her, "This One would like to welcome you to her personal training room. B-rank, such as this one, can have one set up on permanent reserve. Provided they pay of course. It has everything needed to properly train, and it will be where we will begin whipping you into shape zam!"
She slammed her sword into the floor making the three jump at the sudden bang.
"Right now you girls are a sorry excuse for a team," She stated harshly, "Your performance the other day was pitiful, that it was. While the creature was stronger than you individually each of you should have been able to defeat it alone let alone as a group. But as a group you all still failed spectacularly despite your overwhelming advantage. What you all lack is not power or strength, but skill. In the simplest terms…
"You three just plain suck zam."
Winces all around, none of them could deny her words when put in that light.
"But that's not unexpected from a group with as little experience as you three," The woman's tone softened and her posture relaxed, "This One has taken a look at your records, less than a month active and none of you having any proper experience prior to that zam. In all honesty This One expected a much worse showing from a bunch of cocky D-listers, that I did. It wouldn't be going too far to say you all could each qualify as a C-rank in terms of ability though not so much as to compensate for you lack of skill and experience.
"In fact that same strength is probably why you three performed as bad as you did zam."
Confusion was clear on the faces of the three juniors. None of them really had any idea how she could come to that conclusion.
Kagehoshi shook her head and 'tsk'ed at their bemusement.
"Tut tut, it really should be obvious, that it should. Answer this, the three of you, when taking missions what is it you face? Goblins? Imps? Ghouls? Slimes? Do you notice a pattern zam?"
It was Arya who seemed the first to grasp it, "It's groups of pests, weak but numerous."
Smiling, the ninja gestured for her to continue. Arya frowned, either in annoyance or thought. It took a moment but she nodded.
"We're too used to fighting packs of weaklings we can take down ourselves," Her eyes widened, "We always split up to fight, we never had a reason to work together. We got too used to fighting by ourselves against weaklings we don't know how to fight as a team against anything that can pose a threat!"
"PAHFECTO!" Clapping her hands the ninja shouted out some gibberish joyously, "It's an important first lesson to learn, not all experience is good experience. When you're starting out it's very easy to pick up bad habits and train them, not knowing any better. This One has seen Ministra defeated by their own hubris because they became to accustomed to fighting a single opponent and couldn't compensate when faced with an unknown."
Yulia nodded, it made sense. Nearly all D-Ranked jobs were simply facing E-ranked threats en mass. And even the rare stronger monster was still easily dealt with by any of them, a punch from Yulia, a stab from Rus, or a cloth spear from Arya. They were too strong to train effectively against the normal monsters like normal D-ranked Ministra. But they were not quite good enough to face the stronger beasts.
Like putting all your points into attack, only to learn the mobs in the second dungeon can dodge. Complacency was probably an even bigger threat than weakness.
"More than strength, more than power, what a Ministra needs to be is smart," The ninja cautioned. Behind her was a chalkboard, grabbed in the interim, and she snatched up a piece of colored chalk, "There's a simple equation you can remember: Power is Aptitude and Ability multiplied by Skill and Experience. Raw stats like strength or special attack are are only worth as much as you are skilled in their use. One Hundred times zero is still zero, and the power to crush mountains won't matter if you can't even touch your enemy."
She turned and began to write more on the board under her calculation.
"As This One's sensei told her, a Shinobi, or in this case a Ministra, must be; Flexible to adapt to the unexpected, Attentive to spot the answers you seek, Skilled to face any enemy, and Thorough to prevent complacency from taking root."
As she said this she wrote down the first word of each virtue on the board vertically. It ended up with the word FAST written up in large bold letters. The acronym was probably intended, mnemonics existed for a reason after all.
"This is where we'll focusing," She slapped her hand to the board, "As long as you're FAST, nothing can touch you."
"That is a horrible pun."
"Actually that's just normal word play," Yulia corrected her blonde teammate, "It'd be a pun if, for example, she said that using her method we'd be eating monsters for breakFAST."
"...We're no longer friends."
"I didn't know we were that cloth."
Kagehoshi chuckled grabbed the collar of the smallest girl present to prevent her from strangling her smug teammate.
"So, are there any questions zam?"
Rus raised a hand dutifully. After a moment, having realized the tallest member of the team wouldn't speak until given permission, Kagehoshi nodded to her.
"You said the creature we faced was stronger than us, but that we all had a chance to defeat it, correct?" Rus asked and waited for the ninja to confirm before continuing, "I wanted to know how much stronger it was, and how we compared to it that we could defeat it."
It was an understandable question, the monster had made short work of each of them. None present were able to land a decisive hit until Arya had created an opening a mile wide, and even then the creature had survived. Paired with its monstrous strength, the deck was very much stacked in its favor.
The ninja thought for a moment the turned to the board. She erased what had been previously written on it to begin to scribble more down. In short order she finished with a nod and stepped aside to show a list labeled 'Power Levels'
It was divided into three. The first labeled as D and E class and with values from 0 to 25. Near the bottom were Civilians and wolves, low class enemies, and further up were Samurai and bears. Above that was labeled C-rank, with a power scale of 100 to 200. In the corner was a crude doodle of a Tank labeled 95 to use as a reference.
Yulia found her name near the bottom of that list, rated as 110. Above her was Arya with 130, something the blonde esper would no doubt gloat about. Surprisingly Rus was much farther up, the shock not coming from her superiority but rather just how far ahead she was with a score 167. At the top was the Urwsine Man, placed beside something called a Narshark for scale. Both being just over 200 points.
The girl felt it probably would have had more dramatic impact to learn where she stood were it not for the doodles of herself, her team, and the monsters placed beside each marker.
And lastly above them all, and subject to the greatest jump in points was the B-rank group. The range for it being 5000 to 20000.
With a score of 5.6k a doodle of their new teacher was near the bottom, while things such as a 16k Alien Ship and a 22k Ancient Dragon were added to apparently grant something to compare it against. But the most shocking thing was the last entry under the B-ranks.
"What? How is she on there?" Arya shouted and jabbing a finger at the poorly drawn visage of a familiar pink haired girl. And while her reaction wasn't quite so animated Rus was similarly surprised. Even Yulia was shocked, if not by the inclusion then by the position.
Emmy, with a score of over 9000 points. The girl was nearly twice as strong as their Magistra, who in turn was about 50 times stronger than them herself.
"Emmy's B-rank," Yulia answered, "Though she said she was 2305, but she still has a higher score than Miss Kagehoshi."
The ninja raised an eyebrow, "Huh, she told you that did she? But it is true zam."
She circled the doodle with her chalk.
"Emmy is on here because she's one of the rare few with both high enough statistics, and a powerful enough ability that she couldn't be put anywhere below B-class,"
She said, "That's not to say she isn't skilled or experienced, just not enough to normally enter B-class. This is compensated by just how high her base stats are and her having a, quite frankly, stupidly over powered Ability like Thaumcraft that scales with it zam."
"Thaumcraft?" It was the first time any of the three heard that phrase. It was Rus who followed up with, "Don't you mean Thaumaturgy?"
"No, Thaumaturgy is the science of what is considered magic, and limited to the manipulation of effects within The World. By it's nature it has rules, systems, and logic it can't break away from or ignore. Thaumcraft... doesn't."
The one who answered was not Kagehoshi, nor was it any of the girls. Rather a recognizable voice coming from behind them. Emmy walked through the door, dressed in a thick white shirt tucked into pair of rather small blue briefs. She blushed at the sudden attention and moved her gym bag to hide her legs.
"Good Morning Emi-chan This One is glad you could make it," Kagehoshi greeted and looked over the girl, "Cute bloomers, trying to show off zam?"
"Syble gave me a suitcase the other day and said I could only wear what was inside it for the rest of the week," The pinkette grumbled, "This was about the least embarrassing thing in there."
"Harsh," The ninja winced, "I thought she was just going to suck your blood or something for breaking that new phone of hers."
"So did I, but when I asked she just gave me this offended look and said she wasn't a that kind of villain."
The asian girl just nodded in understanding confusing not just her new team but Emmy as well.
"That's enough chit-chat," She clapped her hands together to gather the attention of the room, "It's time to start your training.
--------------------------------------------
"Keep your back straight!" Shouted the brunette, "Breath in and lower it, breath out and lift. Keep your wrists angled. Good, now give me another set of 10!"
Yulia laid on the bench feeling regretting every decision she'd ever made that led her to this point. Aching muscles, burning and sore were screaming at her to stop.
"F-four, haf Five!" Her arms were trembling as she tried to lift the weight again under the hawk-like glare of her trainer, She was panting like a dog and she could actually feel the heat of it with each exhale, "Ssssiiiiiiix, haf haf. Sev... Sev... Sev..."
Despite her struggles the girl couldn't lift the bar further than a few inches each attempt. Each try just making it descend a little more before being caught by the ninja acting as spotter. On her fourth try the weight lifted, but not by any merit of her own. Without even a grunt Kagehoshi lifted and deposited the bar back to its resting place as the girl under her rolled over to collapse on the floor.
"Well, this is good enough for a beginner. Three sets of ten, ten and six at twenty kilos," She leaned down to quickly wipe off the bench with a spare towel, "You know, given your... physique, This One had actually assumed you would do worse. Congrats on beating that low bar zam."
"Not… fat," Yulia managed to choke out into the padding while trying to catch her breath.
What the hell? The girl laid face down on the mat uncaring of her embarrassing pose. She didn't have the arm strength to push herself up fully, so they laid flopped down on the mat under her. Why was that so hard? How could it be so heavy, there was nothing on it!
"Never said you were, squishy," Yulia felt something poke into her side and weakly tried to move her arm in attempt to swat it, "Though you could definitely benefit from laying off the sweets zam."
The girl just groaned.
The ninja had run her, and the rest of the team through various hoops. She'd posited that she needed to start from the bottom to build them up, and at the very bottom was was proper physical training. She'd done some weird hand gestures and somehow summoned up two more copies of herself. The bunshin, as she called them, split up to each focus on a member of the team.
Yulia was at least happy she wasn't suffering alone, that there was at least one person worse off than her. Arya was in a similar position, lying half dead across from her. Both had been told in no uncertain terms that they were far below her standards in fitness.
Just because we don't have abs doesn't make us fat, she mentally complained. She never had any problems with her weight, she was well within the healthy range for her size. She flipped herself over to glare at the ninja's exposed and chiseled core, Toned body, perfect curves, excellent skin and silky hair. I've never really felt self conscious about my looks but this woman is too damn perfect, I feel like a wretch in front of her.
Yulia fell back with a sigh, defeated before she even made it to the starting line.
Her less than flattering thoughts were interrupted by a hand held out in to her by the ninja. With a bit of effort she grabbed it and was quickly pulled back to her feet and standing on wobbly legs.
"Whoa there," Kagehoshi caught her before she could fall back on her face, "Let's get you to the bench, This One thinks that's enough for now, that I do. This One will get you some of her village's special protein shakes to help you cool down zam."
The girl just nodded and let the ninja help her walk to the other end of the gym. Her body was pushed to its limits. Not simply from the bench press. No, that was merely the most recent exercise she'd done.
Sit ups, squats, lateral pull-downs, dragon flags, and running laps. She pushed herself as far as she could go and then moved onto the next after catching her breath. Some energy bars and mineral water provided by the ninja, who was taking her job surprisingly seriously, were a big help in keeping her going. But it seemed whatever was fuelling her had finally exhausted itself and she could barely even stand under her own power.
She knew she would be feeling this in the morning.
"You had surprisingly good form for a beginner," The ninja complimented, "You only started getting sloppy after your muscles got too tired. This One thought you didn't have previous training zam?"
Yulia shook her head, "I don't. I just copied Rus' form."
It wasn't that hard, she simply had to keep an eye out for the girl to see what she did. Then it was a simple as following suit. When she couldn't copy the fencer she just asked her trainer to demonstrate and copied that. It wasn't anything requiring great coordination, so Yulia didn't consider the feat a big deal.
Apparently her instructor thought differently if her impressed look was anything to go by.
"You must have a good eye, you got your form right the first time for every exercise."
Yulia just shrugged, accepting the complement but not seeing the reason for it.
When they reached the end of the gym Yulia took her seat gratefully as the bunshin left to mix up the drink it promised. The exhausted girl took the time to examine her teammates.
Arya was laying face down on her bench with her bunshin fanning her. The girl was so exhausted that even her ribbons she kept in her hair were laying limp on her head. The girl had dropped well before Yulia herself did. She was either more inactive than Yulia had been prior to starting her new career path or else Yulia had lucked out with having inherited some good genes.
On the other end was Rus, pumping iron looking hardly winded despite having been going non-stop since the beginning.
And at a higher difficulty setting too, Yulia noted. Where the pugilist could barely manage with a naked bar the fencer had hers fully loaded. It was at least 100 kilos that the girl was pistoning up and down. Given the the style of Rus' work out cloths it would be impossible to see the prominent, lithe not bulky, muscles under the girl's tanned skin work as moved. If the ninja made Yulia feel inferior as a girl than the fencer made her feel inferior as a Ministra. For someone on her level the girl seemed to be quite far ahead.
You're just too awesome Rus. I don't really compare.
"Now what's got you looking so down?" Yulia turned to see Emmy jogging up, fresh from her own work out. Smiling, she sat down and held out her water bottle to the exhausted girl, "Here, you look like you need this more than me."
With a weak smile the taller girl accepted the offer and started chugging the rather tasty, if oddly thick, drink. She wiped her mouth and handed the empty bottle back to it's owner.
"It's one of Kagehoshi-senpai's protein milk-shakes," Yulia answered the unasked question. She turned her gaze to match her friends, landing on the still active Rus, "You're only just starting out, it's not being fair to yourself to compare yourself to your friend."
"She's right you know," Chimed in the ninja, walking back two bottles, "Sorry to ruin the cozy mood you had going but This One really needs to nip such things in the bud as quickly as possible, that I should."
She handed another shake to Yulia who downed it like the first and gave the second to Emmy who drank hers more conservatively. Kagehoshi took her own seat on Yulia's other side.
"Be sure to always drink one within half an hour of exercising to get the best results," She commented off hand, "But yes, you shouldn't be comparing yourself to that one, few humans are able to match strength with a Hanyou, a crossbreed."
It was an eye opener for the girl. She hadn't known what the word the asian girl was using to refer to her friend by meant before. A crossbreed… Yulia couldn't guess at what the girl's parentage was, there were far too many possible non-human species to list them all.
Crossbreeds were essentially considered a type of Demi-human, even if they were usually classified as humanoid. There were many ways their parentage could affect them, but most common was improved physical abilities or esper-like powers. Some, like Dragonborn, were lucky enough to get both.
Yulia sighed, she was further behind than she thought.
"Ow!" She yelped as she felt a pinch on her side.
"We just told you to stop that," The diminutive pinkette scolded, "Everyone has their limits, and you're just starting out. Don't give up so quickly, or was that promise you made to me just a joke?"
"...Thanks," The girl was right, she needed to stop sulking, "Were you the same when you started Emmy?"
"Of course, I had to start somewhere," She rubbed her friend's shoulder. She somehow missed the widening eyes of her college and her sudden gestures at her to shut up, "I was only able to bench about 50 kilos for ten reps if you can believe that. But I've managed to work my way up to 200 kilos! What about you Yulia? ...Yulia?"
"...Twenty."
"Huh, what's that? I don't think I hear you right, was that a joke? Oh, did you mean the weights? You need to add that to the bar, so that'd be 40 then? I suppose that's-"
The ninja, seeing her friend wasn't going to stop unintentionally torturing her student, quickly covered the small girl's mouth before she accidentally broke the poor girl. With her other she waved it in front of Yulia to get her attention.
"...Well that can't be good," She said as the fist fighter didn't respond, "Damn, I don't think I've ever seen something so vicious. You didn't leave any of her pride intact, what did she do to piss you off that much Emmy?"
"Nothing! What's wrong with Yulia?"
"...It's fine, she just had her fragile self confidence shattered by the cruel words of her girlfriend zam," The ninja sighed.
