Chapter 18: Determination
The two girls stand within the streets of Tokyo, facing the green money-orientated demon before them. They look at him sternly before the girls take a moment to discuss between themselves.
"Do you have a plan?" Silvia says, her face still held present but her eyes everting to the left to look at said goddess.
"Nope," Wendy responds blankly. Before any more words could be muttered, the impatient demon lunges forward, attempting to strike the pair. Wendy reacts swiftly, striking back at her foe. They engage in fisticuffs before Wendy screams out.
"I'll hold him off for now! Until then try to come up with something!"
"What in the world does she want me to do…" Silvia says as she witnesses the ensuing battle. Wendy starts to get the upper hand, throwing slashes with her sword and kicks and punches around. Though the demon starts to activate his ability once again, he uses his right crane arm to start moving the debris around as well as other objects to get in her way, preventing Wendy from singling in.
"Gah this is annoying, it's just like that sand demon!" Wendy ponders over her previous encounter, and she then devises a plan of her own. Boosting herself with the spirits, she starts moving faster than she's ever moved before. Going up and down, left and right, she moves so quickly that it starts to take the form of afterimages. Upon the green demon's crimson eyes, it looks as if there are about seven Wendy's circling into him.
"Damnit, this bitch has some tricks!" The demon thinks before the real Wendy emerges from the afterimages and lands a decisive blow in the demon's gut, crashing him into a nearby cosmetic store through the window.
"Sugoi…" Sivia mutters before she feels a sudden weight placed on her shoulder.
"Anything?" Silvia keeps her composer, but cannot hide the fact she was startled. The girl in question was several feet away only a second ago, and now had appeared right beside her, close enough to touch her.
"I… I may have come up with something… but I don't know if it'll work." Silvia says, going over her idea in her head, yet feeling a lack of confidence in her deduction. She was not prone to go into physical conflicts as such, mostly being positioned inside the church most of her life, her lack of real-life conflicts was getting the best of her.
"Well, that doesn't sound like you sisters…" Wendy says with as much charisma as she can muster. The platinum-green-haired girl looks back at her.
"Aren't you sisters all about faith? In this type of situation, I'm sure that's all we need!" Silvia's eyes glimmer at this.
"Are… you sure?" She questions.
"Maybe… but if not faith, I think I know of another thing that may come in handy right about now…" Silvia's curiosity starts to rise.
"What may that be…?" The scene cuts forward, and Dola-bil finally recovers from the signature blow he had received and now makes his way back to the battleground.
"Damnit… where is that woman, the second I get my hand on her…!"
"Right here!'' Wendy yells back, holding a strong and composed battle pose. She then looks back at the sister behind her, firmly holding the gospel in her hands.
"Okay, let's do this!" She says out loud, getting ready to start the next round with the green Demon. Still pissed off from the earlier attack, the demon is not taking things lightly anymore. He is filled with his own greed, after all, to become the strongest and best of his peers, and no god, no girl is going to get in his way. "You fool…!" The demon snickers in his mind before analyzing the situation.
"You probably came to the conclusion that my power is of attraction or a high frequency of telekinesis, but you are wrong…" The girl lunges forward, charging up her magic through her hand, she engulfs it in a blue hue, and the demon stands firmly, unshakable even as he prepares to take the incoming blow. Wendy closes in preparing to land a lethal blow onto the demon, unbeknownst to her, that said demon began chuckling within his head.
"My power is called invoice, I'm able to relocate one thing to another at high moving speeds! The way it works is I concentrate on one object containing greedy desires and relocate it to another object with said desire. My innate power allows me to perform these actions not just on physical matter, but on magic as well. Right now, this girl is generating all that power to finish me off, but that attack will never land, at least not on me… After all, I already picked a nice-looking target!" He says, with his eyes everting over to the four-eyed girl.
"Once She throws this attack, she thinks she'll be using it to kill me, but in reality, she'll be killing her own friend!"
The strike lands.
