*
8 35 am. 3 more hours and Kaori would soon be here. But now that they've set everything on fire, now that they've destroyed everything Ledia worked so hard to protect.... Was there anymore meaning in this loop?
It was morbid... It was disgusting... That's how she truly felt... About how she's relying on the time loops to solve her problems. But it's all she had, and... Wouldn't anyone feel mad if their hard work was trampled on?
No words were needed, using her left arm as a pivot, she applied pressure onto Vamaly's left arm and pulled her torso forward like a spring, then she shot her right arm at Vamaly. Her right fist impacts Vamaly's cheek, driving out some teeth and blood out of her gums. Vamaly's body falls backwards, using that momentum she sends a high kick that lands squarely on Ledia's jaw, knocking her away. This small exchange created some distance between them.
"WHY?! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THIS??" (Ledia)
"Why? They took everything away from me... Then they had the audacity to forget. I... Was from a rural region. I survived The Great Disaster by luck. My little sister drowned in the irrigated land that folded over our home while I was outside.
Now... Why must I accommodate this reality? This world might as well stop existing! " (Vamaly)
Shit, she's crazy. Or rather the grief got to her head. Ledia lost her mother, but she didn't lose her humanity enough to curse the world to death just because she's not around... She technically did consider abandoning the world as long as her father or her friends end up dead in a loop... Then, how was she any different...?
Ledia had the time loop to fall back on should anything go wrong. Vamaly wanted the world to end with no way to reverse her mistakes... But arguing about humanity was too silly and anachronistic. After all Ledia's been through, she'd be thankful if she could live past 12 pm...
"The cult... The goroshinkai cult invited me right after meeting you... They said I could grasp what I wanted. Naturally I didn't believe in them that much, but if I could use them for my own ends then it's fine.
We share a similar vision after all. Vermanien faith sub sect, Efermis blood guardians, the belief that the universe was born from the expansion of God's corpse. As such, if all life were to cease, time would become relative as there is no observer. And God will return to life in an instant to grant our wishes as a result. " (Vamaly)
She was this far gone? She's already completely subscribed to their bullshit... Fine. Have it your way. If there's no other way, at the very least... She was infinitely easier to defeat than Kaori.
She caused the ground to explode into flames under her feet, propelling herself into the air like a rocket. Spinning her body, she slams her right leg down with her momentum, which was caught by Vamaly crossing her arms. The ground cracks under Vamaly's feet as Ledia resumes by slamming her other foot down while bending her right knee.
This caused her to launch herself off of Vamaly's arms, whom while sustaining fractured forearms rushed forward with her fists. They had a strange glow to them, so Ledia shrouded her arms in flames before engaging. She dodges the first punch by moving her head to the side and pulling up her arm to redirect the punch, brushing with Vamaly's launched fist. Blood splattered across the ground by her feet as a searing pain taints both their arms.
"Tch!" (Both)
The shining bit of her arm... Vamaly was coating her arm in fine metals, causing her punches to be more abrasive which scratched a deep cut into Ledia's skin. At the same time, the flames coating her was able to ignore the fine mental and scorch Vamaly's skin. The cyclone of deep red she saw earlier, and here.... Vamaly's skill is iron manipulation... She mainly uses it to strengthen her blood or use blood to attack such as creating that cyclone...
But she can cause the iron to gather and for grains coating her skin... Her body as a magical girl will just replenish her blood's iron content via regeneration... It's a meagre volume of iron that seemingly comes from nowhere.
Ledia gets closer and throws a punch, Vamaly catches it with a palm and pulls her closer, slamming her elbow into Ledia's face. Ledia explodes into a bigger wreath of flames, causing Vamaly to jump away in a hurry. Ledia keeps the the flames up, resting her arms down as she stares down Vamaly. Vamaly reinforces her steely arms, causing a larger sheen to them as Ledia's flames were reflected by them.
Ledia raises her arms once more, initiating the battle.
"Grahhhhh!!!!!!!!!" (Ledia)
She rushes forward with all her strength and speed and launches a heavy punch, to which Vamaly easily dodges. The iron around her skin gathers to form spikes at her knuckles which she smashes into Ledia's outstretch arm. She ignores the sharp pain inflicted on her arms and leaps forward again, tackling into Vamaly before causing an explosion.
"...?!" (Ledia)
"Heehee... You should have trained for another year if you thought that would defeat me..." (Vamaly)
When she tackled Vamaly, Vamaly manipulated the iron into forming a dagger that exploited Ledia's tackle to drive itself into her heart. At present, a sharp pierce of iron, a dagger was stuck in her torso.
"... Did you think I was doing nothing...?" (Ledia)
"..." (Vamaly)
The explosion right after the tackle blew the 2 apart from each other, but also set Vamaly's body ablaze. Blood was dripping from the edge of Ledia's rose pink lips, a terrible smile widens them into a vicious crescent. This was nothing in the face of her tenacity and drive for blood. Now that she knew Vamaly was part of the cult, there was no need to hold back. Vamaly caught wind of the evacuation and got the bombs to set off before it happened, dealing maximum damage to the populous. There's no excuse for human scum.