"We're no-"
"No, please have mercy on the poor girl and spare her anymore of your barbed word!" The ninja begged on behalf of her student, she didn't know if she could repair the damage such a blow could do to the poor girl.
Emmy just gave her friend an impotent glare, redfaced.
The teasing was interrupted by a soft chuckled from the now responsive ministra. The two were hopeful for a second before it continued. It wasn't the lighthearted fare that would come from humor, but instead a dark and bitter sound.
"Heh, I really am just a weakling, I thought I'd improve myself but I guess it's pointless like this," The girl had empty eyes, resigned with loss, "I guess I'm just a joke…"
The two winced at the rapid decline.
"Crap, that doesn't sound good," Kagehoshi bit her thumb, "Emmy, you need to do something!"
"What can I do?" Emmy didn't have a lot a friends, she'd never had to deal with something like this before!
"I don't know, you broke her you fix her!" She shoved the pinkette forward, hiding behind her smaller form as if to use her as a human shield against her student.
Hesitatingly Emmy approached the taller girl, moving slowly trying not to spook the girl. With nothing else to fall back on, she leaned on her education for answers. The closest situation being dealing with wounded animals. So far it appeared to be working well.
"Yulia?" She reached forward carefully.
"Twenty," Yulia didn't look up.
"Huh?" Emmy stopped in confusion as to what that could mean.
"Twenty kilos," Yulia clarified, "That's what I was lifting. Twenty kilos for three sets of 10. I couldn't even finish that…"
It suddenly dawned on the tiny ministra just what had happened. And as soon as she realized what occurred she cringed.
Her attempt to cheer up her friend had the exact opposite effect. Without meaning to Àimyrhja had really hurt her friend with just some casual words. She pulled her hand back guiltily.
"If I'm this weak how can I possibly reach B-rank," Yulia continued, not seeming to recognize what was happening around her, "I guess it was just a joke, thinking I could make it that far. You-"
Any further words were cut off by 35 kilos of pink haired girl tackling her with a hug. Emotional pain was quickly forgotten in favor a physical as Yulia was forcibly reminded that all her muscles were rather displeased with her recent interest in them. She felt like crying for a very different reason than just a few moments ago.
"Emmy?" She tried to ask 'why' but couldn't quite manage to spit that out due to being unable to breath.
"It's not a joke!"
Yulia failed to see what that had to do with knocking the wind out of her.
"Your promise, it's not a joke," Emmy said, "I'd never laugh at you for trying. It doesn't matter if you're weak now, you'll make it if you keep working hard. I'll be with you the whole way."
"Emmy?" Yulia felt herself tearing up at those heartfelt words, "Emmy!"
She hugged the girl back with as much strength as she could manage.
"Yulia!" Emmy responded by tightening her own grip.
The scene lasted for several more minutes before being interrupted by a polite cough.
"I hate to interrupt such a touching scene but we're still in the middle of training," Kagehoshi reminded them. She actually didn't dislike interrupting them. For some reason the sight of the idiot couple acting so lovey-dovey just annoyed her. A certain vampire would say it probably had something to do with her own lack of a love life, but Kagehoshi was confident that it was merely her annoyance at having her training time disrupted.
"I think it's time for some actual live fighting practice."
Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
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God this chapter took so long to get out, and there's still a second part of it.
so chapter 6a I'll get out part b tomorrow.
so chapter 6a I'll get out part b tomorrow.
justinkal
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First thing's first. In this chapter, you have some serious issues with the rules of dialogue. Whenever you have a sentence of the format "[dialogue in quotation marks][comma][info about the speaker][comma][continuation of the earlier dialogue, again in quotation marks]", the two red sections should NOT have their first words capitalized.
If the first comma is instead a question mark or exclamation point, then things are a bit different. You're never supposed to put a period in that position though.
An example of a sentence in which you messed this up is
As per usual, there's plenty of places that I haven't mentioned where a comma should be added in.
You also need a comma between "restless" and "nightmare".
Also, add a comma between the first instance of "behind the two" and "a figure", and change "behind the two other members and moved to grab both" to "behind them, and moved to grab both" so that the sentence flows better.
Delete either "together" or "they spent in each other's company".
Add a comma between "annoying ninja girl" and "Arya".
You also forgot to capitalize this instance of her referring to herself as "this one".
Add a comma after "bench", delete the word "feeling", delete "she'd ever made", and add a comma after "sore".
Yeah..........after that last scene, particularly the fact that it lasted for minutes, they're going to have a lot of people thinking that they're a couple.
If the first comma is instead a question mark or exclamation point, then things are a bit different. You're never supposed to put a period in that position though.
An example of a sentence in which you messed this up is
I won't point out other instances, because there's a lot of them.
As per usual, there's plenty of places that I haven't mentioned where a comma should be added in.
Change "being powerless what feelings" to "being powerless, the feelings".
Something is missing between "It" and "only" at the start of this sentence.
You also need a comma between "restless" and "nightmare".
Add the word "of" between "sparks" and "interest".
crouch
Also, add a comma between the first instance of "behind the two" and "a figure", and change "behind the two other members and moved to grab both" to "behind them, and moved to grab both" so that the sentence flows better.
Delete either "held out" or "handed over".
Remove the capitalization.
Add a comma between "glaring girl and" Kagehoshi", change the red word to a comma, and add a comma between "several papers" and "and handed".
Add the word "the" between "and" and "few".
Delete either "together" or "they spent in each other's company".
Move the comma so that it's after "Arya" instead of after "who".
friends for the ninja to just swoop in
Change "And seeing her two" to either "Seeing her two" or "Then, seeing her two".
Add a comma between "annoying ninja girl" and "Arya".
Change "Meet" to lowercase.
Add the word "at" between "Arriving" and "the" and add a comma between "entrance" and "the".
"B-rank" should be either "B-ranks" or "B-rank Ministra".
You also forgot to capitalize this instance of her referring to herself as "this one".
Add a comma after "individually" and another after "alone".
Change "to" to "too".
Change the semicolon to a colon.
Delete the red word.
Change both instances of "breath" to "breathe".
Add a comma after "bench", delete the word "feeling", delete "she'd ever made", and add a comma after "sore".
Delete one of the copies of the word "was".
Change the comma after "chiseled core" to a semicolon, change "Toned" to lowercase, and add a comma after "excellent skin".
Delete the word "in".
Change the red word to "of".
Yeah..........after that last scene, particularly the fact that it lasted for minutes, they're going to have a lot of people thinking that they're a couple.
Last edited:
Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
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Dammit, I spell checked it into minutes instead of moments.
But thanks again dude, the capitalization thing is something I'd forgotten about grammar. I'll start self-correcting for that in the future.
But thanks again dude, the capitalization thing is something I'd forgotten about grammar. I'll start self-correcting for that in the future.
Master of Squirrel-fu
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Some general plans of where to take this:
Plan for the rest of the chapters:
[COLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.701961)]Ch 7: More fluff, team focused. Possibly mission with Legionettes. Ch 8: Going on new mission, Maoh Mao Lin's introduction Ch 9: Dealing with defeat Ch 10: Time skip, area off limits. Ch 11: Scheming, returning to fight after learning a lesson Ch 12: Continued fighting Ch 13: Continued fighting, pulling off a win Ch 14: Epilogue[/COLOR]
So, in summary, next full chapter would be a mission with with the Legionettes to take on new monsters appearing in the area, succeeds and reveal that something is going on. During the chapter it is shown that Rus' lineage may be an issue. Ch 8 would show a new patrol of the area with Emmy and running into trouble and fighting seperate battles. I might mix this and the last chapter into one for convenience. An invasion of the district has been occuring and they've already taken over a lot of territory. Yulia ends up fighting the leader Maoh Mao Lin and her teammates the two equally powerful guards. It ends with a the fights unfinished as rescue comes but the girls were obviously on the loosing end and Kagehoshi suffers a serious injury. Ch 10 is a breather chapter, probably going to move my plans for a sleep over chapter to here. More issues are revealed with Rus' lineage, reveal Mrs Atyanas' previous occupation as a lower C-ranked Ministra, reveal she used to date Arya's uncle before meeting Yulia's father. Chapter 11 would be meeting with Kagehoshi and Emmy to learn that The MU is at odds on how to handle the situation and deadlocked so Kagehoshi is going to take the three on a "scouting" mission to find out the leader's hide out as Rus has their scent. Emmy gives Yulia some of her blood, transmuted into a Philosopher's stone to replace the gem in the girl's broken gloves and some training to properly magic on her own without the device to shape the magic. They find the place and start the fight. Emmy and Yulia against the Maoh with an Injured Kagehoshi helping Rus and Arya take on the lieutenants.
CH 12 is majority of the fight, the full truth of what the non-human side of Rus' parentage has done and why they're hated, Arya deals with her own issues with a sadistic opponent, Kagehoshi strains her injuries to protect both girls, Emmy and Yulia have issues dealing with the Maoh. It's revealed the reason for their invasion was because their Netherworld was dissolving thanks to the partner world being destroyed in the wake of the world Alexandria exists in's passing. CH 13, Emmy is conflicted by her morality, gets defeated by Mao Lin, Yulia seeing no way she can win on her own ingests the Philosophers stone based on earlier forshadowing of it's properties as "The Ultimate Magic Catalyst", Kagehoshi overworks herself and the lieutenants try and finish her off but get defeated by the teamwork of Arya and Rus. Yulia burns out all of her magic matching Mao Lin ending with both severely beaten and exhausted. Yulia ends up winning the resulting slugfest by using Emmy's advice on muscle enhancement with magic and Kagehoshi's boxing lessons. Epilogue would be the immediate aftermath, Kagehoshi retiring but staying on as the girls' trainer, Yulia deals with some long term health effects from ingesting a Philosopher's stone including some of organ tissue being replaced with Homunculi tissues and dependant on magic to retain form. Arya and Yulia comfort Rus on learning more about his/her people.
Christ that's a wall of text.
Other spoilery things:
Rus' lineage is being a descendant of a race of artificially created beings called the Lomasi. They were created by a wizard who made them to be perfect slaves to suit any need he had. So they were unnaturally attractive, physically strong, and had large magic capacity. Incidentally they were also created to be dumb enough to have no choice but to follow his orders, dependant on a drug he'd created so to ensure loyalty, be extremely delicious, great as magical ingredients, and have no sense of morality. Eventually he died and the Lomasi escaped, in order to survived they started cannibalizing each other. They tore a path of destruction across all that they met, raping murdering and eating people (and not always in that order) and developting a reputation as being the worst thing to happen to the multiverse since The Great Cataclysm. Eventually they were killed off, either in vengeance, to harvest their organs for potions, or to just eat them. All that's left are partially human descendants who have to deal with people trying to kill them for various reasons. They also require some amount of cannibalism, either human or Lomasi, to remain healthy.
Emmy is the younger sister by adoption of A-Ranked Ministra Ala Alba the White Witch, recent events led to Alba sacrificing the Mana Degeneracy Core (A super Philosophers stone) that acted as her heart to create a body to save Emmy's life. Alba is still alive but only has a few years left before she runs out of magic entirely and disappears. The act changed Emmy from a human into a Homunculus and gave her the ability of Thaumcraft, or Wishmaker, the ability to simply brute force any spell into working regardless of skill level or knowledge by expending lots of magic.
Yulia has a second hidden ability that probably won't be explored in depth. It's a form of True Sight, rather than seeing through illusions it instead allows her to see actions take place regardless of the speed they occur at. It grants no enhanced reflexes or acuity, simply able to see objects moving even if they move too fast for normal humans to see.
Kagehoshi has a little sister by the name of Seka who's Ministra Magi Hanabi Yaredaze who specializes in making things explode. Kagehoshi herself was on Ala Alba's first Magistra team and was her student. She is actually the same age as Emmy: 19 and had a small crush on Emmy prior to her gaining a new body.
Arya doesn't have any hidden psychosis or dark secrets, Despite being a text book Ojo/Tsundere type she's the most mature and socially aware of her team. Her family has been Ministra or at least powerful espers for generations and have a lineage they claim back to The Luminous Maiden. Her older sisters are Aisling who is an Idol Singer and powerful enough to equal A-ranked Ministra and cuddles her younger siblings, especially Arya, and can summon and control Negative Anti-mass capable of silently and selectively annihilate any matter or energy known. Aisling is known as the strongest esper in centuries. Her brother Aventus joined the Champions' Guild and eloped with a demi-human Slime Girl . Her other sister is Aela is a C-ranked Ministra named Puella Pamplemouse Star-Drop Diva who can create and manipulate small amounts of a type of Exotic Matter with properties that defy conventional physics. Arya is self conscious about her comparatively weak ability.
The Legionettes are an army of clones created by the Luminous Maiden some time before The Great Catastrophe that caused the worlds to start merging. They are individually weak and tied together by a mental network that links them all. They appear emotionally empty and very uncanny, most people find them creepy both from their mechanical actions and their worship of The Luminous Maiden as a religious figure. They are D-ranked psychics on their own, but have the ability to channel the strength of their sisters in times of need thanks to their Network. They're methods are not well known and few volunteer information about it. They follow the rulings of the city first, and are the first respondents to lethal external threats.
[COLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.701961)]Ch 7: More fluff, team focused. Possibly mission with Legionettes. Ch 8: Going on new mission, Maoh Mao Lin's introduction Ch 9: Dealing with defeat Ch 10: Time skip, area off limits. Ch 11: Scheming, returning to fight after learning a lesson Ch 12: Continued fighting Ch 13: Continued fighting, pulling off a win Ch 14: Epilogue[/COLOR]
So, in summary, next full chapter would be a mission with with the Legionettes to take on new monsters appearing in the area, succeeds and reveal that something is going on. During the chapter it is shown that Rus' lineage may be an issue. Ch 8 would show a new patrol of the area with Emmy and running into trouble and fighting seperate battles. I might mix this and the last chapter into one for convenience. An invasion of the district has been occuring and they've already taken over a lot of territory. Yulia ends up fighting the leader Maoh Mao Lin and her teammates the two equally powerful guards. It ends with a the fights unfinished as rescue comes but the girls were obviously on the loosing end and Kagehoshi suffers a serious injury. Ch 10 is a breather chapter, probably going to move my plans for a sleep over chapter to here. More issues are revealed with Rus' lineage, reveal Mrs Atyanas' previous occupation as a lower C-ranked Ministra, reveal she used to date Arya's uncle before meeting Yulia's father. Chapter 11 would be meeting with Kagehoshi and Emmy to learn that The MU is at odds on how to handle the situation and deadlocked so Kagehoshi is going to take the three on a "scouting" mission to find out the leader's hide out as Rus has their scent. Emmy gives Yulia some of her blood, transmuted into a Philosopher's stone to replace the gem in the girl's broken gloves and some training to properly magic on her own without the device to shape the magic. They find the place and start the fight. Emmy and Yulia against the Maoh with an Injured Kagehoshi helping Rus and Arya take on the lieutenants.
CH 12 is majority of the fight, the full truth of what the non-human side of Rus' parentage has done and why they're hated, Arya deals with her own issues with a sadistic opponent, Kagehoshi strains her injuries to protect both girls, Emmy and Yulia have issues dealing with the Maoh. It's revealed the reason for their invasion was because their Netherworld was dissolving thanks to the partner world being destroyed in the wake of the world Alexandria exists in's passing. CH 13, Emmy is conflicted by her morality, gets defeated by Mao Lin, Yulia seeing no way she can win on her own ingests the Philosophers stone based on earlier forshadowing of it's properties as "The Ultimate Magic Catalyst", Kagehoshi overworks herself and the lieutenants try and finish her off but get defeated by the teamwork of Arya and Rus. Yulia burns out all of her magic matching Mao Lin ending with both severely beaten and exhausted. Yulia ends up winning the resulting slugfest by using Emmy's advice on muscle enhancement with magic and Kagehoshi's boxing lessons. Epilogue would be the immediate aftermath, Kagehoshi retiring but staying on as the girls' trainer, Yulia deals with some long term health effects from ingesting a Philosopher's stone including some of organ tissue being replaced with Homunculi tissues and dependant on magic to retain form. Arya and Yulia comfort Rus on learning more about his/her people.
