Ch-47 A Little Break in the Fight and then More Fighting
"So how did you like my little gift?"
Those words drenched in coldness and insensitivity shook everyone out of their confusion as the words were able to resonate deep within their souls. Everyone knew that it was Yui who was behind that great attack which easily destroyed the great demon that was probably able to take on several Magical Girls at once and this understanding of the situation brought a great cloud on their minds that everyone out there would call fear.
However, thanks to their combat experience, they were all able, despite their terror, to take advantage of this moment when no one was fighting to find the source of the attack and following the angle from which this attack had struck, they found the Witch in Crimson who was pointing her hands at some device. From her slightly tired look it was possible to see that whatever she was doing had used up a great deal of magical energy and everything suddenly clicked in their heads when they realised what had happened. Whatever this device was that was made of black metal and amethyst crystal was what had fired this massive projectile.
They did not know from where did she conjured up such a great magical tool, but the sheer display of its power told enough of what would happen to the person who would be in its firing line and needless to say no one wanted to be there, even the demons moved away slightly in fear despite being quite far from the line of fire. The mere flash of the magical circles on the device was enough to cause a shiver of fear in everyone present, even the Witch of Hate was not taken out of this description and the facial expression she now had would cause disbelief in all who knew her. Luckily or unluckily for her, only Yui was calm enough to see it.
The device itself was a magic cannon created by Yui, using her four artifacts that looked like crosses, connected by Yui's magic crystal in which magic formulas were engraved and filled in with a darker crystal that contained much more of magic power. The cannon was almost four metres long and its front part was completely made of crystal, while the artifacts were at the back, where their side arms touched each other to form a diamond shape and had enough space between them to fit the projectile that was fired at the demon.
When Yui flew here together with Miyu, she created this cannon and projectile, which itself had several magic formulas in it, using the fourth of her entire mana supply, because who would have ever thought creating magic formations on short notice its quite inefficient in terms of magic energy consumption. Especially since Yui is no master at creating magic circles and her work would look amateurish to any more experienced magic engineer. Yui knew this which annoyed her as she disliked using inefficient methods but unfortunately the situation demanded it of her.
The magic formulas of magic cannon were quite simple and uncomplicated as Yui could only remember so much from her notes, which was quite a feat in itself considering that magic circles actually worked. Yui used the magic circles to transform magic power into pure momentum similar to how the Witch of Hate's ability works, but in a much inferior way and although the effect seemed powerful you have to consider how much mana was spent on it. Other effects that Yui added were penetration power on the projectile and a simple formula to amplify the effect, repeatedly over the length of the cannon.
But back to the cannon, where Yui created everything, Miyu powered everything by using a quarter of her magic energy at once as well which made her look so tired and Yui didn't looked so pale only because the cannon creation process was not instantaneous, plus of course Yui is very good at hiding her fatigue. Demoralizing your enemy is important because marale is half of the battle and Yui always liked to increase her chances whenever she could, even when she was sure of victory, wanting to always be in control of the clash.
*Crack* *Crash*.
Suddenly, the cannon's crystal as well as the projectile began to crack and then shattered into pieces, after which only four black crosses were left in the air, which quickly began to fly towards Yui. At the same moment Yui made a note to herself that she needed to improve the formula of the cannon as it was unable to withstand the magical force loaded into it. However, Yui was not given the opportunity to think in peace as she was interrupted by the host of this meeting.
The Witch of Hate using that noise of the cracking crystal as a signal, fired towards Yui to prevent her from retrieving her artefacts, thus reducing her combat potential and so with her black sword aimed at Yui's throat, glinting with a pale light, she rushed at incredible speed. Argent seeing this wanted to shield Yui, but she was too slow due to her wounds and thereafter the Witch in Black was only less than a second away from piercing the unmoving target. Yui, however, looked at her with eyes filled with boredom and the Witch knew that her attack wouldn't work.
As if in sync with her thoughts Fenrir attacked the Witch from the side easily catching her exposed flank in his maw and from being pierced by the fangs the Witch was only protected through her quick thinking as she created a barrier on her torso that was able to stop the demonic wolf's fangs. In an attempt to get rid of the wolf the Witch began firing magical projectiles at it, but these were stopped by the dark amethyst mist swirling around the demon's body and her levitating swords did not fare much better as they were destroyed by the swipe of Fenrir's tail, which was enhanced by the amethyst mist.
Finally she decided to use her swords, which had already begun to glow white, but Fenrir knowing what was coming, with a powerful swipe of his head, released the Witch sending her straight to the ground where she just barely managed to avoid a collision and looking at her you could see that the wolf's fangs had torn her clothes. The Witch quickly sorted herself out and looked at Fenrir, who was circling around his lady walking on air as if it was earth, with hatred, however her gaze quickly fell back to Yui around whom her crosshairs were already circling.
