The girl was standing behind a corner in an alleyway, covered by the stone bricks of some house at Alamo Street, on the west of Astarte.
In one hand, she had the metal tube-like weapon, the lightsaber, with its one-meter-long red energy blade chirping lowly.
(We kissed last night and his people are already shooting me. How lovely.)
The plasma beams were shooting in her direction, without hitting anything. This time, they were much far away, probably about a hundred meters.
(I can't read their minds now... At least I still have the Bullet Time; I can escape again.)
But she stopped herself before activating the ability.
She could escape, but then they would just come back again and again.
Leta Astarte Igvar de Rosé IV had to beat them, so they wouldn't come back after her.
(I don't want to kill Groso and his men though. Hmm, I'll aim for their weapons.)
With that in mind, she only had to worry about getting close enough. The Bullet Time would be a problem, if she overused it she'd end up dead.
"I'll use it in short bursts. Activate for a second and deactivate." And then she ran for another cover, turning around the stone houses that were placed like a labyrinth.
The minimum distance that the attackers were was fifty meters, they were constantly changing positions, most likely to see how she reacted to their offense.
Leta activated Spirit Armor, another ability passed onto her by her bloodline, without activating the Bullet Time aspect of it. Mere fifty, or even a hundred meters were easily shortened in the blink of an eye.
With that simple move, she already got a clear vision of the people in armor, their blasters in hands; on top of a flat roof, covered by a tank of water and piles of wood.
Now they all were in face of each other, two of them were pretty close and she targeted them first. Those were the woman and the one with golden wings as ornaments in his helmet.
The only one who didn't point at her was probably Groso.
(Cute.) She thought for a moment, before activating the Bullet Time.
The plasma beams flew straight to her chest. Even with Spirit Armor, she still wasn't able to dodge them because those moved with at least Mach 3 speeds.
She'd need the slow-motion effect granted by her ability.
The red lightsaber flashed twice.
In two movements, she slashed in half the black long rifles that two of them were carrying.
"Leave now, or I'll kill you." She held the lightsaber in front of her face, pointing at the nearest of them; probably the woman.
None of them answered. The largest one, who seemed to be 8'0" tall pointed his blaster rifle at her.
Those people were really scary. Leta honestly wondered for a second why that guy was so tall, even taller than the 7'7" Sir Dile. Those two were probably from the same family of giants.
As the giant shot her, Astarte Igvar activated Bullet Time and easily deflected the plasma blast upwards toward the clouds.
The lightsaber made a horizontal curve and split the rifle in two, charring its divided parts because of the plasma blade's extreme heat.
She quickly turned off her enhanced perception.
"Have you had enough? Leave now and I won't kill you." She said in a serious tone, trying to intimidate them. She still spoke with a noticeable hint of pride in overcoming her enemies with such ease.
But the girl was caught off guard.
Almost imperceptible gas filled her nostrils, her strength dropped considerably in a few moments and she dropped the saber which deactivated the red blade almost immediately.
"What... did you... do?" Leta IV fell, unable to move a single finger.
But they didn't answer, the squad in armor and helmets were quiet through the whole process. Even when she took away their weapons, they still didn't react with nothing but indifference.
Her biggest error was to think of them as normal people, even normal knights. Those were the elites of the elite, Ciliegia's ARC Troopers.
Leta's eyes darted towards the rifles smoking from where she had cut. She had thought it was just the normal effect, as the lightsaber's blade had an absurd temperature.
(Their... weapons! They're emitting some kind of gas! Damn, did they predict that I wasn't going to aim directly at them!?)
They supposed correctly. If she wanted them dead, she would have killed them yesterday. If she wanted, she could just have escaped again, back to that witch.
Leta wouldn't know, but they already had some knowledge of her, plus a little bit more time to prepare for the rematch.
ARC Troopers weren't the best because they never failed. They were the best because they always learned from their failures.
Three of them took out a hand blaster and pointed at her. The woman, the giant, and the one with golden wings as ornaments in his helmet. They weren't taking their sweet time, no, Leta activated Bullet Time to buy a few more seconds for herself.
They were moving very slowly, but she was incapable of doing anything about it. God knows how long the effect of the gas they used would last, and from her perspective, it was going to take at least twice as long. Plus, an overuse of Bullet Time could kill her.
Leta Astarte Igvar de Rosé IV had no options but to close her eyes and accept her end.
There was no escape from this situation.
She wished to have a quick death, so she turned off Bullet Time and her breath became shallower.
Then she felt a strong wind hitting her.
But it wasn't the fault of the wind blowing from the north.
No.
It was something that sent the four soldiers flying many meters away from the roof, making them fall hard on a wooden ceiling and sink into someone's house. Surprisingly, none of them screamed in shock or pain; it bothered Rosé.
She ignored that and turned her head to the side, slowly and with relative difficulty.
A girl tiny and petite girl, almost half her size, who stood at 4'9" was climbing the flat roof nonchalantly.
With pale white skin, blonde-gold hair, yellow and red eyes, wearing a black schoolgirl uniform and square glasses. She had a cylindrical weapon, that was 49.5 centimeters long and 3.5 centimeters in diameter; the metallic hilt was clipped to her backpack's zipper.
Just by looking at that made Leta widen her eyes.
"You... that..." She tried to say something more, but the words got stuck in her mouth.
"This?" She took the cylinder and pressed a button.
Igniting a 1.30 meter-long red energy blade.
With the ignited blade and the hilt, her lightsaber was much larger than her now, still the girl spun it in her small hand like a kid playing with a stick.