Christ that's a wall of text.
Other spoilery things:
Rus' lineage is being a descendant of a race of artificially created beings called the Lomasi. They were created by a wizard who made them to be perfect slaves to suit any need he had. So they were unnaturally attractive, physically strong, and had large magic capacity. Incidentally they were also created to be dumb enough to have no choice but to follow his orders, dependant on a drug he'd created so to ensure loyalty, be extremely delicious, great as magical ingredients, and have no sense of morality. Eventually he died and the Lomasi escaped, in order to survived they started cannibalizing each other. They tore a path of destruction across all that they met, raping murdering and eating people (and not always in that order) and developting a reputation as being the worst thing to happen to the multiverse since The Great Cataclysm. Eventually they were killed off, either in vengeance, to harvest their organs for potions, or to just eat them. All that's left are partially human descendants who have to deal with people trying to kill them for various reasons. They also require some amount of cannibalism, either human or Lomasi, to remain healthy.
Emmy is the younger sister by adoption of A-Ranked Ministra Ala Alba the White Witch, recent events led to Alba sacrificing the Mana Degeneracy Core (A super Philosophers stone) that acted as her heart to create a body to save Emmy's life. Alba is still alive but only has a few years left before she runs out of magic entirely and disappears. The act changed Emmy from a human into a Homunculus and gave her the ability of Thaumcraft, or Wishmaker, the ability to simply brute force any spell into working regardless of skill level or knowledge by expending lots of magic.
Yulia has a second hidden ability that probably won't be explored in depth. It's a form of True Sight, rather than seeing through illusions it instead allows her to see actions take place regardless of the speed they occur at. It grants no enhanced reflexes or acuity, simply able to see objects moving even if they move too fast for normal humans to see.
Kagehoshi has a little sister by the name of Seka who's Ministra Magi Hanabi Yaredaze who specializes in making things explode. Kagehoshi herself was on Ala Alba's first Magistra team and was her student. She is actually the same age as Emmy: 19 and had a small crush on Emmy prior to her gaining a new body.
Arya doesn't have any hidden psychosis or dark secrets, Despite being a text book Ojo/Tsundere type she's the most mature and socially aware of her team. Her family has been Ministra or at least powerful espers for generations and have a lineage they claim back to The Luminous Maiden. Her older sisters are Aisling who is an Idol Singer and powerful enough to equal A-ranked Ministra and cuddles her younger siblings, especially Arya, and can summon and control Negative Anti-mass capable of silently and selectively annihilate any matter or energy known. Aisling is known as the strongest esper in centuries. Her brother Aventus joined the Champions' Guild and eloped with a demi-human Slime Girl . Her other sister is Aela is a C-ranked Ministra named Puella Pamplemouse Star-Drop Diva who can create and manipulate small amounts of a type of Exotic Matter with properties that defy conventional physics. Arya is self conscious about her comparatively weak ability.
The Legionettes are an army of clones created by the Luminous Maiden some time before The Great Catastrophe that caused the worlds to start merging. They are individually weak and tied together by a mental network that links them all. They appear emotionally empty and very uncanny, most people find them creepy both from their mechanical actions and their worship of The Luminous Maiden as a religious figure. They are D-ranked psychics on their own, but have the ability to channel the strength of their sisters in times of need thanks to their Network. They're methods are not well known and few volunteer information about it. They follow the rulings of the city first, and are the first respondents to lethal external threats.
dragonx99
Actually Satan
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My shipping is just intensifying. And Yulia darling you really do have to remember that you're going down your most difficult path right now when you run into walls like this. If nothing else it should at least cheer you up a little bit.
Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
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The ring was a five meter large circular mat with smaller rings drawn inside it. There were no physical boundaries around it, just a line of white to indicate where the inbound area was.
The ninja lead the five guests to the ring before giving her explanation. The four sat on the floor as she began, a bit too tired at the moment to keep standing unless needed.
"By now each of you girls has a work out plan and the proper knowledge of how to train to improve your physical strength zam," She said, "Now it's time to start improving on your skill as well. For now you will start without using any of your powers, that you will. So no magic and no esper abilities. It's best to have a solid foundation to work off of before any specialization can be done."
Kegehoshi was looking at Arya while explaining that, as the girl stood to gain the least from martial training. Thankfully the girl didn't seem to take any offense to the plan, just gritting her teeth and hardening her resolve. These were the words of someone who had made it into the elite forces, something that couldn't easily be dismissed.
"Trust when This One says not to discount the value of such training, that you should not. This One has, herself, reached the rank of B thanks to her dedication and hard work," She went on, "This One is not an esper, a hanyou, nor was she gifted with any sort of great power. As ashamed as someone of this rank may be of such things This One is proud of her 'Dark History' as weakling unable to swim even run ten meters before needing to catch her breath."
The three girls were shocked. Even ignoring the ninja's claim of humble beginnings, that level of weakness was something that they thought only existed in parody. One of those exaggerated 'Before' images in a workout program that's supposed to be comically inept to contrast their buff 'After' photo. That such a person could have ever existed in real life was on its own a dramatic reveal.
A comical image conjured in Yulia's mind of her trainer suddenly launching into an infomercial like speech to try and sell them all some shady miracle drug.
"And for just five easy payments of 24.99 you too can become like me! NinNin Brand X is filled with ELECTROLYTES! Give it to your babies and they will grow up to be as fast as a ninja! They will be so fast when people see them they will actually think they're ninja!"
The notion brought a smile to the girl's face.
"If This One could climb the ladder with not a single advantage she can be sure you, who are above her previous self, will go even farther," The ninja continued, either not noticing or ignoring her student's brief lapse in attention, "So, let us get started then zam! Each of you will take a turn on the mat facing Emmy while This One observes.
"Now to see what order you go in," She reached into her pouch and pulled out a coin. She tossed the metal bit into the air and quickly snatched it from it's fall, using both hands to obscure the motion.
"Right!" Called the two taller teammates while the final girl called "Left!"
The ninja opened her hands to show the coin in her right.
The esper pouted at dropping out first. As the selection method had doubled as a means to test reaction and visual tracking as well the girl was less than pleased to fail so quickly.
The game continued for a few more rounds as the two girls confidently provided the same answers as the ninja slowly upped her speed and the complexity of her catches.
"Right!" Called Rus, eyes tracking the coin as it fell into the woman's hand.
"Ri- No, Left," Yulia provided.
The ninja opened her hands, the coin sitting in her left hand. She closed her hands again before reopening them to show the coin in her right hand.
"You have really good eyes, ducky," She praised the girl and rolled the slug over her knuckles, "For seeing through that little trick you get to go first zam!"
Yulia grumbled as she unsteadily began to stand up. She'd assumed that winning would mean getting a chance to rest first, but it seemed she was unlucky. She was at least grateful that her muscles were no longer aching so much as before.
She paused mid-step as she suddenly became aware of her speedy recovery. Not so long ago she was on the verge of collapse, but now all she felt was a bit of stiffness and fatigue. She'd exhausted herself before to similar degrees when she was younger and couldn't recall such a miraculously swift recovery.
"It's your Magic," Emmy said seeming to realize what her friend was concerned about, "It's Type 3, when they tested you they opened the channels for your inner energy to flow. Chakra, dragon paths, mage circuits, Magicgate, whatever you want to call it, when opened they usually have a side effect of increasing strength, recovery, or stamina without conscious effort.
"After this I can teach you a few tricks on how to use it," she was confident in her speech, an odd change from her earlier demeanor thus far. It was like a switch had been flipped. Where prior she seemed hesitant or passive the moment she stepped on the mat those qualities vanished. Instead the girl was entirely sure in her motions and intents, as if a new personality had been revealed, "I usually use Type 2 'Formal' Magic but I'm quite capable of Type 3 'Informal' Magic as well, learning to control the flow of magic will help you immensely in the future."
"Hey hey, don't go stealing my students away from me before I even get the chance to teach them," Kegehoshi joked, "Now, take your spots in the center ring so we can start."
The two reached the center of the mat and stood opposite of the other. The ninja raised her hand.
"Ready," the two girls took their stances as Kagehoshi raised her hand, Yulia entering a standard boxer's guard she'd copied from hours of videos. Upright and angled with fists held ready, a position that favored agression over defense. Emmy straightened her back and stood with her side facing her opponent with her arms out and knees bent, "Go!"
Yulia shot forward as fast as her legs could propel her, her long legs allowing her to very quickly bridge the gap. Her left arm went into a hook aiming for the head of the pinkette who hadn't responded. Right foot out, exhaling, she put as much of her momentum into the strike as possible.
Emmy's head juked back at that last moment, allowing the strike to fly past harmlessly. Without missing a beat she griped the offending wrist while the arm was over her shoulder and she turned, twisting meanwhile to throw the girl over her shoulder.
Yulia landed painfully on her back, the impact forcing the air from lungs in shock. A horrible feeling only compounded moments later by a small fist driving itself deep into her solar plexus.
Yulia spent several horrible seconds curled into herself from the combination of pain and breathlessness. She fought not simply just to finally breath in but to prevent herself from emptying the contents of her stomach onto the mat like the world's most disgusting juicebox.
It felt to her like an eternity later that she was able to finally inhale.
Emmy had made no move to comfort her, instead she moved away a respect full distance and regarded her with cold eyes. It was clear no mercy would be afforded during a match. The moment they had entered the ring they were opponents and nothing more.
"Your form is impressive but your speed and technique are atrocious," Emmy spoke, "You're trying to end the match with a single overwhelming strike. It plays well to your strengths as a ministra but fails without magic and the moment you face someone like me, who can counter it, you're helpless."
Yulia finally managed to get back on her feet holding her aching stomach. The strike was powerful but not debilitating, despite the force forcing all the air from her lungs earlier. For an idle moment the girl pondered how skilled the pink haired girl was to strike just hard enough to fit into that middle ground of being effective while not knocking her out of the fight entirely.
The smaller girl curled her fingers in a beckoning gesture.
"Don't just stand there, come at me," she called, "If you can stand you can fight."
Emmy outclassed her, Yulia could easily see that. The moment she attacked she'd be on the mat again from another strike. The bloomers wearing girl was faster, more skilled, and despite her frame stronger than her taller opponent. An overwhelming obstacle that she couldn't overcome by tenacity or overpower.
"Ora!"
With a shout the girl sped forward again. She'd gain nothing by standing around, and any defence she had would crumble instantly if the smaller girl went on the offensive. When faced with such a situation she chose to go on the attack once again.
Emmy seemed disappointed, taking another looser stance while the taller girl drew near. Once again the scene from before played out as the tall girl stepped in with her right foot and tried to hook the shorters head, Emmy stepping back and turning to again grab the girl's wrist. Confident in her grip the girl pulled the arm over her shoulder.
The attempt was aborted half way through as a fist impacted her left kidney with far more force than the first punch. Yulia jerked her arm from the loosened grip and pulled back for another strike. Any retaliation was halted before it could occur when a backhand slammed up into the taller girl's jaw, and the boxer instantly collapsed in a daze.
"Emmy!" Yulia assumed it was Kagehoshi who yelled as she currently could only see the blue plastic of the mats she was laying face down on, "That's a bit much!"
"I'm sorry she surprised me!"
Yulia felt herself lifted to her feet, her stance was unsteady as everything felt like it was spinning. Her knees gave out and she fell onto something soft and smelling of flowers that thankfully kept her somewhat standing.
"Oh good you're conscious," Yulia felt something poking her cheek and turned to see a certain ninja waving a finger in front of her face, "And unconcussed. Excellent, This One did not want to have to call in the medics on her first day as a Magistra zam."
The mass beneath her shifted and she found herself being led to the benches of the other side of the mat and deposited. At the flash of pink she quickly realized whom had been helping her.
"I'm sorry for being so rough, Yulia," Emmy said giving her friend a hug, "You're still new to this, I should have been gentler."
"It's fine," Yulia shook her head and waved the sympathy off, "Being treated with kid gloves wouldn't have accomplished anything."
"It wouldn't have given This One a better idea of where you stand," Kagehoshi but in giving her friend an annoyed look, "As it is This One will need to retest you later to get an accurate assessment. Now get back in the ring Emmy, you have two more children to beat up."
From Emmy's face Yulia could see she didn't particularly care for the way Kagehoshi (intentionally) phrased her request. But she still made her way into the ring to face Rus.
"Just get some rest and the ringing and dizziness should pass," putting a hand on her shoulder the ninja offered a bit of comfort, "And for what it's worth that was a decent trick getting her to underestimate you to strike her blind spot. That was a very small window to attack in, This One too had initially thought you were just being hot headed."
"Thanks," Yulia smiled. It'd been a risk, she'd only have fraction of a second between when Emmy fully turned and when she pulled her off her feet into another throw. She'd assumed the worst that could happen was just another tumble but given the aching joints in her right arm she may have narrowly avoided a dislocation or worse.
"Don't get cocky, if Emmy used a different toss, or even noticed you lead with your right foot your little feight would have failed regardless of timing," The ninja scolded, "You have good instincts, but you need to polish your form. Now if you'll excuse me, This One needs to start a match."
Nodding, she walked forward and began Rus's match against Emmy.
Yulia was already feeling better and let herself relax as she watched them. Both were armed, using weapons that the much shorter girl had magicked out of her hands. It was a much more impressive display, the two matching blade strikes. Where Rus wielded a single Rapier Emmy favored a pair of sticks.
Rus was at a disadvantage. It was clear enough for even Yulia to pick up on easily. Her attacks were all parried, any opening punished with a swift and painful strike, and where the tanned girl struggled the pale girl moved with ease and poise.
The two clashed for some minutes before Emmy decided to end the affair. A strike was parried to the side with ease. But before the swordswoman could retract her arm it was gripped by the pinkette who discarded her stick in favor of gripping the girl's elbow. She pulled forward, continuing the moment of her opponent's attack and drove a fist deep into her belly.
The attack did not end there, Emmy maneuvered herself behind the taller girl who had fallen to her knees. Rus was forced to surrender, being unable to breath and having a weapon to her throat.
When Arya's turn came Yulia felt a bit of pity. The girl had not trained in any sort of fighting method that didn't include relying on her cloth. Sloppy strikes were avoided and it wasn't long before she was pinned to the ground and forcibly retired by Kagehoshi.
"That should be enough for today," the Ninja called out to the girls' surprise, "You've trained about as much as your bodies can reasonably handle for now. And This One needs to take care of a few things. You can keep using the equipment so long as Emmy is here to supervise. Personally This One recommends taking the rest of the day to recover. Meet me tomorrow morning."
"Sensei," Rus called, using the title Kagehoshi requested they refer to her by, "Tomorrow is a school day."
"Don't care; meet me at ten," and with that ninja vanished in a puff of smoke.
Arya sighed, "I hope this doesn't become routine."
"It shouldn't, Kagehoshi-senpai is just making sure to hammer out your training schedule as soon as possible," Emmy provided, "It'll settle down after that, until then just tell your teachers it's because of your duties as a Ministra and they should cover it."
----------------------------------------
After some showers and a change of cloths the team decided to use their free time to grab another bite at cafe they'd first visited when they'd formed. It was suggested by Arya when Yulia complained of missing her lunch.
The meals had arrived for three of those present. Rus had settled for a drink and simply ate what appeared to be jerky she'd packed. The staff didn't mind, as the girl had explained before ordering. While it wasn't often seen there were races with extremely specific diets that could not handle the food normally served. It was generally accepted that turning away such cases was bad for business as their group would likely find some place more accommodating otherwise.
"So," asked Yulia, "What is that anyway?"
Arya gave her teammate a look at the insensitive question.
"It is a dietary requirement," Rus evaded, "While I can eat human food most of the time it's only in small amounts and I didn't bring the pills needed to offset the negative aspects. So this is something I can eat without making myself sick."