While there was a fatal attack done on her heart, her flames were also rapidly eroding Vamaly's magic defence, breaking it down with unadulterated energy. In a way, the explosion was a mere matchstick and she was controlling the flames from here... So obviously, she'll set it to maximum output!!!
Another explosion occurs directly on Vamaly, the ground around her began to melt as organic compounds decomposed and sublimated. The exposed elements blew a wind that decimated all the ash and soot around her into the sky. Radiating black smoke, Ledia's sight was blocked, so she sees this for the first time...
Thermal radar...? A passive in her combat dress, whenever she activates it, it's as if a pair of contact lenses cover her eyes and showers the world in different colours. Blue, green, yellow, orange, red. A large mass of red hovers in front of her, her flames are going strong which turned the entire area into a mass of heat, her radar was quite useless here but at least it pinpoints the enemy's location a radius of 5 metres. The heat would expand and scatter whatever noise she made, rendering her screams garbled and not as loud as it could be.
The large mass of red sways around violently, wobbling like a drunkard before it settled down... This is bad... Did Vamaly get used to the heat? There was no way this much heat could kill a C grade magical girl, it continuously erodes at her magic defence before getting to her unaugmented body, but that will take time.
Even then, it has to overcome her rate of regeneration, like a race. Her magic spontaneously generates heat energy, meaning its power actually wanes over time instead. If Vamaly got used to the heat instead, that meant the fire weakened and her body or her magic's regeneration is overcoming the fire's damage.
The fire and smoke scatters into every direction in instant. Ledia shields her face and vital spots, when she let's her arms down they were bleeding all over, as if a grenade had been dropped in front of her. The smoke and heat clears up, leaving a lone magical girl in a lab coat and striped shirt and small skirt trampling over the burnt ground in front of her. Vamaly stood there completely intact.
"... You're completely fine..." (Ledia)
" Yeah. This wouldn't be the first time I fought with another magical girl. Experience is a hell of a thing here." (Vamaly)
She smiles at Ledia, unnerving her. It was irritating to see all of that effort vanish into smokes, literally. It looks like Vamaly shot all the iron coating her skin at high speeds, extinguishing and scattering the flames plaguing her body at once. Through the sheer power of distributing the heat away with her iron acting as a heat absorber, she survived with no scratches. So it excels at both defence and offense.
Like she said, experience was a hell of an advantage over others. To know your own capabilities and respond with relative ease, to control the rhythm of the battle for a favourable outcome. Vamaly lured Ledia into wasting a lot of magic when she had the fail safe that was her iron ejection at all times. And it wouldn't be the last time she'll use that technique either. The iron plunged right through her arms, it functioned as a powerful grenade that could tear apart the defence of a magical girl.
This was something no Newby should ever fight.
Name: Vamaly exzelmia
Title: Cursed husk of a wish long past
Magical girl effectiveness level: B
Perimeters:
- Physical: C
- endurance: B
- speed: C
- will: B
- well: B
How was I suppose to fight this thing? Ah, wait... That's right. Ledia dodges her punches that Vamaly rapidly threw before bring up her left arm to block a tough hook. Vamaly's fist landed squarely on her arm, generating smoke from the sheer strength it displayed. She can always fall back on this. Over many times...
Whenever she covers herself in flames, Vamaly jumps back. She can't defend herself spontaneously, it takes a split moment for her iron to accumulate, and it was enough to warrant a tactical retreat. Shroud yourself in your trusty flames, these embers are your allies. Secure the heat around your body, low level thermal barrier. She felt energised, as if her fatigue was fading. The heat was seeping into her body, was it another passive? To absorb heat and directly use it as biochemical energy? Or was it the effect of her first skill?
She couldn't tell but... It felt like her blood was boiling! It felt like her steps lightened up, as if her body was soaring through the sky... But at the same time the feel of inertia bringing her foot to the ground was also present. Sky and ground, those stimuli intermingled into a new high. This... Was the same thing she felt when she first transformed into a magical girl.
"HGHGHHH PTUIII!!!" (Ledia)
She spat at the ground and gazed at Vamaly sharply, pointing a finger straight at her face. She was wrong from the very start. She assumed that she herself was a selfish magical girl who only cared about revenge and that Vamaly was a virtuous officer fighting for the common folk. It was ridiculous how they've completely switched places now, over the course of her time loops, her objective was only met with failure after failure.
That failure twisted her mission and gradually she deviated into wanting to save everyone. If I had the power to, why the hell not? There must be a reason why I'm looping back in time, it must be my attachment to everyone! To save everyone! That's the only way I'll get past 12 pm and live the rest of my life!!!
"Don't kid with me! Cursing the world to death? Who the hell do you think you are? I've fought a god multiple times! (though I died instantly and could barely see her face)
You think I'm going to back down from your meagre experience?! Eat this! " (Ledia)
A torrent of flames Rose from her heart and flooded the ground around them, bathing their surroundings in red. Good old simple red and orange fire. None of that fancy blue, white or black stuff. Only insecure people use those to make themselves look tough.
She leaps forward to initiate the next engagement.