Some obscure corner of her mind tried to guess how fast he'd have to be running to be on her so quickly - it had to have been at least fifty meters from her to the door he started from, but he still managed to cover the distance almost before she had a chance to react. He shouted something as his sword's basket came up hard against the gap between her axe's blade and shaft, a name, she thought, something like 'karaiapi,' and then the world's colors went away into an impossible grayscale and every sound, even that of her own heartbeat, vanished completely for a fleeting instant.
Mugen ni hirogaru hoshi wo
Nando mo miagete ita
"K'so!" she snapped as she threw herself back and away. Yeah, it had been a name, all right - the name of a Child, which certainly answered the question of whether or not whatever had happened to him went deep enough to let him have one. Besides the fact that it had appeared quite literally out of nowhere, the massive, armored form whose scythe-like forelimb had buried itself deep in the ground inches from where she had been standing was too bizzare to be anything else.
It was large, about the size of her own Gakutenou, but leaner and more spread-out. At first glance, the body was wormlike, but longer exposure made it seem more like a dragonfly's - either way, it was long and flexible and covered in armored plates. Beside the mantis's arms, it had four blade-like wings that it held back out of the way and as many splay-footed legs bracing its form off the ground. Its head was long and narrow and seemed to have far too many jaws, like a cross between a stork and a furled umbrella, and it had no eyes at all.
Midori knew damn well that she couldn't beat it herself. "GAKUTENOU!"
Ano yoru wo wasure nai
Hiki kaese nai
It was, she realized some time later, a mistake. By the time her Child had finished manifesting, his opposite number's jaws were gaping wide, with strange, comblike organs folded out to fill the gaps between their spreading arcs and complete the parabolic dish.
It was a shriek; it was a symphony. It was the roar of an angry God and the poison whisper of the Devil himself, simultaneously the loudest sound of Midori's life and the only one that would never register on her ears at all.
The core of it was only visible as a sort of lightning-quick heat shimmer that picked Gakutenou up and knocked him sprawling to the ground. The car parked some distance beyond him rocked on its shocks, and the paint all along its nearer side split and flaked in a radial pattern off of the bare metal underneath. Its tires exploded, and every window on the compound seemed to simply vanish into a shower of glitter.
Ushinau mono wa nani mo nai
Afure dashiteku ENERGY
Even the fringes of the... zone... were enough to send sheets of dust skidding away from its line of flight, and lift Midori bodily off the ground and send her tumbling across the parking lot. For a moment she just lay there, cataloging the raw scrapes scattered across her exposed skin and taking note of the fact that she was bleeding not only from nose and ears, but also the corners of her eyes, which hazed the entire world with a red film.
Needless to say, everything hurt.
Some instinct - it had to have been that, since she was looking the wrong way and there was no way her eardrums hadn't burst - prompted her to abruptly roll to one side and try to throw herself to her feet. She couldn't, of course - her sense of balance had been destroyed even more thoroughly than her other ones - but she did manage to get herself out of the way of the descending swordblade before she had to start throwing up.
Atsuku tsuyoku takumashiku
Tatoe hikari no nai sekai demo
Julia was much the worse for wear, having had to fight two of the more powerful Childs without support, and Kiyohime's decision to use her as a bowling ball to knock Calliope away from Gakutenou was almost the final straw. She didn't dissolve, quite, but she certainly didn't look to be up to even picking herself up off the ground, let alone continuing to fight.
Yuuichi cut Duran's first shot out of the air and ducked under the second, then glanced around and cursed. Julia on the ropes, Gakutenou ditto, Kagutsuchi out of the way for now but Harry and Akane'd have all that they could do to even survive, let alone keep him busy... Kiyohime was all tied up for the time being but already working to tear herself free, with her mistress's help, which left Duran and Calliope free...
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Nao stumbling over to her Child's side, clutching one hand to her side and obviously bleeding freely.
Koe wo kanjite
Anata dake mitsuke rareru
After a moment of thought, he cursed again and shouted a command and dashed towards the only ally he had left on the field. By the time he reached her, Calliope had left off her harrying of Midori's battered Child and buzzed over to wrap her legs around the badly injured Julia. A moment later, after her master had wrapped an arm around Nao's waist and dragged her into the gap between the two hulking monsters, she lifted off again, although with noticably more difficulty, and zoomed off out of sight at just over treetop level.
Yes, that was an intentional DWII homage you saw, although I arrived at the choice of that powerset completely seperately.
*rereads post title* Boy, that's a little ironic, isn't it?
Ja, -n
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"