"Is it any good?" continued Yulia.
"...To me it is, most humans would probably disagree if they knew what it was."
"It's not poisonous is it?"
"No, it's just humans don't usually agree with eating it," She answered.
Yulia nodded.
Quickly her hand snatched out and plucked up a meat shred and tossed it in her mouth. Rus just looked shocked, not having expected the act and caught off guard.
"...It tastes pretty bland."
The ninja lead the five guests to the ring before giving her explanation. The four sat on the floor as she began, a bit too tired at the moment to keep standing unless needed.
"By now each of you girls has a work out plan and the proper knowledge of how to train to improve your physical strength zam," She said, "Now it's time to start improving on your skill as well. For now you will start without using any of your powers, that you will. So no magic and no esper abilities. It's best to have a solid foundation to work off of before any specialization can be done."
Kegehoshi was looking at Arya while explaining that, as the girl stood to gain the least from martial training. Thankfully the girl didn't seem to take any offense to the plan, just gritting her teeth and hardening her resolve. These were the words of someone who had made it into the elite forces, something that couldn't easily be dismissed.
"Trust when This One says not to discount the value of such training, that you should not. This One has, herself, reached the rank of B thanks to her dedication and hard work," She went on, "This One is not an esper, a hanyou, nor was she gifted with any sort of great power. As ashamed as someone of this rank may be of such things This One is proud of her 'Dark History' as weakling unable to swim even run ten meters before needing to catch her breath."
The three girls were shocked. Even ignoring the ninja's claim of humble beginnings, that level of weakness was something that they thought only existed in parody. One of those exaggerated 'Before' images in a workout program that's supposed to be comically inept to contrast their buff 'After' photo. That such a person could have ever existed in real life was on its own a dramatic reveal.
A comical image conjured in Yulia's mind of her trainer suddenly launching into an infomercial like speech to try and sell them all some shady miracle drug.
"And for just five easy payments of 24.99 you too can become like me! NinNin Brand X is filled with ELECTROLYTES! Give it to your babies and they will grow up to be as fast as a ninja! They will be so fast when people see them they will actually think they're ninja!"
The notion brought a smile to the girl's face.
"If This One could climb the ladder with not a single advantage she can be sure you, who are above her previous self, will go even farther," The ninja continued, either not noticing or ignoring her student's brief lapse in attention, "So, let us get started then zam! Each of you will take a turn on the mat facing Emmy while This One observes.
"Now to see what order you go in," She reached into her pouch and pulled out a coin. She tossed the metal bit into the air and quickly snatched it from it's fall, using both hands to obscure the motion.
"Right!" Called the two taller teammates while the final girl called "Left!"
The ninja opened her hands to show the coin in her right.
The esper pouted at dropping out first. As the selection method had doubled as a means to test reaction and visual tracking as well the girl was less than pleased to fail so quickly.
The game continued for a few more rounds as the two girls confidently provided the same answers as the ninja slowly upped her speed and the complexity of her catches.
"Right!" Called Rus, eyes tracking the coin as it fell into the woman's hand.
"Ri- No, Left," Yulia provided.
The ninja opened her hands, the coin sitting in her left hand. She closed her hands again before reopening them to show the coin in her right hand.
"You have really good eyes, ducky," She praised the girl and rolled the slug over her knuckles, "For seeing through that little trick you get to go first zam!"
Yulia grumbled as she unsteadily began to stand up. She'd assumed that winning would mean getting a chance to rest first, but it seemed she was unlucky. She was at least grateful that her muscles were no longer aching so much as before.
She paused mid-step as she suddenly became aware of her speedy recovery. Not so long ago she was on the verge of collapse, but now all she felt was a bit of stiffness and fatigue. She'd exhausted herself before to similar degrees when she was younger and couldn't recall such a miraculously swift recovery.
"It's your Magic," Emmy said seeming to realize what her friend was concerned about, "It's Type 3, when they tested you they opened the channels for your inner energy to flow. Chakra, dragon paths, mage circuits, Magicgate, whatever you want to call it, when opened they usually have a side effect of increasing strength, recovery, or stamina without conscious effort.
"After this I can teach you a few tricks on how to use it," she was confident in her speech, an odd change from her earlier demeanor thus far. It was like a switch had been flipped. Where prior she seemed hesitant or passive the moment she stepped on the mat those qualities vanished. Instead the girl was entirely sure in her motions and intents, as if a new personality had been revealed, "I usually use Type 2 'Formal' Magic but I'm quite capable of Type 3 'Informal' Magic as well, learning to control the flow of magic will help you immensely in the future."
"Hey hey, don't go stealing my students away from me before I even get the chance to teach them," Kegehoshi joked, "Now, take your spots in the center ring so we can start."
The two reached the center of the mat and stood opposite of the other. The ninja raised her hand.
"Ready," the two girls took their stances as Kagehoshi raised her hand, Yulia entering a standard boxer's guard she'd copied from hours of videos. Upright and angled with fists held ready, a position that favored agression over defense. Emmy straightened her back and stood with her side facing her opponent with her arms out and knees bent, "Go!"
Yulia shot forward as fast as her legs could propel her, her long legs allowing her to very quickly bridge the gap. Her left arm went into a hook aiming for the head of the pinkette who hadn't responded. Right foot out, exhaling, she put as much of her momentum into the strike as possible.
Emmy's head juked back at that last moment, allowing the strike to fly past harmlessly. Without missing a beat she griped the offending wrist while the arm was over her shoulder and she turned, twisting meanwhile to throw the girl over her shoulder.
Yulia landed painfully on her back, the impact forcing the air from lungs in shock. A horrible feeling only compounded moments later by a small fist driving itself deep into her solar plexus.
Yulia spent several horrible seconds curled into herself from the combination of pain and breathlessness. She fought not simply just to finally breath in but to prevent herself from emptying the contents of her stomach onto the mat like the world's most disgusting juicebox.
It felt to her like an eternity later that she was able to finally inhale.
Emmy had made no move to comfort her, instead she moved away a respect full distance and regarded her with cold eyes. It was clear no mercy would be afforded during a match. The moment they had entered the ring they were opponents and nothing more.
"Your form is impressive but your speed and technique are atrocious," Emmy spoke, "You're trying to end the match with a single overwhelming strike. It plays well to your strengths as a ministra but fails without magic and the moment you face someone like me, who can counter it, you're helpless."
Yulia finally managed to get back on her feet holding her aching stomach. The strike was powerful but not debilitating, despite the force forcing all the air from her lungs earlier. For an idle moment the girl pondered how skilled the pink haired girl was to strike just hard enough to fit into that middle ground of being effective while not knocking her out of the fight entirely.
The smaller girl curled her fingers in a beckoning gesture.
"Don't just stand there, come at me," she called, "If you can stand you can fight."
Emmy outclassed her, Yulia could easily see that. The moment she attacked she'd be on the mat again from another strike. The bloomers wearing girl was faster, more skilled, and despite her frame stronger than her taller opponent. An overwhelming obstacle that she couldn't overcome by tenacity or overpower.
"Ora!"
With a shout the girl sped forward again. She'd gain nothing by standing around, and any defence she had would crumble instantly if the smaller girl went on the offensive. When faced with such a situation she chose to go on the attack once again.
Emmy seemed disappointed, taking another looser stance while the taller girl drew near. Once again the scene from before played out as the tall girl stepped in with her right foot and tried to hook the shorters head, Emmy stepping back and turning to again grab the girl's wrist. Confident in her grip the girl pulled the arm over her shoulder.
The attempt was aborted half way through as a fist impacted her left kidney with far more force than the first punch. Yulia jerked her arm from the loosened grip and pulled back for another strike. Any retaliation was halted before it could occur when a backhand slammed up into the taller girl's jaw, and the boxer instantly collapsed in a daze.
"Emmy!" Yulia assumed it was Kagehoshi who yelled as she currently could only see the blue plastic of the mats she was laying face down on, "That's a bit much!"
"I'm sorry she surprised me!"
Yulia felt herself lifted to her feet, her stance was unsteady as everything felt like it was spinning. Her knees gave out and she fell onto something soft and smelling of flowers that thankfully kept her somewhat standing.
"Oh good you're conscious," Yulia felt something poking her cheek and turned to see a certain ninja waving a finger in front of her face, "And unconcussed. Excellent, This One did not want to have to call in the medics on her first day as a Magistra zam."
The mass beneath her shifted and she found herself being led to the benches of the other side of the mat and deposited. At the flash of pink she quickly realized whom had been helping her.
"I'm sorry for being so rough, Yulia," Emmy said giving her friend a hug, "You're still new to this, I should have been gentler."
"It's fine," Yulia shook her head and waved the sympathy off, "Being treated with kid gloves wouldn't have accomplished anything."
"It wouldn't have given This One a better idea of where you stand," Kagehoshi but in giving her friend an annoyed look, "As it is This One will need to retest you later to get an accurate assessment. Now get back in the ring Emmy, you have two more children to beat up."
From Emmy's face Yulia could see she didn't particularly care for the way Kagehoshi (intentionally) phrased her request. But she still made her way into the ring to face Rus.
"Just get some rest and the ringing and dizziness should pass," putting a hand on her shoulder the ninja offered a bit of comfort, "And for what it's worth that was a decent trick getting her to underestimate you to strike her blind spot. That was a very small window to attack in, This One too had initially thought you were just being hot headed."
"Thanks," Yulia smiled. It'd been a risk, she'd only have fraction of a second between when Emmy fully turned and when she pulled her off her feet into another throw. She'd assumed the worst that could happen was just another tumble but given the aching joints in her right arm she may have narrowly avoided a dislocation or worse.
"Don't get cocky, if Emmy used a different toss, or even noticed you lead with your right foot your little feight would have failed regardless of timing," The ninja scolded, "You have good instincts, but you need to polish your form. Now if you'll excuse me, This One needs to start a match."
Nodding, she walked forward and began Rus's match against Emmy.
Yulia was already feeling better and let herself relax as she watched them. Both were armed, using weapons that the much shorter girl had magicked out of her hands. It was a much more impressive display, the two matching blade strikes. Where Rus wielded a single Rapier Emmy favored a pair of sticks.
Rus was at a disadvantage. It was clear enough for even Yulia to pick up on easily. Her attacks were all parried, any opening punished with a swift and painful strike, and where the tanned girl struggled the pale girl moved with ease and poise.
The two clashed for some minutes before Emmy decided to end the affair. A strike was parried to the side with ease. But before the swordswoman could retract her arm it was gripped by the pinkette who discarded her stick in favor of gripping the girl's elbow. She pulled forward, continuing the moment of her opponent's attack and drove a fist deep into her belly.
The attack did not end there, Emmy maneuvered herself behind the taller girl who had fallen to her knees. Rus was forced to surrender, being unable to breath and having a weapon to her throat.
When Arya's turn came Yulia felt a bit of pity. The girl had not trained in any sort of fighting method that didn't include relying on her cloth. Sloppy strikes were avoided and it wasn't long before she was pinned to the ground and forcibly retired by Kagehoshi.
"That should be enough for today," the Ninja called out to the girls' surprise, "You've trained about as much as your bodies can reasonably handle for now. And This One needs to take care of a few things. You can keep using the equipment so long as Emmy is here to supervise. Personally This One recommends taking the rest of the day to recover. Meet me tomorrow morning."
"Sensei," Rus called, using the title Kagehoshi requested they refer to her by, "Tomorrow is a school day."
"Don't care; meet me at ten," and with that ninja vanished in a puff of smoke.
Arya sighed, "I hope this doesn't become routine."
"It shouldn't, Kagehoshi-senpai is just making sure to hammer out your training schedule as soon as possible," Emmy provided, "It'll settle down after that, until then just tell your teachers it's because of your duties as a Ministra and they should cover it."
----------------------------------------
After some showers and a change of cloths the team decided to use their free time to grab another bite at cafe they'd first visited when they'd formed. It was suggested by Arya when Yulia complained of missing her lunch.
The meals had arrived for three of those present. Rus had settled for a drink and simply ate what appeared to be jerky she'd packed. The staff didn't mind, as the girl had explained before ordering. While it wasn't often seen there were races with extremely specific diets that could not handle the food normally served. It was generally accepted that turning away such cases was bad for business as their group would likely find some place more accommodating otherwise.
"So," asked Yulia, "What is that anyway?"
Arya gave her teammate a look at the insensitive question.
"It is a dietary requirement," Rus evaded, "While I can eat human food most of the time it's only in small amounts and I didn't bring the pills needed to offset the negative aspects. So this is something I can eat without making myself sick."
"Is it any good?" continued Yulia.
"...To me it is, most humans would probably disagree if they knew what it was."
"It's not poisonous is it?"
"No, it's just humans don't usually agree with eating it," She answered.
Yulia nodded.
Quickly her hand snatched out and plucked up a meat shred and tossed it in her mouth. Rus just looked shocked, not having expected the act and caught off guard.
"...It tastes pretty bland."
Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
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The second part of chapter 6. There was supposed to be more to the eating scene but right now I'm incredibly sleepy.
justinkal
Connoisseur.
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The training scene at the beginning of this chapter, particularly the spar between Yulia and Emmy, reminded me a lot of one of the early episodes of this season's ViVid Strike anime.
Then again, it's hard to not get that feeling when both contain the oddly specific scenario of "magical girl learns the basics of martial arts by getting the shit beaten out of her by a more experienced magical girl", especially considering that the rookie mistakes are similar in both cases.
Not saying that's a bad thing, just something I noticed.
The red section should be either "even swim or run" or "swim, or even run,".
Also, the red section shows that there's multiple places in this chapter where you're still making that capitalization error I talked about last time ("The" should be lowercase here).
Then again, it's hard to not get that feeling when both contain the oddly specific scenario of "magical girl learns the basics of martial arts by getting the shit beaten out of her by a more experienced magical girl", especially considering that the rookie mistakes are similar in both cases.
Not saying that's a bad thing, just something I noticed.
Add a comma between "such things" and "This One", add the word "a" between "as" and "weakling".
The red section should be either "even swim or run" or "swim, or even run,".
Same issue as in the previous chapter. "breath" is a noun and "breathe" is a verb.
Change "respect full" to "respectful".
"feint", not "feight".
Also, the red section shows that there's multiple places in this chapter where you're still making that capitalization error I talked about last time ("The" should be lowercase here).
"Rapier" should not be capitalized, and there should be a comma after it.
clothes
Last edited:
Master of Squirrel-fu
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A work doodle of Kagehoshi Degozaru
Master of Squirrel-fu
The Original
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Rewrite of the dinner scene:
After some showers and a change of cloths the team decided to use their free time to grab another bite at cafe they'd first visited when they'd formed. It was suggested by Arya when Yulia complained of missing her lunch.
The four gathered at a small table sitting outside on the oft used wooden deck. It was a feature that was seen in most of the eateries on the campus. The wide open spaces and bits of greenery offering a very nice view for diners. The sky scrapers in the background, while making a great backdrop for the campus, meant the campus was one of the few areas in area that offered an enjoyable outdoor eating experience. It was little wonder that such a cafe would be so popular, and so packed at a time when classes for many Ministra were finishing their classes.
Yulia, Rus, Arya, and Emmy just enjoyed their drinks for the time being, the first enjoying stuffing herself with the appetizer she'd ordered "for the table". It was supposed to be bottomless but the girl was making a decent headway in seeing how true that claim was. Arya was giving her a disgusted look, at her eating habits, her lack of table manners, or a combination of both was up in the air. She contented herself with her tea. Rus had accepted the offer, and in between Yulia's attempts to empty the bowl, had helped herself to a small plate.
Emmy was making a similar spectacle to her friend on her own appetizer, a syrupy fruity treat in contrast to Yulia's deep fried cheese stuffed snack. But where Yulia mostly earned disappointed and mildly disapproving looks from any patron nosy enough to stare Emmy was drawing coos and other such poorly covered fawning noises that people made when looking on something so disgustingly adorable. Arya was fighting the urge bind the both to end the farce but didn't want to join the spectacle herself. She couldn't fathom how the two didn't seem to notice the attention, both positive and negative, that they earned, but simply mentally labeled them both idiots to prevent the headache that would come from trying to wrap her head around their selective obliviousness.