The demon is met with an overpowering blow filled with spirit magic. His body is engulfed in a blue hue as he gets pushed back in the street and crushed to the ground as his body is filled with an unforgivable amount of pain.
"Spirit Fist!"
The girl says out loud, the demon being left speechless as he spits out a pool of blood.
"How! How did she cancel out my ability!" The scene then changes to earlier in the battle, before the demon had emerged back from the crashed window, the pair can be seen discussing their incoming plan.
"Invoice?"
"Yes, I was able to decipher its magic codes within these scriptures, and it speaks of the demon's innate ability. It's an ability similar to telekinesis, he's able to move matter at his will, with the exception that it all has to be delivered towards an equally justified location. He can also use this power on magic, and people…"
"I see…" Wendy says back before thinking.
"I'm sure he will…"
"He'll probably try to target you…" The two girls come to the same conclusion.
"But that's where my idea stems from." Wendy is surprised at this.
"Hmm, how so?" Well, most of this gospel is written in code, after all, it makes up the cosmic makeup of that demon's spiritual being, but if I'm able to decipher more of this code, and read the specific scriptures, using my authority as a nun, I may be able to temporarily cancel out his ability." Wendy's eyes are left wide.
"You think you can do that!?" Silvia is taken aback by her enthusiasm.
"I… I don't know, I've never done such a thing before, I might mess up…" At this, Wendy pokes the platinum-green-haired girl in the head, taking her off guard.
"Now none of that, I thought we agreed to start working on faith, so come on, have a little more faith in yourself, Silvia, after all, I do," Wendy says with a warm smile. At hearing this, Silvia is filled with an overwhelming feeling that was once foreign to her. She then grips the gospel in her hands before replying sternly.
"I have faith in you too," Silvia says with a stern but warm smile. Now cutting to the present, the demon can be seen holding his stomach, attempting to recover from the blow.
"H-how…! How is this possible! My ability, how did you cancel out my ability!" The demon yells, attempting to use his power once again to move around the surrounding debris, but coming to a fault as it proved to still be ineffective.
"Hehe~ I didn't do anything, that glory goes to that sister over there!" Wendy says mockingly, pointing back at her companion. The demon in question looks back at the nun, with a look of anger, shock, and confusion.
"HOW!?" Wendy's smirk widens.
"You haven't figured it out yet? She was able to decipher your book! One of the old gods created these gospels to bind your sins to the book's scriptures. Once Silvia was able to overcome your authority, along with her knowledge of the ancient texts, she was able to overwrite your ability!" The demon lay confused on the ground, his mind not being able to accept the current predicament.
"That doesn't make any sense. That woman is no Goddess, she's just some girl! How could she accomplish such a feat in such a short amount of time!" Upon hearing this, Silvia's confidence begins to waver, that is before Wendy begins to speak once again, projecting her voice even louder than before.
"Tisk Tisk! What does it matter if she is a Goddess or not? What matters is that she was able to do it! You look down on her just because she's human, but you fail to realize the truth. She was able to bind you to that book through her merits alone, and that's because she has something that you lack! Something that Silvia has that you, a demon will never have!" The demon is furious at this point, veins popping off on his head as steam begins to brew out.
"And what is that!" He screeches out. Wendy strikes a pose once again, pointing forward, and to the ground as well, her hip slides to the side as her face takes on a stern expression, and her blue eyes fire with the passion of the spirit resigning within her.
"Determination."
"GRAAAAAAAH" Consumed by its open rage, the demon lunges straight toward the blue-haired girl. Wendy takes this short opportunity to smirk, as she covers herself in a powerful blue aura. Her plan had worked, batting the demon and drawing him in closer where his magnetic abilities would prove futile. She grabs her sword and holds it up as the two forces clash with one another. The demon's claw hand presses against her black sword, Wendy overpowers the initial clash and uses this moment to strike upon the demon's flesh. A large gaping wound spills out blood from the demon's chest, forcing him to jump back. But the exact moment that he retreats, Wendy is seen to be right behind him, slicing him from the back.