The only saving grace for this operation where the Witch of Hate was sent was that the portal was still open and demons were still flowing out of it but that too was quickly changing. The obelisk in the city center had a light shining through it which was visible from the battlefield, showing everyone to see an incredibly complicated circle of magic carved on it and a wave of magic erupted from it which caused the portal to be destroyed but to make matters worse one could sense that the space was saturated with mana making it impossible for another portal to be used for the near future.
It was one of Obelisak's functions besides repelling demons, but from the reports the Witch had gotten from Etativi, now this function should be in overhaul, which was why they had attacked today and performed this operation where they would destroy the Magic Girls on camera so the world could sink into fear seeing their only defenders on their knees. She herself preferred to just destroy them but that idiotic Etativi wanted to make a spectacle out of it. However, with the footage going live directly on TV, now people would see all the chaos, with no idea what was going on anymore. The whole situation was really playing on the Witch of Hate's nerves and all she could do was direct all this hatred at the Witch of Lust who had gotten into their plans spoiling everything.
However, worse was only still to come, for when the Hate Witch got a grip on herself she noticed that Yui had brought some pretty serious support with her and all her demons didn't look like pushovers, in fact they were stronger than any of the Etativi demons except the biggest one. Her assessment of the situation didn't take more than a few seconds but it was enough for her to understand that the scale of battle had turned against them, especially since it looked like Yui had come to assist the Magical Girls.
Yui seeing the focused Witch of Hate only smiled slightly pleased that the Witch was feeling pinned down but just as quickly as she smiled she got serious and turned to Argent who was slightly confused by the whole situation. Yui then flew up to her and clapped her hands in front of her, which caused Argent to jump a little, causing Yui to giggle a little. However, now was not the time for that, so focusing on Argent's eyes, into which she looked piercingly, Yui proceeded to speak.
"I have decided to take your side for this occasion, but what do you think?" Yui asked her voice calm, it caught the attention of everyone present who still hadn't restarted the fight too distracted by what was just happening in front of them. "How will it be? The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or all on all and thus we create total chaos?"
These words made everyone tense, the Witches because they would have to fight two forces at once, and TransMagica because they did not know how to feel about their enemy the Witch giving them a helping hand and perhaps the most tense was Argent who had to make a decision. On the one hand if she doesn't agree they will surely lose and on the other, she will ally herself with the Witch who should be her biggest enemy, whom she should catch as well as present in front of the force of law. After all, TransMagica has a clear policy on catching all the Witches they can. What's funny about this, is that if Kobayashi had managed to say what she was told at the base, Argent would now know that TransMagica, wants to negotiate with the Witch that is in front of her.
"T-That would be our pleasure." Argent finally said, preparing herself for the consequences of her actions, which to her ignorance would never come, on the contrary she would be rewarded for establishing friendly relations with Yui, but that for later. As with those words the fight began again, as the Etativi demons once again began their attack as did the Witches allied with them and Yui's demons responded in the same spirited manner.
"Great! Well we'll talk later. Looks like I have a date with one naive girl right now." So replied Yui, defending herself from the levitating swords with her crosses, at the same moment ordering Fenrir with her hand and he obeyed the order by dropping slightly, then leaping at Argent, whom with this forced to ride him, while the Magic Girl herself out of surprise or fear grabbed at his fur. Thus Fenrir carried Argent into the TransMagic's defensive position, and Yui was able to give all her attention to the oncoming Witch.
"How energetic! Unexpectedly didn't work, huh. Would you like a kiss in consolation for your wasted efforts?" Yui mocked the Witch for her unsuccessful attacks.
"Shut up!" The Witch of Hate on the other hand was slowly starting to get more and more fed up, where the stress of situation was starting to take its toll on her.
"Will it be okay if I do it by giving you a long kiss?" Yui's mockery, however flew further.
"Grr!!!" The Witch growled, once again attacking with her levitating blades, which however bounced off the curved shields formed by Yui's crosses and with great of ease as they didn't even appear to be scratched, which irritated the Witch even more. Yui did this after drawing a magic circle on the shield, which only served to slightly change the direction of the projectiles, but combined with the shields that were at an angle this worked perfectly as the Witch's accelerated blades simply slipped over Yui's shields. However, it had to be noted that each hit took some mana away from Yui but it was still better than constantly repairing the shields, risking the swords breaking through them.
The Witch, after several seconds of her attacks, finally got close enough to Yui, constantly defending herself from the crystal projectiles and attacked her with her swords, which the shields were unable to reflect, thus cracking, but they served their purpose by slowing down the Witch's attack well, thus giving Yui a chance to counterattack. Yui fired a large crystal spear directly at the exposed Witch, who had to defend herself with her blades, giving enough time for the crosses to turn and fire at the defenseless back of the Witch.