Rus was nibbling on her mozzarella stick.
"Can the two of you please just stop," Arya groused out, not liking being seen in such embarrassing company, "You're both making a scene."
Yulia paused in her gorging to give the short blonde a curious look, Emmy however was too engrossed in her treat to notice.
"My mouth's closed and I'm not making a mess, I fail to see how it's an issue," Yulia said, "I'm really hungry, so forgive me if I'm eating too much for a lady."
"You've eaten at least a pound of fried cheese since they served you the basket!" Arya was honestly expecting the girl to suddenly suffer a heart attack from the amount of amount of grease she was shoveling down her gullet.
Yulia just shrugged, she didn't see how that invalidated her point, "And what's wrong with Emmy anyway?"
"Wait what?" The pink haired girl perked up at the mention of her name. Noticing at last the amount of attention given to her she became nervous, "Is something the matter, why's everyone staring?"
"Nothing's wrong Emmy," Yulia patted the girl's shoulder, "You're just too cute!"
"Yulia! Please be serious!"
"No no, she's actually right," Arya sighed, "Miss Àimyrhja, have you forgotten what you're wearing?"
The confused look on her face was a good indicator that the pinkette in fact had forgotten. The look of dawning mortification was an indicator that she had just remembered. She curled into herself trying to hide the frilly pink costume she was wearing, a pointless effort by that point.
Yulia didn't see the issue, the dress wasn't anything indecent. In fact it covered pretty much everything below the neck down to the knees. It seemed a bit cumbersome with how puffy it was but it really looked great on the tiny girl. It was cute, and while it looked more like a costume than normal wear it was not the most stereotypically "Magical Girl" looking outfit she'd seen a Ministra in.
"It's very attention drawing," Arya continued, "It'd be enough on it's own but when you eat that dessert you ordered…"
"What about it?" Emmy pouted as she started picking at her dish again, hoping to distract herself from remembering her outfit, "It's really good."
"That's likely the problem Emmy," Yulia said, absently using a fork to swipe some of said girl's fruit, "When you eat something tasty your face relaxes into a really refreshing expression. Observe."
She pulled out her phone and flipped through it. After a moment she displayed the image to her friend. The girl blushed at the sight of herself happily eating candy that was displayed on the screen.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She cried, "Why did you take a picture?"
"Sorry, but looking at the satisfied look on your face always brings a smile to mine," Yulia admitted without shame, "I even have it saved as as the background image on my phone."
Yulia ruffled the blushing girl's head. The girl's 'it's so tasty!' look was weapons grade cuteness in her her opinion, like watching a kitten crawl on your lap and fall asleep. It was the sort of thing that required a complete lack of a soul to not instantly feel charmed by.
"That doesn't bother does it? I can delete it if you want," it'd be disappointing to see it go but she valued her friend more than a picture.
"No, it's fine," Emmy admitted, "It's a bit embarrassing but I don't mind."
Arya gave the two a flat look for their touching scene. She could just imagine the pink filter and sparkle effects laid over it. Something about watching a romantic comedy playing out before her was ticking her off. A feeling that only increased when the two sampled the other's food, done by feeding the other.
She was quite thankful that the server interrupted before succumbed to her more violent impulses.
The meals had arrived for three of those present while the fourth had pulled a boxed lunch from her bag. Rus had chosen to bring her own dish, meat of some kind with a thick red sauce. The staff didn't mind, as the girl had explained her unique dietary requirements before any of them had ordered.
While it wasn't often seen there were races so limited in diet that they could not handle any of the food normally served, it was generally accepted that turning away such cases was bad for business. As those so afflicted were only visiting them in a group turning them away would be turning away paying customers who would likely just find some place more accommodating.
Despite having her own food laden plate Yulia was oddly preoccupied with Rus' own meal. The dark skinned girl shot her a bemused look, not understanding the fascination.
"I'm just curious," the other Praelia answered, "You always pack your own lunch and I was wondering what it was that you could be eating when you don't touch anything else."
Rus paused unsure how to answer.
"Well, it is meat that I get delivered from The Union," she explained, "While I can eat other foods, the same as what you are currently, it doesn't taste the same to me and I will not get everything I need from it to stay healthy. At worse some foods may make me ill if I do not take supplements"
"So," asked Yulia, "What is that anyway? Is it any good?"
Arya gave her teammate a look at the insensitive question.
"I... would rather not say," Rus evaded, "It is not something a human would want to imbibe after learning what it is, and I would rather not be judged for eating what I need to survive."
"Is it poisonous? To humans that is."
"No?," Rus answered cautiously.
Yulia nodded.
Quickly her hand snatched out and plucked up a meat shred and tossed it in her mouth. Rus just looked shocked, not having expected the act and caught off guard.
"...It tastes pretty bland."
After some showers and a change of cloths the team decided to use their free time to grab another bite at cafe they'd first visited when they'd formed. It was suggested by Arya when Yulia complained of missing her lunch.
The four gathered at a small table sitting outside on the oft used wooden deck. It was a feature that was seen in most of the eateries on the campus. The wide open spaces and bits of greenery offering a very nice view for diners. The sky scrapers in the background, while making a great backdrop for the campus, meant the campus was one of the few areas in area that offered an enjoyable outdoor eating experience. It was little wonder that such a cafe would be so popular, and so packed at a time when classes for many Ministra were finishing their classes.
Yulia, Rus, Arya, and Emmy just enjoyed their drinks for the time being, the first enjoying stuffing herself with the appetizer she'd ordered "for the table". It was supposed to be bottomless but the girl was making a decent headway in seeing how true that claim was. Arya was giving her a disgusted look, at her eating habits, her lack of table manners, or a combination of both was up in the air. She contented herself with her tea. Rus had accepted the offer, and in between Yulia's attempts to empty the bowl, had helped herself to a small plate.
Emmy was making a similar spectacle to her friend on her own appetizer, a syrupy fruity treat in contrast to Yulia's deep fried cheese stuffed snack. But where Yulia mostly earned disappointed and mildly disapproving looks from any patron nosy enough to stare Emmy was drawing coos and other such poorly covered fawning noises that people made when looking on something so disgustingly adorable. Arya was fighting the urge bind the both to end the farce but didn't want to join the spectacle herself. She couldn't fathom how the two didn't seem to notice the attention, both positive and negative, that they earned, but simply mentally labeled them both idiots to prevent the headache that would come from trying to wrap her head around their selective obliviousness.
Rus was nibbling on her mozzarella stick.
"Can the two of you please just stop," Arya groused out, not liking being seen in such embarrassing company, "You're both making a scene."
Yulia paused in her gorging to give the short blonde a curious look, Emmy however was too engrossed in her treat to notice.
"My mouth's closed and I'm not making a mess, I fail to see how it's an issue," Yulia said, "I'm really hungry, so forgive me if I'm eating too much for a lady."
"You've eaten at least a pound of fried cheese since they served you the basket!" Arya was honestly expecting the girl to suddenly suffer a heart attack from the amount of amount of grease she was shoveling down her gullet.
Yulia just shrugged, she didn't see how that invalidated her point, "And what's wrong with Emmy anyway?"
"Wait what?" The pink haired girl perked up at the mention of her name. Noticing at last the amount of attention given to her she became nervous, "Is something the matter, why's everyone staring?"
"Nothing's wrong Emmy," Yulia patted the girl's shoulder, "You're just too cute!"
"Yulia! Please be serious!"
"No no, she's actually right," Arya sighed, "Miss Àimyrhja, have you forgotten what you're wearing?"
The confused look on her face was a good indicator that the pinkette in fact had forgotten. The look of dawning mortification was an indicator that she had just remembered. She curled into herself trying to hide the frilly pink costume she was wearing, a pointless effort by that point.
Yulia didn't see the issue, the dress wasn't anything indecent. In fact it covered pretty much everything below the neck down to the knees. It seemed a bit cumbersome with how puffy it was but it really looked great on the tiny girl. It was cute, and while it looked more like a costume than normal wear it was not the most stereotypically "Magical Girl" looking outfit she'd seen a Ministra in.
"It's very attention drawing," Arya continued, "It'd be enough on it's own but when you eat that dessert you ordered…"
"What about it?" Emmy pouted as she started picking at her dish again, hoping to distract herself from remembering her outfit, "It's really good."
"That's likely the problem Emmy," Yulia said, absently using a fork to swipe some of said girl's fruit, "When you eat something tasty your face relaxes into a really refreshing expression. Observe."
She pulled out her phone and flipped through it. After a moment she displayed the image to her friend. The girl blushed at the sight of herself happily eating candy that was displayed on the screen.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She cried, "Why did you take a picture?"
"Sorry, but looking at the satisfied look on your face always brings a smile to mine," Yulia admitted without shame, "I even have it saved as as the background image on my phone."
Yulia ruffled the blushing girl's head. The girl's 'it's so tasty!' look was weapons grade cuteness in her her opinion, like watching a kitten crawl on your lap and fall asleep. It was the sort of thing that required a complete lack of a soul to not instantly feel charmed by.
"That doesn't bother does it? I can delete it if you want," it'd be disappointing to see it go but she valued her friend more than a picture.
"No, it's fine," Emmy admitted, "It's a bit embarrassing but I don't mind."
Arya gave the two a flat look for their touching scene. She could just imagine the pink filter and sparkle effects laid over it. Something about watching a romantic comedy playing out before her was ticking her off. A feeling that only increased when the two sampled the other's food, done by feeding the other.
She was quite thankful that the server interrupted before succumbed to her more violent impulses.
The meals had arrived for three of those present while the fourth had pulled a boxed lunch from her bag. Rus had chosen to bring her own dish, meat of some kind with a thick red sauce. The staff didn't mind, as the girl had explained her unique dietary requirements before any of them had ordered.
While it wasn't often seen there were races so limited in diet that they could not handle any of the food normally served, it was generally accepted that turning away such cases was bad for business. As those so afflicted were only visiting them in a group turning them away would be turning away paying customers who would likely just find some place more accommodating.
Despite having her own food laden plate Yulia was oddly preoccupied with Rus' own meal. The dark skinned girl shot her a bemused look, not understanding the fascination.
"I'm just curious," the other Praelia answered, "You always pack your own lunch and I was wondering what it was that you could be eating when you don't touch anything else."
Rus paused unsure how to answer.
"Well, it is meat that I get delivered from The Union," she explained, "While I can eat other foods, the same as what you are currently, it doesn't taste the same to me and I will not get everything I need from it to stay healthy. At worse some foods may make me ill if I do not take supplements"
"So," asked Yulia, "What is that anyway? Is it any good?"
Arya gave her teammate a look at the insensitive question.
"I... would rather not say," Rus evaded, "It is not something a human would want to imbibe after learning what it is, and I would rather not be judged for eating what I need to survive."
"Is it poisonous? To humans that is."
"No?," Rus answered cautiously.
Yulia nodded.
Quickly her hand snatched out and plucked up a meat shred and tossed it in her mouth. Rus just looked shocked, not having expected the act and caught off guard.
"...It tastes pretty bland."
justinkal
Connoisseur.
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This post size is much more manageable when it comes to proofreading!
clothes
"at the cafe"
"areas in area" sounds really bad, perhaps "places in the area" instead?
Again, you used "classes" twice here in a way that sounds bad. Perhaps change it to "at a time when many Ministra were finishing their classes."?
Add "you," between "bother" and "does".
Change "worse" to "worst,".
Master of Squirrel-fu
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Thanks!
Master of Squirrel-fu
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World Building fact:
The setting is post scarcity. There is an unlimited supply of resources due to the nature of how the city exists over separate realities. The economy still exists due to the fact that despite there being an unlimited supply it still takes effort to gather and refine the resources, and the city maintains strict hold over the values of currency and often cheat things via the use of certain types of magic and creating artificial scarcity of resources.
Racism is a very real problem in Alexandria. While official law is against it many still act on such things. Usually it is against Demi-humans, the definition of which is vague and can include elves, espers, and certain magical breeds of humans. Even Demi-humans discriminate against each other, as often their natures and values clash. The group that is arguably the worse off is the Blanche. A specific breed of humanity that are born from worlds that have no innate supernatural elements in them, under law they are not technically considered "beings" so much as organic machines. By their nature they do not have souls and do not register as "Alive" under most magic and many technologies that measure such things direct rather than by reading bio-metric data. Even their intelligence is questioned as it has been known that they do not suffer the same "mental degeneration" as every other species when faced with Outsiders and Eldritch things. Many consider them at the very least unsettling if not horrifying.
The setting is post scarcity. There is an unlimited supply of resources due to the nature of how the city exists over separate realities. The economy still exists due to the fact that despite there being an unlimited supply it still takes effort to gather and refine the resources, and the city maintains strict hold over the values of currency and often cheat things via the use of certain types of magic and creating artificial scarcity of resources.
Racism is a very real problem in Alexandria. While official law is against it many still act on such things. Usually it is against Demi-humans, the definition of which is vague and can include elves, espers, and certain magical breeds of humans. Even Demi-humans discriminate against each other, as often their natures and values clash. The group that is arguably the worse off is the Blanche. A specific breed of humanity that are born from worlds that have no innate supernatural elements in them, under law they are not technically considered "beings" so much as organic machines. By their nature they do not have souls and do not register as "Alive" under most magic and many technologies that measure such things direct rather than by reading bio-metric data. Even their intelligence is questioned as it has been known that they do not suffer the same "mental degeneration" as every other species when faced with Outsiders and Eldritch things. Many consider them at the very least unsettling if not horrifying.
Master of Squirrel-fu
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Blub blub!
The cry of a slime is an interesting thing to hear. As the creature has no internal organs, and following that logic no means of traditional vocalization, it's means of communicating are limited. While most communicate by scent they were known to use sound as well. The Slime would absorb oxygen through its semi-permeable skin and expel the bubbles in various manners to make all sorts of sounds. The distressed cry could be likened to blowing bubbles in a bottle of syrup.
The small Blue Slime that releasing a steady burbling sound that grew in pitch as the girl landed beside it. It gave as close to a trill as it was able and started to move away from the larger creature. Unfortunately it wasn't able to move far before it found itself backed against a wall with the comparatively giant girl slowly approaching it. It flattened against the barrier behind it as it reached forward.
"Hey there, it's okay," Yulia cooed to the small jelly, "I'm here to help you."
She gently cupped the shivering thing in her hands and softly pried it from the bark of the tree it had been backed against. It was a somewhat tedious process as it needed to be done slowly to avoid injuring the slime on the rough edges. She made small 'boop'ing noises at it to calm it down and relax its grip.
Soon she had the creature free in her hands and cuddled it to her chest. Without another word she dropped from the tree branch she was standing onto the sidewalk below.
"Ech, you're touching it," Arya made a face at the sight of the mass of blue gel, "It's stain your costume."
"Nah, pet slimes like these are trained to keep their fluids inside. It's only the wild slime that leak ooze and it's a sign of poor health," Yulia explained as the two started to walk down the path of the parkway, "You can tell the difference pretty easily, pet slimes are like gelatin and wobble if you poke them but wild slimes will let in anything that touches it."
She poked the small thing to show her partner, and true to her words the finger didn't penetrate the membrane around the creature but rather pushed it's gelatinous form. It let out a soft 'blorp' sound and Yulia cooed again, petting the creature.
Arya just gave her the normal flat look she does when seeing Praelia doing such odd things.
"I don't see how anyone can keep such vermin as pets," she crossed her arms sending a glare at the blue blob the girl beside her was cuddling, "They're horrid little things, why you seem so fond of that one when you seem to enjoy playing exterminator I have no idea."
"Those are wild slimes Arya, of course they're gross. But this little Jelly is domesticated, it's completely different," Yulia didn't stop petting the slime even as she lecture her friend, "Look at it's shiny film, it's crystal clear aqua tint, or that adorable little wriggle and tell me it's not adorable."