"This time I'll make sure you aren't able to resurrect again!" The demon turns around to strike her straight in the face with its claw arm. Wendy gets taken aback by this attack for a moment before realizing she has let go of her sword. The demon uses this as an opportunity to use its abilities on her sword, levitating it out of her reach and sending it flying across the sky.
"Now what will you do without your sword!" Brushing off a stream of blood from her mouth, Wendy looks coldly back at the demon.
"Did you think I know only how to fight with a sword, Idiot!" As quick as lightning, Wendy jolts in front of the green beast, firming her footing beneath her, striking a punch straight into its stomach. Coughing up blood, the demon returns her blow by attempting another cheap shot with its crane. Wendy does a flip in the opposite direction before jumping towards a nearby building, kicking off that building, and lunging straight to the demon in a kicking posterior, it then dodges this, only for her to grab it by its head and slam it on the ground. Now on top of him, she repeatedly strikes the demon with her armored fist. A punch with her left, then a punch with her right, till is splattered with blood. The demon takes a moment to look up at the girl on top of him, her eyes are white and the shadow on her face has darkened as she raises her fist above her head once more.
"She's a Demon."
Muttering under their breath, for once in his endless life, he feels an emotion foreign to the entire demon race, Fear. Satisfied with her attacks and feeling she had won this battle, Wendy looks up at Silvia.
"Sister, this should be enough now, what else do I need to do?" Wendy asks the astonished nun. Silvia had never experienced such an extensive display of violence before. Not to mention, that this girl was able to display acts of raw strength that would put many body-builders to shame was truly perplexing.
"This girl… her strength is unquestionable, just who exactly is she…" Silvia says under her breath, trying to wrap her mind around the situation before turning her eyes back down to the gospel.
"The gospel… Yes, with your flames you need to destroy its physical body to bind it to the book!" Wendy looks back down at the demon, seeing it's still in shock from her barrage of punches.
"Tsk! And he sent my sword flying across to who knows where…" Wendy says, trying to think of her next best course of action.
"Let's see… I could try to blast him with as much firepower as I can muster, but with how low my initial output is, that'd probably take a while…" As she goes over her options, the demon below her is inwardly lurking on his next course of action.
"No… No, No, No, No, No! This can't be it! I only just got here, I can't be defeated by this, by this woman!" Unbeknownst to the two women, the demon had been attempting to gather more energy from various victims it had affected while on its earlier crusade. The stacked-up greed that their innocence had stacked up was now leaving the individual's bodies and heading straight toward the green-skinned demon. Viewing this incoming swarm of demonic energy, Wendy instinctively jumps off of the monster.
"What in the world!" She screams out as the overwhelming green energy covers the demon, as its open mouth takes in the full mass of the incoming energy. Though as Wendy had predicted, the demon was still premature in its resurrection to take in this amount of power. Its exterior starts to discombobulate. Its weight and mass are growing at an extraordinary rate, now seemingly reverting to its baby-like state, as its sprouting words start losing their cohesiveness and meaning. Though its infant-like status had returned, its size was growing at a miraculous rate, now overtaking this city district.
"This is bad, at this rate I'll keep consuming dark energy until it explodes!" Silvia screeches out, holding onto her glasses as she looks over at Wendy. The girl can be seen standing face forward, gripping both her fists.
"I'll stop him!" Wendy says, more determined than ever to defeat this demon. She realized after witnessing the demon's increase in size, this situation was adherently different from her previous battles. This wasn't a random temple in a desert, they were in the streets of Tokyo, her hometown, and beyond her duty as a goddess, she had a responsibility to protect the place she was born and raised. Now with eyes holding her firm resolution, Wendy summons as many spirits as she can summon to her disposal.
"I need your guy's help! Please help me get this thing out of the city!" The spirits comply with the woman's wishes, swarming around the big oaf's exterior and rising from the ground. With several spits acting around the demon, they attempt to lift it as high up toward the clouds as possible. The demon, who had lost a significant amount of its consciousness, still attempts to attack the various people in its path. It, not being able to move its body any more, starts attempting to cultivate its energy into its mouth all the while Wendy is attempting to secure the demon along with the spirits to a safer distance.