Anticipating this, the Witch fired her levitating blades at them, disrupting the crosses' aim, thus causing the magical projectiles fired from them to miss her and Yui seeing this noticed that after their last clash, the Witch of Hate was getting better at using her levitating blades, which was annoying. However, the Witch was not done, having been able to simultaneously, with her defense, fire three levitating swords towards Yui. Yui defended against this by using her sword to destroy one incoming sword and allowing two to scratch her armour, which broke off pieces of it, however Yui herself was unharmed.
This quickly turned into a sword fight, where Yui was in a disadvantage as the Witch of Hate was faster than her and worse this time not underestimating Yui, being able to fight off her projectiles as well as her artifacts. However, Yui was smiling cheerfully the whole time, just like during their previous fight, which was terribly disturbing and even more annoying to the Hate Witch, who wanted to end this as quickly as she could, giving her all now. Because of this Yui was now practically being showered with the Witch's mana, who was using increasingly powerful attacks in hopes of breaking through Yui's defenses.
In this dance, the Witch had the upper hand and she knew it as she slowly sliced through Yui's defenses, but even for a moment she did not forget to occupy Yui's artifacts with her own attacks or to defend herself from her opponent's projectiles. Therefore when she sensed a stronger attack coming from behind she sent several magic projectiles and a levitating sword towards it being sure that it was enough, "AHH!!!" therefore she was not prepared for the sword in her thigh. This created an opening which Yui exploited mercilessly, driving her sword into the side of the Witch who nevertheless defended herself from the magical projectiles that Yui also sent towards her and using her sword as leverage Yui was able to sent the Witch down where she hit the ground with great force.
As the Witch hit the ground she immediately created a barrier over herself almost instinctively which protected her from the hail of bullets, allowing her to quickly increase the distance which Yui allowed. Being at a safe distance the Witch looked at her thigh which was pierced by a crystal thin blade that was coming out of the shorter arm of the cross, which broke off from the blade and quickly flew to the side of her master, leaving a broken blade in the Witch's thigh.
Circles of magic could be seen on the blade, but the Witch didn't know what they meant, but she guessed that with this Yui was able to pierce through her defensive attacks. She was correct in this as Yui had enchanted the same skill into it, that the Witch of Hate used all the time, it took a lot of mana from Yui, but it didn't cause a problem thanks to the artifact at the back of Yui's head and blade was quite hard to create in a fight, which is why Yui allowed herself to be wracked for so long. The attack was effective though so Yui wasn't complaining.
In a moment of calm, the Witch pulled the blade from her thigh, groaning slightly at the same time and threw it to the ground, then checked her wounds, still not taking her eyes off the smiling Yui. The wounds although deep did not bleed and instead made that part of her body feel like a burden, an effect similar to her black miasma but instead of pain and difficulty to heal, it made the body part not too responsive to the commands of the brain, which the Witch thought was worse. Through the pain at least you can fight and force yourself to go, but this might have been able to completely throw the body part out of the fight.
The moment of rest that Yui gave the Witch however passed as Yui with her sword sent a magical slash to remind the Witch that she was now to focus on her. The Witch cursed in her head when she saw her opponent's cheery smile and cursed again when she saw that the damage on Yui's armor was disappearing. She just realized that all along she was the one who was on the losing end of this fight and Yui was just toying with her.
At the same time Miyu was fighting the other Witch, letting Eisst help the Magical Girls deal with the big demon and where she would be more useful as Miyu here had total control. The Witch in Brown was unable to do anything to her, because even though they were of the same rank Miyu was simply better. There was no other way to put it, Miyu was faster, more agile, better at mana control, stronger, better at close combat, better at ranged combat and her artifact made it impossible to hurt her. In addition, Miyu's emotionless face terrified her opponent, who tried with all her might to survive.
While these battles were going on, Yui's demons took care of the remnants of the Etativi army, which was completely smashed by the better demons. Yui's knightly demons and demonic soldiers, in their black and amethyst armour were slaughtering the shadow demons, who were not even able to defend themselves well against them, as their swords cut through the claws of the shadows. Their organisation was also far superior and even, the soldiers of TrasMagic could not help but admit that these demons were quite good.
Fenrir devoured every demon he encountered thus increasing his strength, something no one but Miyu and Yui knew about. He didn't even need to hit them with his paws, he was simply in a different league and it was apparent that this fight didn't even entertain him. The only demons that were able to trouble anyone would be those hybrids of stone and shadow, though they too fell to the more powerful blow of the demon wolf. And even when he used his tail, then the demons were gone like coins thrown into a well.
Driad shot at all demons which tried to attack Magical Girls from behind and when she looked closer at Aqua, she then for some reason clutched her butt and looked around as if looking for a ghost.
And this was how slowly the fight began to come to an end.