"It's not adorable," was the girl's honest response, "So stop shoving it in my face before I splatter it like the rest. It's getting really creepy how much your gushing over that pest."
"Fine fine," Yulia pulled back her hands to once again cradle the blob. She was careful to lift it a bit higher than Arya could easily reach in case the girl got any ideas, "I just always like slimes since I was little. They're cool to the touch, low maintenance, and depending on the type they can be useful around the house by cleaning spills or hunting other vermin."
"How fascinating," the blond drawled.
"When I was about eight I won one from a carnival eating contest. I named her Verdi since she was a green slime. She was always with me, and since I was always getting hurt she was always crawling on my arms or legs to disinfect the cuts and scrapes. And she'd make this cute 'blu-bloop' sound when she wanted to be petted. Ah, I miss her."
"It died?" the girl sounded somewhat interested in the conversation, "I was under the impression that slimes could survive in any conditions if there was enough humidity."
Yulia shook her head.
"No, Verdi didn't die, me and mom moved and they didn't allow amorphous pets in the building," she sighed, "My cousins didn't want to look after her, strangers were out since they could just sell her to a potion maker, and I couldn't just leave Verdi to fend for herself. So mom called the Union so they could pick her up as part of their Familiar Adoption program."
It was the best option available, the little slime probably got adopted by either a healing type a healing type Ministra or a beast tamer. She'd been sure to check and see if she could find her old friend but it seemed they didn't keep any such records and there were no Green Slimes available for adoption.
She sighed and shook off the thoughts not wanting to dwell on such things. She started as a hand fell on her arm and looked down to see a reluctant Arya giving her a comforting pat. It was a nice gesture, even if the girl was making sure to stay an arm's length away from the slime the taller ministra was still cradling.
The two continued on until they reached the clearing in the center of the park, where the sight seers and less active nature lovers gathered. Still sitting at or standing around the bench they'd met at was the rest of the team, plus a few taggers on. Rus stood off to the side speaking with an unknown brunette Ministra.
Emmy sat on the bench completely still as a several small blue slimes crawled over her. Her face was pale and her smile looking very unnatural, even as a slime wobbled up and down on her head in what may have been excitement.
Kneeling on the seat beside her was a giggle Slime Child. A pretty light orange coloration and even smaller than the pink haired girl sitting beside her. She cheerfully lifted any slimes that started to stray from the human's body and placed them back on her.
Seeing an opportunity Yulia discretely pulled her phone out and snapped a quick picture while her friend was distracted. Another one for the collection.
"We're back!" She called as she quickly replaced the camera in her vest's breast pocket, "And we have Papualb!"
The react was instant, the young slime girl perked up and, upon seeing that they indeed had her pet, let out a happy bubble and quickly oozed off the bench to slither their way. She plucked the tiny blue slime and hugged it to her own orange chest in a happy twirl with a bubbling giggle.
"Papualb!" It wasn't so much a word as the tiny slime girl being unable to properly enunciate. A common speech impediment amongst Semi-liquid demi-humans, unable to pronounce hard consonants,"'hanp hwu!"
Yulia smiled and stood up fully, posing with a stupid grin plastered across her face. She ignored her blonde friend's incredulous look.
"Oh it's nothing little one, it's a hero's privilege to be able to protect the precious smiles of all the cute little children!" Yulia announced dramatically before bending over and poking the nose of the tiny slime girl, "Just be sure to keep a better eye on little Papualb in the future, she was really scared when we found her and we don't want that to happen anymore do we?"
"'Oh!" The jelly-like girl announced with a look of childish seriousness. She tried to say more but in her excitement the words were unable to form and all she could produce were rapid gurgles. She didn't seem to notice.
Yulia smiled and crouched down to pat the child on the head and calm her down.
"Yes, I can see you take good care of her, her coat is almost as shiny as yours and she's not even the slightest bit murky," The girl puffed up in pride, "With how well you look after this little one here I'm sure you can be a great Ministra if you try."
She nearly fell as the girl wrapped her arms around her neck to pull her into a hug before letting go to fetch the rest of her pets. Her shirt was left a bit damp but the Ministra was confident it would dry quickly.
Yulia stretched out her back, standing back up, and noticed the blond's unamused look.
"What?"
"Who are you," Yulia mirrored the little blonde's look at that question, "I'm serious, you have been acting weird all day."
"I'm just in a good mood," Yulia defended, "It's a nice day, no school, and I get to play around with cute things. After all the drama and training I think we deserve to let our hair down a little."
The taller girl felt her annoyance growing at the suspicious look her blonde friend was still giving her.
"I guess that make sense," Arya admitted reluctantly, "You're surprisingly good with children. I'd expect you to ignore them like everything else, not drag us out of our way to rescue gooey house pests."
The other girl just shrugged her shoulders, "I'd like to see you say no when a little girl asks you to find her pet."
"I was before you interrupted me," Arya hissed, "We're supposed to be on patrol to as insurance against criminals and monsters. We shouldn't be wasting hours on every charity case that asks, we have more important things to do."
Yulia didn't retort despite the overwhelming urge to get into a shouting match with the girl. But she didn't want to ruin what was left of her good mood. Instead she made her way over to the bench to sit down.
Emmy, having been rescued from her slimy nightmare was on her hands and knees on the pavement taking deep breaths and trying to calm her nerves.
"You look like you had a fun time," Yulia prodded surprised by her friends extreme reaction. She felt a bit guilty in her part in it when the pink haired girl turned to her with a haunted look on her face, "Um, Emmy are you okay? I mean, most people don't like touching slimes but you seem a bit…"
"Fine. ...I'm fine," The girl finally said getting to her feet with a shiver, "I… I just had a… rather unpleasant experience with some slime when I was younger."
"Okay?" It wasn't much of an answer but Yulia was willing to leave that beehive unpoked. Instead she offered a hand and helped her friend up to take a seat next to her, "So… who's that?"
Yulia gestured to the extremely pale brunette speaking with Rus. She was noticeably shorter, standing maybe level with the mage's chin. The girl's appearance was quite eye catching, paper white skin and ink black hair in such unnatural tints that it couldn't be called a hyperbole wrapped in a rather sci-fi looking bodysuit. It was a rather creepy look. But Yulia could not recall ever seeing the girl before.
"Is she a friend of Rus?"
"No. I'm surprised you don't recognize her from her appearance, she's a Legionette from the Luminous Church," Emmy answered, "She arrived while you and Arya were away and wanted to talk with Kagehoshi-senpai. Since senpai's busy with a meeting she just pulled Étoile aside."
"You don't know what she wanted?" Emmys shook her head.
The two watched for a bit longer as the seemed to take notice that the rest of the team had finished their impromptu mission. Rus walked up to the bench, where Arya was stand and Yulia and Emmy were sitting. Behind her the creepy mannequin like girl followed.
"Petra, Linen, Miss Àimyrhja, this is Soixante," Rus introduced as the girl in question moved forward.
"I am Soixante Lustrum of the Legionettes," She bowed mechanically not blinking her lidded amber eyes, "I come on behalf of The Church of The Luminous Maiden to investigate an abnormality in monster activity in the district. I was hoping to speak with your Magistra but it seems she is indisposed."
"Yes," Rus continued, "It seems that in the last few months there has been a decrease in Monster activity in the area so the Church wanted to request the aid of some Ministra teams to help. It's a joint operation between the Union and the Church, so until further notice she'll be accompanying us on missions."
The cry of a slime is an interesting thing to hear. As the creature has no internal organs, and following that logic no means of traditional vocalization, it's means of communicating are limited. While most communicate by scent they were known to use sound as well. The Slime would absorb oxygen through its semi-permeable skin and expel the bubbles in various manners to make all sorts of sounds. The distressed cry could be likened to blowing bubbles in a bottle of syrup.
The small Blue Slime that releasing a steady burbling sound that grew in pitch as the girl landed beside it. It gave as close to a trill as it was able and started to move away from the larger creature. Unfortunately it wasn't able to move far before it found itself backed against a wall with the comparatively giant girl slowly approaching it. It flattened against the barrier behind it as it reached forward.
"Hey there, it's okay," Yulia cooed to the small jelly, "I'm here to help you."
She gently cupped the shivering thing in her hands and softly pried it from the bark of the tree it had been backed against. It was a somewhat tedious process as it needed to be done slowly to avoid injuring the slime on the rough edges. She made small 'boop'ing noises at it to calm it down and relax its grip.
Soon she had the creature free in her hands and cuddled it to her chest. Without another word she dropped from the tree branch she was standing onto the sidewalk below.
"Ech, you're touching it," Arya made a face at the sight of the mass of blue gel, "It's stain your costume."
"Nah, pet slimes like these are trained to keep their fluids inside. It's only the wild slime that leak ooze and it's a sign of poor health," Yulia explained as the two started to walk down the path of the parkway, "You can tell the difference pretty easily, pet slimes are like gelatin and wobble if you poke them but wild slimes will let in anything that touches it."
She poked the small thing to show her partner, and true to her words the finger didn't penetrate the membrane around the creature but rather pushed it's gelatinous form. It let out a soft 'blorp' sound and Yulia cooed again, petting the creature.
Arya just gave her the normal flat look she does when seeing Praelia doing such odd things.
"I don't see how anyone can keep such vermin as pets," she crossed her arms sending a glare at the blue blob the girl beside her was cuddling, "They're horrid little things, why you seem so fond of that one when you seem to enjoy playing exterminator I have no idea."
"Those are wild slimes Arya, of course they're gross. But this little Jelly is domesticated, it's completely different," Yulia didn't stop petting the slime even as she lecture her friend, "Look at it's shiny film, it's crystal clear aqua tint, or that adorable little wriggle and tell me it's not adorable."
"It's not adorable," was the girl's honest response, "So stop shoving it in my face before I splatter it like the rest. It's getting really creepy how much your gushing over that pest."
"Fine fine," Yulia pulled back her hands to once again cradle the blob. She was careful to lift it a bit higher than Arya could easily reach in case the girl got any ideas, "I just always like slimes since I was little. They're cool to the touch, low maintenance, and depending on the type they can be useful around the house by cleaning spills or hunting other vermin."
"How fascinating," the blond drawled.
"When I was about eight I won one from a carnival eating contest. I named her Verdi since she was a green slime. She was always with me, and since I was always getting hurt she was always crawling on my arms or legs to disinfect the cuts and scrapes. And she'd make this cute 'blu-bloop' sound when she wanted to be petted. Ah, I miss her."
"It died?" the girl sounded somewhat interested in the conversation, "I was under the impression that slimes could survive in any conditions if there was enough humidity."
Yulia shook her head.
"No, Verdi didn't die, me and mom moved and they didn't allow amorphous pets in the building," she sighed, "My cousins didn't want to look after her, strangers were out since they could just sell her to a potion maker, and I couldn't just leave Verdi to fend for herself. So mom called the Union so they could pick her up as part of their Familiar Adoption program."
It was the best option available, the little slime probably got adopted by either a healing type a healing type Ministra or a beast tamer. She'd been sure to check and see if she could find her old friend but it seemed they didn't keep any such records and there were no Green Slimes available for adoption.
She sighed and shook off the thoughts not wanting to dwell on such things. She started as a hand fell on her arm and looked down to see a reluctant Arya giving her a comforting pat. It was a nice gesture, even if the girl was making sure to stay an arm's length away from the slime the taller ministra was still cradling.
The two continued on until they reached the clearing in the center of the park, where the sight seers and less active nature lovers gathered. Still sitting at or standing around the bench they'd met at was the rest of the team, plus a few taggers on. Rus stood off to the side speaking with an unknown brunette Ministra.
Emmy sat on the bench completely still as a several small blue slimes crawled over her. Her face was pale and her smile looking very unnatural, even as a slime wobbled up and down on her head in what may have been excitement.
Kneeling on the seat beside her was a giggle Slime Child. A pretty light orange coloration and even smaller than the pink haired girl sitting beside her. She cheerfully lifted any slimes that started to stray from the human's body and placed them back on her.
Seeing an opportunity Yulia discretely pulled her phone out and snapped a quick picture while her friend was distracted. Another one for the collection.
"We're back!" She called as she quickly replaced the camera in her vest's breast pocket, "And we have Papualb!"
The react was instant, the young slime girl perked up and, upon seeing that they indeed had her pet, let out a happy bubble and quickly oozed off the bench to slither their way. She plucked the tiny blue slime and hugged it to her own orange chest in a happy twirl with a bubbling giggle.
"Papualb!" It wasn't so much a word as the tiny slime girl being unable to properly enunciate. A common speech impediment amongst Semi-liquid demi-humans, unable to pronounce hard consonants,"'hanp hwu!"
Yulia smiled and stood up fully, posing with a stupid grin plastered across her face. She ignored her blonde friend's incredulous look.
"Oh it's nothing little one, it's a hero's privilege to be able to protect the precious smiles of all the cute little children!" Yulia announced dramatically before bending over and poking the nose of the tiny slime girl, "Just be sure to keep a better eye on little Papualb in the future, she was really scared when we found her and we don't want that to happen anymore do we?"
"'Oh!" The jelly-like girl announced with a look of childish seriousness. She tried to say more but in her excitement the words were unable to form and all she could produce were rapid gurgles. She didn't seem to notice.
Yulia smiled and crouched down to pat the child on the head and calm her down.
"Yes, I can see you take good care of her, her coat is almost as shiny as yours and she's not even the slightest bit murky," The girl puffed up in pride, "With how well you look after this little one here I'm sure you can be a great Ministra if you try."
She nearly fell as the girl wrapped her arms around her neck to pull her into a hug before letting go to fetch the rest of her pets. Her shirt was left a bit damp but the Ministra was confident it would dry quickly.
Yulia stretched out her back, standing back up, and noticed the blond's unamused look.
"What?"
"Who are you," Yulia mirrored the little blonde's look at that question, "I'm serious, you have been acting weird all day."
"I'm just in a good mood," Yulia defended, "It's a nice day, no school, and I get to play around with cute things. After all the drama and training I think we deserve to let our hair down a little."
The taller girl felt her annoyance growing at the suspicious look her blonde friend was still giving her.
"I guess that make sense," Arya admitted reluctantly, "You're surprisingly good with children. I'd expect you to ignore them like everything else, not drag us out of our way to rescue gooey house pests."
The other girl just shrugged her shoulders, "I'd like to see you say no when a little girl asks you to find her pet."
"I was before you interrupted me," Arya hissed, "We're supposed to be on patrol to as insurance against criminals and monsters. We shouldn't be wasting hours on every charity case that asks, we have more important things to do."
Yulia didn't retort despite the overwhelming urge to get into a shouting match with the girl. But she didn't want to ruin what was left of her good mood. Instead she made her way over to the bench to sit down.
Emmy, having been rescued from her slimy nightmare was on her hands and knees on the pavement taking deep breaths and trying to calm her nerves.
"You look like you had a fun time," Yulia prodded surprised by her friends extreme reaction. She felt a bit guilty in her part in it when the pink haired girl turned to her with a haunted look on her face, "Um, Emmy are you okay? I mean, most people don't like touching slimes but you seem a bit…"
"Fine. ...I'm fine," The girl finally said getting to her feet with a shiver, "I… I just had a… rather unpleasant experience with some slime when I was younger."
"Okay?" It wasn't much of an answer but Yulia was willing to leave that beehive unpoked. Instead she offered a hand and helped her friend up to take a seat next to her, "So… who's that?"
Yulia gestured to the extremely pale brunette speaking with Rus. She was noticeably shorter, standing maybe level with the mage's chin. The girl's appearance was quite eye catching, paper white skin and ink black hair in such unnatural tints that it couldn't be called a hyperbole wrapped in a rather sci-fi looking bodysuit. It was a rather creepy look. But Yulia could not recall ever seeing the girl before.
"Is she a friend of Rus?"
"No. I'm surprised you don't recognize her from her appearance, she's a Legionette from the Luminous Church," Emmy answered, "She arrived while you and Arya were away and wanted to talk with Kagehoshi-senpai. Since senpai's busy with a meeting she just pulled Étoile aside."