"You... came here to save me?" Leta doubted hard inside her heart.
The pale girl with an expressionless face looked down on her, pointing the red energy blade to Leta's neck.
"Sure." She said, spinning the weapon in her hand. "I am the Mysterious Heroine X after all. Call me MHX, okay?"
Astarte was slowly regaining her movements back, luckily the gas effects weren't going to take long to get out of her system. She just had to buy some more time.
"What do you want..." She tried to back away, but couldn't muster enough strength on her elbows pressed on the flat roof. "ugh... with me?"
"Are you trying to buy time? I suppose those ARC Troopers did something to you? I can wait if you want."
"Wh-what?"
"I'll wait for you to get up. And *then* I'll kill you."
At that very moment, Leta Astarte Igvar realized that she was working with another kind of monster compared to the ARC Troopers.
The former princess swallowed hard. "What...what if I refuse...?"
"Oh, come on. I'm doing this for you." MHX threw her lightsaber up again and again, catching the hilt casually; for some reason, the energy blade wasn't turning off like Leta's would if she lost grip on it. "I mean, how often do we get to fight another Duelist?"
"Due...? What, what is that?" Leta asked, now regaining more of her movements. She took her lightsaber from the floor and managed to sit on her knees.
MHX tilted her head to the side, still expressionless. "You don't know what's a Duelist? You can't be serious... anyway. It's what we are. If you have a lightsaber you're either a collector or a Duelist. There will hardly be a middle ground... except for that person, I guess..."
Leta raised an eyebrow at what she said at last but ignored it.
"A Duelist..." It sounds noble, Rosé thought to herself.
"Yes, and as Duelists we have to fight each other, don't you agree? I can't remember the last time I fought another Duelist, so I might be a bit rusty." She pointed her blade to Leta. "Come on, Princess. Let's have a good ol' duel to death."
Astarte looked up at her. MHX was smaller than she was, but that didn't fill her with confidence. On the contrary.
Leta Astarte Igvar de Rosé IV stood up, holding her metallic tube-like weapon with both hands. She pressed the button on it and a one-meter-long red energy blade ignited almost instantly.
MHX still spun the lightsaber in her hand.
"Princess, have you ever heard about Sonkyo? Or any of the Seven Combat Styles?"
"N-no..."
After that, MHX completely stopped talking. She waved her lightsaber slightly, before dashing at Leta and aiming a stab at her left shoulder.
"...!!"
Rosé swung her lightsaber vertically to the left. The two blades of red plasma made contact, and then the shock made them be knocked back.
The force of MHX's strike was a little too much and Leta staggered rightward.
Without pause, the longer blade flashed once.
Rosé barely reacted to it, holding her lightsaber horizontally to block the descending strike aimed at her head.
Mysterious Heroine X kicked the princess on her stomach, making her wince from the pain and fall near the board of the flat roof.
"Your reactions are pretty good." MHX spun her lightsaber vertically as she slowly approached Astarte Igvar. "But you lack skills."
She struck down on Leta's horizontal block; again, again and again, overpowering her with pure strength and breaking her block. Leta's lightsaber fell out of the roof, rolled on the ground of the street, and stopped after hitting the side of a wooden bench at a fish stall.
With her back given to her, Astarte was lucky that MHX decided to just kick her down. MHX was trying to enjoy the fight as much as she possibly could before finishing it.
Astarte hit the ground hard, opening a tear on her forehead after hitting a metal rod that was holding up a tavern sign.
Mysterious Heroine X jumped right behind her, as Igvar crawled across the ground like a worm to reach her lightsaber.
Leta got up and waved her lightsaber two, three, four, five, six times... To no avail. Every one of her strikes was met by a twice-as-strong block.
"Kh!!"
(She's too strong!! But she's so small!!)
Astarte struck again, aiming for her neck twice... Which was once again met by a block.
Leta's saber curved to confuse MHX, and it became a diagonal downward attack!
Mysterious Heroine X was caught by surprise, her lightsaber was being held horizontally at her neck's height.
"Oh?" She let out a small chuckle, as expressionless as ever, staring down at her enemy's red energy blade.
As it was almost hitting her waist, MHX made a small gesture with her free hand.
And Leta stopped completely.
She forced her hands down as hard as she could, but they were completely immovable.
"Wh—?!!"
"Aww, look who's trying." MHX mockingly stated, with her never wavering deadpan face. "Calm down, Princess. You might lose your arm if you try too hard."
She waved her hand and Leta was pushed back by an invisible force.
"Was that...?"
"Telekinesis. Cool, right?"
MHX turned off her lightsaber and telekinetically brought Leta's to her hand.
"Hey!" Leta pushed her hand forward but soon brought it back as she realized how defenseless she was now.
"Hmm." Mysterious Heroine X ignited Leta's lightsaber and spun it vertically on her hand, doing a few highspeed maneuvers. "I like yours. It's pretty light... Makes me wonder why you fight the way you do. Guess you really are a newbie."
"What was that?"
"Here." She threw Leta's lightsaber back at her, it was turned off the instant she let go.
"Bye, Princess. You better get stronger if you don't want to die." And just like that, MHX left.
"What the hell was that...?"
And soon Princess Leta IV noticed.
"Where are Groso and his squad??" Her eyes darted around madly, as she took cover under a nearby table.
The spectators all stared at her in awe, hidden in their houses or stores. None of them dared to approach the princess after witnessing the lightsaber duel.