*
It didn't take very long. She was the a mage type magical girl, though she doesn't shoot fireballs or energy beams. Instead she isolates the enemy in the other space and waits for them to break free. The walls may not be indestructible, but with her magic capacity, nothing short of A grade could scratch it. For an A grade like the vampire, that may mean nothing. But, it'll take its toll.
Titania's magic wasn't efficient to the point it was absurd like Miwa's, but it was still higher than average, higher than Triney and Kanou's. Rather, it was HuoLi who was the anomaly for being able to compete with everyone's best stats. Despite no specialisation, her augmentations are as high or higher than everyone's specialised stats that they specifically train to be as strong as possible.
Ah... There she goes again. She has already noticed it for a long time, Titania is constantly comparing herself to HuoLi. But this, is solely due to her ego wanting to overtake HuoLi. There was simply no way she would sit still and be content with reality. Such was the reason she had trained her well to eke out slightly more magic than HuoLi! Even if it was just the tiniest margin, her vast reserves here would allow her to fight Miwa the longest. Well, as long as you don't shoot magic at Miwa, she couldn't do much to you. Her attacks are scaled to her enemy's magic attacks.
In terms of gaps in ability and success in defeating their enemies, there might be a slight correlation. Titania didn't know their exact ages, but if they were tiered, it would be like this:
<2-3 centuries>
Triney
HuoLi
De Lan
Rei
Kanou, Titania
Miwa, Sufia
Her gaze became fiercer, her determined brows lock with her cheeks. Her fingers twirl the large staff in her hand. How strange, with such a get up anyone would expect her to throw curses or shoot poison at people. But her first 2 skills were both completely nonlethal. Analysis and isolation, that's all they were. A complete production job. The vampire turns into bats once more.
She takes in information about the present and analyses reality. To place her isolation bubble in the best possible spot, she sends every bat except for one into another dimension. Then she smashes her staff into the remaining one. The bats ravage the walls of the isolated dimension. Her passive 'diminishes the existence' of whatever she analyses. So she was commonly playing the role of a debuffer.
She didn't have many tools to fight with, one could say she was the least suited to fighting among the ArcMaidens, but that is when it comes to purely fighting. She has other roles that she excelled at. With calculated movements, she understood when exactly the bat's would finally break out of the extra dimension. So before then, she stepped right behind and waited.
The bats reappeared in reality and dashed towards a single point, converging into the silhouette of a young girl once more. The vampire reformed back into a humanoid shape before her very eyes. Titania was ready for the trajectory, she swiftly stepped behind Leslie's landing spot and impaled her with her staff.
But... It didn't feel like she actually stabbed a solid object... It actively squirmed around her stuff, as if numerous vines have wrapped around and trapped it. Instinctively, she isolated herself in the other dimension. When things are returned from the other dimension, she can choose where they rematerialise, the most cost effective location would be the original place where they are abducted in the first place.
This allows Titania to plan where the enemies are released if they break out of her extradimension and move accordingly. She releases herself back into reality at a short distance away, swinging her staff into a defensive stance. The vampire notices and face her, she raises her right arm into the air, palm facing Titania.
A few dark flashes appeared, they were barely noticeable even for S grades. If not for her analysis skill identifying them in an instant, she might have been done for. Ultra condensed high speed blood bullets. They were small, but they were packed with so much magical particles they could disintegrate buildings easily. Titania stuck her staff into the ground and supported it with both hands.
Fortunately the bullets all followed a similar trajectory and struck the same spot on the staff, deflecting them to the right and left. Explosions rang behind Titania, the collision of the blood bullets blew up storms of ash clouds, burning up large volumes of soil into mere soot. Meanwhile the resulting tremors from those explosions shook her feet, however her grip and her stance stayed firm under all that duress.
Her complexion remained focus, accompanying her witch esque look was a librarian like look where a pair of spectacles were expected to sit snuggly over the ridge of her nose. There was a clear beautification effect of magical girl transformations, it prevented any contraction of disease and healed all injuries.
Naturally this would preserve one's youth and complexion. Most would say that magical girls are unnaturally attractive. This could be the case for magical girls like Kaori... Because she looked drastically different from her untransformed self. While for others who look similar to their state before transformation, it was actually their youth that looked aesthetically pleasing.
Her skills weren't oriented towards combat at all, at most they were like extra passives. Rather, it was ridiculous how she had almost no offensive capability. She could trap weaker opponent's in the extradimension, but if they were magical girls they would be immortal and outlive their natural lifespans as long as they stayed transformed.
Ah. That's right. She thought she could forget her, but like a bubble resurfacing from a pond, her mind would always jog back to those times. She had a partner, an offense oriented magical girl that dutifully filled her gaps. She couldn't have made it all the way here alone, rather her partner was sacrificed. They both awakened way before The Great Disaster, perhaps about 4 to 6 years time, similar to Kanou.