"You don't know what she wanted?" Emmys shook her head.
The two watched for a bit longer as the seemed to take notice that the rest of the team had finished their impromptu mission. Rus walked up to the bench, where Arya was stand and Yulia and Emmy were sitting. Behind her the creepy mannequin like girl followed.
"Petra, Linen, Miss Àimyrhja, this is Soixante," Rus introduced as the girl in question moved forward.
"I am Soixante Lustrum of the Legionettes," She bowed mechanically not blinking her lidded amber eyes, "I come on behalf of The Church of The Luminous Maiden to investigate an abnormality in monster activity in the district. I was hoping to speak with your Magistra but it seems she is indisposed."
"Yes," Rus continued, "It seems that in the last few months there has been a decrease in Monster activity in the area so the Church wanted to request the aid of some Ministra teams to help. It's a joint operation between the Union and the Church, so until further notice she'll be accompanying us on missions."
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Posting what I have for now. Chapter 7.1
Master of Squirrel-fu
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Here's another work doodle of Rus Kaf in his/her Ministra uniform which are also his/her everyday cloths.
Master of Squirrel-fu
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Another Arts:
Master of Squirrel-fu
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7.2
No matter where you were in Alexandria you would be hard pressed to find a person who did not know who The Legionettes were. In fact their presence was so intertwined with the citys existence and history that it'd be all but impossible to find anyone who had not at least heard of them. Theirs was an existence that was as omnipresent, the impact of they or their work could be seen every day. Some could say that between Ministra and Legionettes, the latter was more important.
The Daughters of Light, they were born from the Luminous Maiden whom was a member of the Originals, one of the Six Maidens. Exactly how this came to be no one knows for sure, borne of the Maiden's incredible psychic ability, created in the wake of her sacrifice to stop The Cataclysm, or even made the old fashioned way. Whatever their origins in current times the Legionettes were an organization made of psionically linked clones, large enough in numbers to dwarf any other organization and make up 0.8% of the city's entire population.
Where the Ministra acted as something akin to a police force defending peace in the city the Legionettes were more analogous of the city's military and national guard. Where Ministra protected the peace the Legionettes protected the city.
Soixante was a silent sentinel as she accompanied the girls. She made no moves to interact with them, but kept a constant watch with eerily intense eyes. It was a rather uncomfortable time to have a the stranger following along.
The first day had been a tense affair, she followed them through the rest of the patrol. Their meeting the next day had been met with the Legionette waiting for them in the gym along with a Kagehoshi wearing a very fake smile.
Kagehoshi said nothing on the subject more than what the clone had, and chose to simply ignore her. Throughout the workout session she never left her post. Yulia doubted the girl ever blinked the entire time.
It was a tense few days, being under observation while on the job. Rather than accepting missions from the board as was the norm they were having to patrol.
It was hours of walking around the city blocks, or running over the roofs when they felt the need to hurry. Rarely was there anything so exciting as a monster to face, at best it was assisting citizens with minor tasks. It wasn't really much of anything, finding lost objects, buying groceries, herding chickens, just the normal chores you'd expect E-ranked Ministra to handle.
There was nothing wrong with charity work, but the amount of which they were doing was starting to grate. They were still getting paid, a pittance compared to even such things as rat or slime extermination, but it was tedious. They were a combat focused team after all.
"Thank you dear," the old woman said, "You've been a great help."
"It's no problem ma'am," Yulia said as she placed down the groceries on the table, "If there's anything else just let me know."
Yulia hoped she would say there wasn't.
"Oh no, this is more than enough," Said the woman before pausing, "Actually there was one more thing, if it's not too much trouble."
"Of course ma'am," Yulia tried to hide her disappointment.
"You see my granddaughter usually comes to visit me and help me with things like this, but she didn't come in today," The granny explained, "She's a Ministra like you dear, so occasionally she gets tied up in her job, If it's not too much trouble could you check in on her to make sure she's not overtaxing herself?"
"Of course ma'am," Yulia agreed, it sounded like a break from the normal chores.
She she handed over the form for the woman to sign, proof of a small job done, and accepted it back along with a picture and the address of a restaurant the girl frequented. She'd also provided a few bags of treats, one for her daughter, one for Yulia, and a couple for her team.
It was just a matter of minutes to call the girls and have them meet up.
"We will go with you," Rus announced, "It may not be a difficult task but the distance is too much for us to split up."
Arya nodded, "There is nothing better for us to do here. This will be a nice detour."
"I offer no objects if it's fine with you Yulia?" Emmy turned to the final member of the team who nodded.
Standing away from them and observing was, of course, Soixante. She said nothing and nothing was asked of her. She was simply an observer and none of the girls were quite willing to invite more than that. If it bothered the clone she showed no signs that any present could see. Her face was as impassive as ever.
The decision was made. They would be going to visit this bistro.
----------------
"I'm sorry I haven't seen Aggie around recently," The server answered, "She's normally here for lunch but she's hasn't shown up in the last couple days."
"It's okay sir, thank you for your help," Emmy bowed and thanked the man on their behalf. She turned with a sigh, "So I guess that's it then?"
The girls looked disappointed at their failure to complete the mission.
"We could still look around the area then?" Yulia asked, "That old lady seemed nice, it just doesn't feel right to just eat this or throw it away."
She lifted the bag of cookies the grandmother had given them for this Aggie.
"Well, if you really are serious about trying to find her you could try the used book store a few blocks down near the candy shop," The waiter chimed in helpfully. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a folded paper, "Aggy sometimes drops by both so they might know something. And while you're there you could give my sister this so I don't have to make an extra stop after work."
The three looked to each other to deliberate before nodding. Rus accepted the folded paper with a nod and placed it in her waist coat for safe keeping.
The distance was only a few minutes run, especially when taken over the rooftops. It wasn't long before the group of five found the location and entered the bookstore in question.
The place was small and fairly peaceful. There was only the one customer inside, a redhead reading in the corner. The cashier was doing some reading of her own, a fashion magazine, behind the counter. Given the familiar shade of brown her hair was it seemed they found at least one of their marks.
Rus walked up to the counter and pulled out the paper while the girl sat up and made her way over.
"Yes, can I help you?" She asked.
Rus nodded and held up the paper.
"Yes, first if you have a brother who works at Bistro Mainyu he gave us something to deliver to you."
The young woman nodded a plucked the paper from Rus' hands and opened it up. She stared at it for a second and nodded.
"Thanks. Since you said 'first' I guess you had something else to do besides being making sure I got my mail?"
"Yes ma'am, we're trying to find this person," Rus handed her the photo, "If you know where she is or where we may be able to find her that would be a great help."
The brunette stared at the photo, "Aggie? She normally comes in here every month to get some picture books or scrapbooking stuff. I saw her last week when she got some cookbooks and the new Adalepo chapter."
"Oh I love those, do you have any left?"
"New shipment in the other day so there's more than enough," the woman nodded to Yulia then turned back to Rus, "But yeah, you should have asked bro, he sees her more often than I do."
"We already have but she hasn't been there in several days."
The woman looked surprised, shocked in fact, at the news.
"Snap, hope nothing happened to her. Where have you looked so far?"
"Just here and the bistro," Yulia answered, "We don't really have a lot of leads to work with."
The woman rubbed her chin. The girls shuffled their feet. This seemed to be escalating a bit beyond what they originally thought.
"Aggie's always been tight lipped about her personal life so I don't know much," the woman finally said, "But when she came in last time she came in she had bags from the pet store up block. I have a friend that works there that can probably help, he'll probably ask you to get some random thing before helping you so just tell him Teala sent you and he'll drop it. If he insists tell him I'm calling in on that solid he owes me."
The girls nodded.
"So who wanted a copy of Adalepo and The Wrath of Stheno?"
Five hands raised into the air.
No matter where you were in Alexandria you would be hard pressed to find a person who did not know who The Legionettes were. In fact their presence was so intertwined with the citys existence and history that it'd be all but impossible to find anyone who had not at least heard of them. Theirs was an existence that was as omnipresent, the impact of they or their work could be seen every day. Some could say that between Ministra and Legionettes, the latter was more important.
The Daughters of Light, they were born from the Luminous Maiden whom was a member of the Originals, one of the Six Maidens. Exactly how this came to be no one knows for sure, borne of the Maiden's incredible psychic ability, created in the wake of her sacrifice to stop The Cataclysm, or even made the old fashioned way. Whatever their origins in current times the Legionettes were an organization made of psionically linked clones, large enough in numbers to dwarf any other organization and make up 0.8% of the city's entire population.
Where the Ministra acted as something akin to a police force defending peace in the city the Legionettes were more analogous of the city's military and national guard. Where Ministra protected the peace the Legionettes protected the city.
Soixante was a silent sentinel as she accompanied the girls. She made no moves to interact with them, but kept a constant watch with eerily intense eyes. It was a rather uncomfortable time to have a the stranger following along.
The first day had been a tense affair, she followed them through the rest of the patrol. Their meeting the next day had been met with the Legionette waiting for them in the gym along with a Kagehoshi wearing a very fake smile.
Kagehoshi said nothing on the subject more than what the clone had, and chose to simply ignore her. Throughout the workout session she never left her post. Yulia doubted the girl ever blinked the entire time.
It was a tense few days, being under observation while on the job. Rather than accepting missions from the board as was the norm they were having to patrol.
It was hours of walking around the city blocks, or running over the roofs when they felt the need to hurry. Rarely was there anything so exciting as a monster to face, at best it was assisting citizens with minor tasks. It wasn't really much of anything, finding lost objects, buying groceries, herding chickens, just the normal chores you'd expect E-ranked Ministra to handle.
There was nothing wrong with charity work, but the amount of which they were doing was starting to grate. They were still getting paid, a pittance compared to even such things as rat or slime extermination, but it was tedious. They were a combat focused team after all.
"Thank you dear," the old woman said, "You've been a great help."
"It's no problem ma'am," Yulia said as she placed down the groceries on the table, "If there's anything else just let me know."
Yulia hoped she would say there wasn't.
"Oh no, this is more than enough," Said the woman before pausing, "Actually there was one more thing, if it's not too much trouble."
"Of course ma'am," Yulia tried to hide her disappointment.
"You see my granddaughter usually comes to visit me and help me with things like this, but she didn't come in today," The granny explained, "She's a Ministra like you dear, so occasionally she gets tied up in her job, If it's not too much trouble could you check in on her to make sure she's not overtaxing herself?"
"Of course ma'am," Yulia agreed, it sounded like a break from the normal chores.
She she handed over the form for the woman to sign, proof of a small job done, and accepted it back along with a picture and the address of a restaurant the girl frequented. She'd also provided a few bags of treats, one for her daughter, one for Yulia, and a couple for her team.
It was just a matter of minutes to call the girls and have them meet up.
"We will go with you," Rus announced, "It may not be a difficult task but the distance is too much for us to split up."
Arya nodded, "There is nothing better for us to do here. This will be a nice detour."
"I offer no objects if it's fine with you Yulia?" Emmy turned to the final member of the team who nodded.
Standing away from them and observing was, of course, Soixante. She said nothing and nothing was asked of her. She was simply an observer and none of the girls were quite willing to invite more than that. If it bothered the clone she showed no signs that any present could see. Her face was as impassive as ever.
The decision was made. They would be going to visit this bistro.
----------------
"I'm sorry I haven't seen Aggie around recently," The server answered, "She's normally here for lunch but she's hasn't shown up in the last couple days."
"It's okay sir, thank you for your help," Emmy bowed and thanked the man on their behalf. She turned with a sigh, "So I guess that's it then?"
The girls looked disappointed at their failure to complete the mission.
"We could still look around the area then?" Yulia asked, "That old lady seemed nice, it just doesn't feel right to just eat this or throw it away."
She lifted the bag of cookies the grandmother had given them for this Aggie.
"Well, if you really are serious about trying to find her you could try the used book store a few blocks down near the candy shop," The waiter chimed in helpfully. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a folded paper, "Aggy sometimes drops by both so they might know something. And while you're there you could give my sister this so I don't have to make an extra stop after work."
The three looked to each other to deliberate before nodding. Rus accepted the folded paper with a nod and placed it in her waist coat for safe keeping.
The distance was only a few minutes run, especially when taken over the rooftops. It wasn't long before the group of five found the location and entered the bookstore in question.
The place was small and fairly peaceful. There was only the one customer inside, a redhead reading in the corner. The cashier was doing some reading of her own, a fashion magazine, behind the counter. Given the familiar shade of brown her hair was it seemed they found at least one of their marks.
Rus walked up to the counter and pulled out the paper while the girl sat up and made her way over.
"Yes, can I help you?" She asked.
Rus nodded and held up the paper.
"Yes, first if you have a brother who works at Bistro Mainyu he gave us something to deliver to you."
The young woman nodded a plucked the paper from Rus' hands and opened it up. She stared at it for a second and nodded.
"Thanks. Since you said 'first' I guess you had something else to do besides being making sure I got my mail?"
"Yes ma'am, we're trying to find this person," Rus handed her the photo, "If you know where she is or where we may be able to find her that would be a great help."
The brunette stared at the photo, "Aggie? She normally comes in here every month to get some picture books or scrapbooking stuff. I saw her last week when she got some cookbooks and the new Adalepo chapter."
"Oh I love those, do you have any left?"
"New shipment in the other day so there's more than enough," the woman nodded to Yulia then turned back to Rus, "But yeah, you should have asked bro, he sees her more often than I do."
"We already have but she hasn't been there in several days."
The woman looked surprised, shocked in fact, at the news.
"Snap, hope nothing happened to her. Where have you looked so far?"
"Just here and the bistro," Yulia answered, "We don't really have a lot of leads to work with."
The woman rubbed her chin. The girls shuffled their feet. This seemed to be escalating a bit beyond what they originally thought.
"Aggie's always been tight lipped about her personal life so I don't know much," the woman finally said, "But when she came in last time she came in she had bags from the pet store up block. I have a friend that works there that can probably help, he'll probably ask you to get some random thing before helping you so just tell him Teala sent you and he'll drop it. If he insists tell him I'm calling in on that solid he owes me."
The girls nodded.
"So who wanted a copy of Adalepo and The Wrath of Stheno?"
Five hands raised into the air.
Master of Squirrel-fu
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Man, I'm really falling behind with Thanksgiving. Why does this have to happen in november? I'll try and write up more this weekend.
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7.3
Yulia threw the coat into the bearded man's face.
Normally she wasn't so rude, or insulting about such things. While things tended to annoy her she had experience with aggravating people and remaining civil despite overwhelming urges to commit violence.
This man however was responsible for a very long, very tedious, and entirely pointless chain of events. A chain that could have been averted very easily.
But that alone wasn't really enough to abandon her manners. That had more to do with the look on his face and the knowledge that he was well aware of the trouble he'd caused her and her team.
All that said Yulia felt she was deserving of a little rudeness. Probably a bit more actually but socking him in the jaw would be counter productive. They still needed him to talk.
Rus frowned but didn't chastise her teammate. Whether from her own displeasure or due to company she just moved past Yulia to ask the man again where they could find Aggie.
"Thanks, you girls saved me twenty minutes off my commute home," Yulia fought down the urge to break something, preferably over his head, "But a deal's a deal. You'll find Aggie in the Alleygrove Garden after dusk."
"And how do you know that?" It was Arya who spoke up, stepping forward and crossing her arms while sending the mustachioed man a nasty glare, "I don't feel much too generous with my trust given what you put us through so far."
Yulia agreed. She'd have said something similar, albeit in a much more direct and angry manner, had Arya not done so.
The man didn't seem to take offence, he honestly seemed more amused by the insinuation than anything else.
Sitting behind his desk, with his pallid complexion and uncaring but smug attitude reminded several of those present of a another rather unpleasant person. Someone, who if present, would likely silently approve of the man's skill of aggravating others.