"What is it doing? I can sense a lot of dark energy coming from its head." Just as she thinks this, the demon shoots a concentrated green laser, blowing up a part of one of the surrounding buildings. This first shot seemed to be somewhat of a test for the demon as it discovered this new power. After a moment, it shoots out an even stronger, more powerful blow of spirit magic in the spirit goddess's direction. This lethal attack makes direct contact, shooting the girl through two skyscrapers, and leaving her blasted in an unknown location. It all happened so fast, that the sister didn't even have a chance to react.
"M-miss… Miss Wendy!" Silvia scratches out toward the blast's direction, viewing the catastrophic damage its newfound ability had produced. Her eyes look back at the green entity in fear, as she is now left to deal with the mutated kaiju-sized Demon all on her own. The demon then turns his head, gazing back at Sister Silvia. Still burning with anger at getting one-upped by a mere human, the demon uses his ability once again, raising the sister from the ground, and levitating her onto his grasp. Now holding onto the sister, the way King Kong would hold onto a damsel in distress, Silvia screams in terror as she is presumed to meet the same fate as him as they both elevate into the sky by proxy of the spirits. His dark magic still overflowing, and Siliva is left in distress as the incoming explosion approaches closer and closer by the second.
Within the destruction of a distant building, the blue-haired maiden can be seen on top amassed of debris, never before being hit with such a lethal condensed magical attack. Wendy can be seen bleeding out from various wounds on her body, blood even pouring from her head. Her magical supply diminishes as spirits start to swarm her body.
"Dammit… I… "I might be in trouble here…"
Back within the confounds of the cathedral, the Father of the instituted Egyptian Orthodox Church arises from his trance. Finally breaking free from Sin's demonic spell, his eyes scan the room as if trying to deduct how much time had passed before his eyes eventually land on those of a silver-eyed girl.
"Father Isaac, you're awake!" The girl says jumping up for joy. As she holds this happy expression, the silver ankh she had carried in her hand suddenly snaps and implodes.
"Oh darn it! There goes my gift to Onee-Sama…" Hibiki says with her mood now sunken down to a more gloomy state. The priest stands up, regaining his composure before looking over at the small girl.
"What happened to everyone? Tell me what's going on. " Issac asks very concerningly. He usually holds a very serious complexion, but in this instant, his eyes show an immense amount of fear and compassion for his comrades.
"Things aren't looking so good, Onee-Sama woke up first to go fight Greed, and then sister Silvia woke up slightly after in pursuit of her." The priest's eyes seem to calm down for a moment.
"I see, though things got a bit hasty, it seems everything is going the way it should be…" The priest says, seemingly letting all the prior stress he accumulated leave his body.
"What! How can you say that? Things are getting way out of hand, Father Issac, we need to go do our best to support Onee-Sama and sister Silvia." The priest returns the sister's gaze before answering.
"Sister Hibiki, I can understand your fear of the situation, but please do not let your emotions get the better of you. Never forget, we are members of the Egyptian Orthodox Church, and we do not condone acts of violence. With that said, you must never let your heart falter, especially in situations like this. Or could it be that you are at a loss of Faith?" The sister is left stunned by the Priest's explanation. Ever since she was young, she has always stuck by her beliefs and her faith. But things are different now, she can't simply wait on the sidelines while her Onee-Sama is out there fighting a battle she may not win.
"I'm sorry Father Issac, but if you won't interfere, then that doesn't mean I can't!" The sister says, immediately turning around, preparing to leave. But before she gets a chance to, the priest calls out to her.
"Hibiki, please don't do anything foolish." The girl smiles to herself before thinking. "I'm sorry, Father… but I can't help it… After all, I am foolish… foolishly in love!" The girl yells out in her head. As the Priest remains within the Church's closing doors, he can't help but feel a ping of regret within his soul.