But they weren't artificially awakened like those in the labyrinth supervised by the Progenitor. They were simply... Normal girls living out their school lives.
***
Her steps were impossible to hear among the cacophony erupting throughout the main hall. It was an extensive corridor that connected the entire school after all, it was time to change classes as different subjects had different venues.
Her lips pursed in anxiety as she tread through the sea of students making their way, there were always those that were perpetually in a rush. She couldn't understand them, why didn't they simply leave earlier if they have to make so much haste? She saw them as wild animals that charged through the halls, dangers that were to be avoided. She didn't want to get tackled in the middle of the day... Or any time of the day. But if any incident were to occur, this would be the most likely place that it did.
... It occurred. Concrete dust blew through the entire hall in an instant, concealing the destruction of the nearby walls. Walls that weren't completely obliterated were left with scarring cracks that extended like spider webs. The webs reach her feet and the roof, the damage was mostly contained to a large hole in the wall to her left. But... Nobody seemed to heed it.
Everyone went by their lives as if it was the most mundane occurrence, in fact it might have seemed like they were actively ignoring it. What the hell was going on? At the time she couldn't have known, one of the laws of magical girls, matters concerning magic was subconsciously concealed within the minds of normal bypassers. After all, how could she predict that her magic gene was ready to awaken at any time?
With the cult-like following that The Progenitor had, these followers were mostly adults without any future. No chance to awaken, no chance to live a normal life. Some were scum, others were like little glass bottles stuck in the vicious sea torrent that was their life. Despite all of that, they did proper research. They theorise the magic gene's activation was induced by some environmental factors, it wasn't such an uncommon thing in nature.
In the end, they used the progenitor's magic to forge some results. Zedicia was able to access the akashic records, an unknown trove of knowledge with all skills in existence. It had every skill, yet it could not copy the opponents moveset in active battle. It might have been a subconscious deactivation, a naturally low confidence in being able to wield the opponents skill as well as they did. It was then much better to use other skills anyway. Zedicia used a skill to find those with good potential and then another to awaken them.
With that, it was basically impossible to tell how one would awaken naturally. Just as she was about to run away in a panic, she saw one. A monster that arose from the darkness behind the cracked walls and a magical girl. It was late in the morning, nearing noon. It was suppose to be blindingly bright outside, but the hole in the wall was pitched black. As if it was a portal to another world that completely lacked light.
She understood when she saw where the magical girl came from. The monster threw her through the wall, causing the concrete to collapsed. It was hard to imagine how the magical girl's slim body could handle that kind of impact. That was the first time she saw her, Tifanny. She was dressed in a main theme of sailors and sapphire. Her hat was similar in shape to a pirates, but it was white with sky blue highlights at the edges and was adorned with an anchor emblem that jutted out like a solid 3d badge.
Her white jacket had a high collar that almost reached the top of her neck, the first button was opened giving a slightly wild look while maintaining her prim and proper navy soldier atmosphere. Her cuffs were studded with deep blue crystal buttons and the edge of her silhouette was also reinforced with a line of dark blue crystals, so the centre of her sleeves and shoulders had such crystals on them. On her shoulders were additional pads that were secured from end to end like a soldier's rank and her torso sprouted other soldier like ornaments like military medals, badges and buttons.
She didn't wear trousers though. She wore a tightly fitting skirt that reached down to her knees like a female officers uniform skirt, it was fitted with a formal looking black leather belt with a dark blue crystal buckle that secured its length down. Under the skirt was a full set of leggings that completely covered her legs along with large black boots with fur sticking at the end like winter boots.
Her combat dress looked to be extremely stuffy and warm, but she moved around as if there was no problem. Somehow she could be agile and nimble as the skirt magically expands and contracts so her legs could stretch as much as they wanted. It was like a normal magician's trick, usually even looking at it directly wouldn't explain much to a layman. They would still go 'ah, that's magic, I don't understand it.' Such was the inexplicable phenomenon surrounding her combat dress.
She whipped out a large hammer and swiftly smashed the monster in the darkness, this time putting an end to it for good. It must have been weakened after a prolonged battle. The darkness of the void in the hole of the school hall shattered and ripped apart like paper metamorphosising into petals that flew out of the hole. Black petals fluttered vigorously due to their sheer quantity like moths trying to escape the darkness to orbit the light, eventually the petals were so numerous the hole could no longer be seen. But after a second the petals drastically reduce until there were no more and the hole was mysteriously gone.
It was a magical girl battle in a school background, since she had the magic gene that was on the verge of activating, she was exempt from the law of magical girls which concealed the identity of magical girls from the general public.
"... Tifanny... Senpai?" (?)