"Oh there's nothing I can offer for proof but my words," he cheerfully explained, "And while I feel that's enough proof I suppose it's not enough for everyone. But perhaps you'll be more willing to believe me if I explained why I know where she's supposed to be?"
Arya gave a reluctant nod.
"It's rather simple, I saw her," he smiled, "I live near the area and often pass the park on my way home. It's a very pretty place, there's several magicians and demis in the area who look after it, so I often like to stop and admire the sight. As it turns out she's been skulking around the place quite often this month. I'd say that there wasn't a day this month where she wasn't loitering around the park, and probably other parks too."
"And the timing?"
"I only ever see her at night there, I've not seen her during my daytime visits."
The girls took in the news. It could easily be a lie but it sounded rather believable, no contradictions and nothing too strange about the story. Other than their own annoyance towards the man there was no reason not to give the story the benefit of the doubt.
The girls looked to Emmy, the most experienced of them. The pinkette frowned.
"It's not my decision to make," she told them, "Kagehoshi-senpai and I are only supposed to supervise. I can offer some advice but you girls are supposed to be learning to make choices for yourselves."
Three of the girls frowned. Soixante nodded to the small girl's words having already known such. Arya didn't want to trust the man after his part in their little circle of deals, while Yulia wasn't entirely sure if they should. As one the two turned to Rus whom both consulted when at an impasse.
Rus scrunched her face in thought. She weighed the options and the situation.
"I believe we should we go," she said nodding to herself, "As much as the last four hours grated on the nerves he has not lied. We also lack any other leads to follow, we have reached a dead end and the only way forward is by acting on his word."
The two other teammates nodded, accepting her logic.
"It's already getting dark out," Yulia noted, "If we leave now we can get there just as it gets dark."
The group quickly exited the building and made their way to the park.
And as the pugilist had said they'd arrived not long after the sun dipped below the city skyline.
The park was dark, the only lights around located sparsely on the streets outside it. Not a single lamp was lit inside the park itself, just the dim lights of the fireflies and the moon above served to illuminate the area.
As they entered the gates there was an unnerving feeling. A sixth sense of a sort that living beings had to sense the paranormal. Hair standing on end, a sudden chill, and the sensation of being observed, all signs of something lurking in the dark.
Some would write it off to paranoia, the shadows and winds paying tricks on the mind. But the girls were in a career that dealt heavily in the supernatural. When regularly fighting off the things that go bump in the night, it was more wise to heed such suspicions than not. While the girls lack the experience with such situations each felt unnerved with the air of the park and decided to trust their instincts.
The three rookies were on their guard the moment they crossed the threshold. While none took on any sort of stance each was tense, ready to react at a moment's notice. Emmy, who was once again acting as their substitute Magistra while their teacher was indisposed, showed no such concern. While she too was ready to act she maintained a looser stance, the only sign of her heightened caution being an odd sort of rigidness to her hair.
The last girl, Soixante, didn't even show that little of a reaction. While the others stopped once noticing the aura of menace permeating the air, she simply continued to walk forward.
"There are two beings other than ourselves currently within the boundaries of this park," She stated calmly pointing to her right behind the treeline, "One is dim, chances of being a civilian are significant. She is about fifty meters to our right and will be exiting the grounds in approximately twenty seven seconds at current movement rate. Chances of being the target 'Agatha Kruez' is low as the sign is reading as male."
She moved her hand in the opposite direction.
"Ninety five meters in that direction is a second Light. It reads as inhuman and brightness indicates it being about 800 at a minimum on the ranking scale Magistra Kagehoshi Degozaru has listed in her private gym," She stated calmly, "Likeliness that the subject is a monster is high, designated a C-class threat. It is advised that we call in for backup and secure the area while avoiding the contact with the creature."
It was with little fanfare or emotion that the bomb had been dropped on the four others. Team Shadow Star were all clearly shocked, none able to form a response for a moment. Even Emmy was surprised by the revelation.
"Tch," the B-rank made a disappointed sound, "Well there goes our peaceful day. The Legionette is right, in the event of encountering a high leveled monster Ministra are to secure the area for civilians and only engage as a last resort while waiting for backup."
"But we have you with us, right?" Yulia asked, "You're stronger than Kagehoshi-sensei, so you should be able to defeat it easy right?"
"No, and that line of thinking should not be continued Yulia," Emmy answered, her voice dead serious, "I am not stronger than Kagehoshi-senpai. Her estimates were based off an ability I cannot freely use, and even under ideal circumstances with the full breadth of my ability…
"Nine times out of ten, I would still lose to her."
Yulia sucked in a breath. She'd assumed quite the opposite after learning of her friends immense strength. Emmy sighed after seeing her friend's mistake.
"It's not a matter of power. In terms of physical strength we're about equal, in terms of sheer destructive ability I outclass her by a wide margin," she explained, "But her skill and experience far exceed mine. But more than that her strengths make her a terrible match up for me."
Emmy held up a finger giving her friend a serious look while turning it to the rest to ensure they too would listen to what she was about to say.
"Always remember this: Power is not everything, and neither is skill. There will always be some strange ability that can very easily turn an otherwise easily decided match around entirely," She held their gaze to make sure her words sank in, "In this world there are incredibly unfair abilities that can easily render all your effort and strength pointless. Altering the flow of time, annihilation of all things, and altering reality by one's own will, these are abilities that I personally have seen.
"Senpai is unique in that her ability, while just as powerful, is something she achieved by her own merit and dedication. She achieved the impossible through training, and you will find only a handful of B-class capable of defeating her despite her own ranking.
"But that's irrelevant to the current situation. Ignoring any tricks the creature may have, without the use of my ability the creature is a much too close a match for my own power that I would risk a match unnecessarily. We're in luck that there is no noone else in this park.
Rus raised her hand looking somewhat conflicted.
"Actually Miss Àimyrhja. There I am smelling another person in that direction."
The pinkette quickly turned to her, "Are you sure?"
"My senses are turned to such things ma'am, I and confident that I can smell a human woman in the same direction as the beast," Rus answered, "There is… there is a lot of blood."
Emmy's eyes widened and she prepared to rush forth but was blocked by an outstretched arm.
"There is no point," Soixante said plainly, "What she is smelling is a corpse, the woman likely died just before we arrived judging by her fading Light. Given it's position it's likely the creature killed her in order to eat her."
"And you didn't tell us?" Arya shouted, "It killed someone!"
"It was not relevant. The victim was dying as she entered my ability to detect her and would not have survived long enough to rescue," the sheer lack of care in the brunette's voice was galling. For all her tone indicated she may well have been describing the weather, "Had we been following procedure and avoiding an encounter you never would have known about it."
The other girls present grit their teeth. Yulia couldn't tell what she was feeling, there was anger at the girl's cold explanation about murder but reluctant acknowledgement of the logic behind her reasoning. Quick glances showed she wasn't the only one conflicted. Rus had an unreadable look and Arya had a look of bitter acceptance.
Emmy looked furious, more so than Yulia had ever seen the girl. Her hair was beginning to lift up and there was a distinct feeling of menace radiating off the girl. Murderous was not an adequate description of her expression. It was anger mixed with determination, a look that closely mirrored one of utter hatred but somehow different.
What could be told was that the tiny Ministra was out for blood.
"You girls stay back, follow procedure and wait," She commanded, "I will take care of this shortly."
In an instant she disappeared, vanishing in a burst of speed into the woods.
Yulia threw the coat into the bearded man's face.
Normally she wasn't so rude, or insulting about such things. While things tended to annoy her she had experience with aggravating people and remaining civil despite overwhelming urges to commit violence.
This man however was responsible for a very long, very tedious, and entirely pointless chain of events. A chain that could have been averted very easily.
But that alone wasn't really enough to abandon her manners. That had more to do with the look on his face and the knowledge that he was well aware of the trouble he'd caused her and her team.
All that said Yulia felt she was deserving of a little rudeness. Probably a bit more actually but socking him in the jaw would be counter productive. They still needed him to talk.
Rus frowned but didn't chastise her teammate. Whether from her own displeasure or due to company she just moved past Yulia to ask the man again where they could find Aggie.
"Thanks, you girls saved me twenty minutes off my commute home," Yulia fought down the urge to break something, preferably over his head, "But a deal's a deal. You'll find Aggie in the Alleygrove Garden after dusk."
"And how do you know that?" It was Arya who spoke up, stepping forward and crossing her arms while sending the mustachioed man a nasty glare, "I don't feel much too generous with my trust given what you put us through so far."
Yulia agreed. She'd have said something similar, albeit in a much more direct and angry manner, had Arya not done so.
The man didn't seem to take offence, he honestly seemed more amused by the insinuation than anything else.
Sitting behind his desk, with his pallid complexion and uncaring but smug attitude reminded several of those present of a another rather unpleasant person. Someone, who if present, would likely silently approve of the man's skill of aggravating others.
"Oh there's nothing I can offer for proof but my words," he cheerfully explained, "And while I feel that's enough proof I suppose it's not enough for everyone. But perhaps you'll be more willing to believe me if I explained why I know where she's supposed to be?"
Arya gave a reluctant nod.
"It's rather simple, I saw her," he smiled, "I live near the area and often pass the park on my way home. It's a very pretty place, there's several magicians and demis in the area who look after it, so I often like to stop and admire the sight. As it turns out she's been skulking around the place quite often this month. I'd say that there wasn't a day this month where she wasn't loitering around the park, and probably other parks too."
"And the timing?"
"I only ever see her at night there, I've not seen her during my daytime visits."
The girls took in the news. It could easily be a lie but it sounded rather believable, no contradictions and nothing too strange about the story. Other than their own annoyance towards the man there was no reason not to give the story the benefit of the doubt.
The girls looked to Emmy, the most experienced of them. The pinkette frowned.
"It's not my decision to make," she told them, "Kagehoshi-senpai and I are only supposed to supervise. I can offer some advice but you girls are supposed to be learning to make choices for yourselves."
Three of the girls frowned. Soixante nodded to the small girl's words having already known such. Arya didn't want to trust the man after his part in their little circle of deals, while Yulia wasn't entirely sure if they should. As one the two turned to Rus whom both consulted when at an impasse.
Rus scrunched her face in thought. She weighed the options and the situation.
"I believe we should we go," she said nodding to herself, "As much as the last four hours grated on the nerves he has not lied. We also lack any other leads to follow, we have reached a dead end and the only way forward is by acting on his word."
The two other teammates nodded, accepting her logic.
"It's already getting dark out," Yulia noted, "If we leave now we can get there just as it gets dark."
The group quickly exited the building and made their way to the park.
And as the pugilist had said they'd arrived not long after the sun dipped below the city skyline.
The park was dark, the only lights around located sparsely on the streets outside it. Not a single lamp was lit inside the park itself, just the dim lights of the fireflies and the moon above served to illuminate the area.
As they entered the gates there was an unnerving feeling. A sixth sense of a sort that living beings had to sense the paranormal. Hair standing on end, a sudden chill, and the sensation of being observed, all signs of something lurking in the dark.
Some would write it off to paranoia, the shadows and winds paying tricks on the mind. But the girls were in a career that dealt heavily in the supernatural. When regularly fighting off the things that go bump in the night, it was more wise to heed such suspicions than not. While the girls lack the experience with such situations each felt unnerved with the air of the park and decided to trust their instincts.
The three rookies were on their guard the moment they crossed the threshold. While none took on any sort of stance each was tense, ready to react at a moment's notice. Emmy, who was once again acting as their substitute Magistra while their teacher was indisposed, showed no such concern. While she too was ready to act she maintained a looser stance, the only sign of her heightened caution being an odd sort of rigidness to her hair.
The last girl, Soixante, didn't even show that little of a reaction. While the others stopped once noticing the aura of menace permeating the air, she simply continued to walk forward.
"There are two beings other than ourselves currently within the boundaries of this park," She stated calmly pointing to her right behind the treeline, "One is dim, chances of being a civilian are significant. She is about fifty meters to our right and will be exiting the grounds in approximately twenty seven seconds at current movement rate. Chances of being the target 'Agatha Kruez' is low as the sign is reading as male."
She moved her hand in the opposite direction.
"Ninety five meters in that direction is a second Light. It reads as inhuman and brightness indicates it being about 800 at a minimum on the ranking scale Magistra Kagehoshi Degozaru has listed in her private gym," She stated calmly, "Likeliness that the subject is a monster is high, designated a C-class threat. It is advised that we call in for backup and secure the area while avoiding the contact with the creature."
It was with little fanfare or emotion that the bomb had been dropped on the four others. Team Shadow Star were all clearly shocked, none able to form a response for a moment. Even Emmy was surprised by the revelation.
"Tch," the B-rank made a disappointed sound, "Well there goes our peaceful day. The Legionette is right, in the event of encountering a high leveled monster Ministra are to secure the area for civilians and only engage as a last resort while waiting for backup."
"But we have you with us, right?" Yulia asked, "You're stronger than Kagehoshi-sensei, so you should be able to defeat it easy right?"
"No, and that line of thinking should not be continued Yulia," Emmy answered, her voice dead serious, "I am not stronger than Kagehoshi-senpai. Her estimates were based off an ability I cannot freely use, and even under ideal circumstances with the full breadth of my ability…
"Nine times out of ten, I would still lose to her."
Yulia sucked in a breath. She'd assumed quite the opposite after learning of her friends immense strength. Emmy sighed after seeing her friend's mistake.
"It's not a matter of power. In terms of physical strength we're about equal, in terms of sheer destructive ability I outclass her by a wide margin," she explained, "But her skill and experience far exceed mine. But more than that her strengths make her a terrible match up for me."
Emmy held up a finger giving her friend a serious look while turning it to the rest to ensure they too would listen to what she was about to say.
"Always remember this: Power is not everything, and neither is skill. There will always be some strange ability that can very easily turn an otherwise easily decided match around entirely," She held their gaze to make sure her words sank in, "In this world there are incredibly unfair abilities that can easily render all your effort and strength pointless. Altering the flow of time, annihilation of all things, and altering reality by one's own will, these are abilities that I personally have seen.
"Senpai is unique in that her ability, while just as powerful, is something she achieved by her own merit and dedication. She achieved the impossible through training, and you will find only a handful of B-class capable of defeating her despite her own ranking.
"But that's irrelevant to the current situation. Ignoring any tricks the creature may have, without the use of my ability the creature is a much too close a match for my own power that I would risk a match unnecessarily. We're in luck that there is no noone else in this park.
Rus raised her hand looking somewhat conflicted.
"Actually Miss Àimyrhja. There I am smelling another person in that direction."
The pinkette quickly turned to her, "Are you sure?"
"My senses are turned to such things ma'am, I and confident that I can smell a human woman in the same direction as the beast," Rus answered, "There is… there is a lot of blood."
Emmy's eyes widened and she prepared to rush forth but was blocked by an outstretched arm.
"There is no point," Soixante said plainly, "What she is smelling is a corpse, the woman likely died just before we arrived judging by her fading Light. Given it's position it's likely the creature killed her in order to eat her."
"And you didn't tell us?" Arya shouted, "It killed someone!"
"It was not relevant. The victim was dying as she entered my ability to detect her and would not have survived long enough to rescue," the sheer lack of care in the brunette's voice was galling. For all her tone indicated she may well have been describing the weather, "Had we been following procedure and avoiding an encounter you never would have known about it."
The other girls present grit their teeth. Yulia couldn't tell what she was feeling, there was anger at the girl's cold explanation about murder but reluctant acknowledgement of the logic behind her reasoning. Quick glances showed she wasn't the only one conflicted. Rus had an unreadable look and Arya had a look of bitter acceptance.
Emmy looked furious, more so than Yulia had ever seen the girl. Her hair was beginning to lift up and there was a distinct feeling of menace radiating off the girl. Murderous was not an adequate description of her expression. It was anger mixed with determination, a look that closely mirrored one of utter hatred but somehow different.
What could be told was that the tiny Ministra was out for blood.
"You girls stay back, follow procedure and wait," She commanded, "I will take care of this shortly."
In an instant she disappeared, vanishing in a burst of speed into the woods.