trans_9 | Rematch [Semi-Open]

A couple minutes after the agreed meeting time, Satori floated over a crag to meet up with Nanoha. She couldn't help but smile slightly, having been looking forward to this.

"I seem to be a touch late."

She shook her head. "Not by much - better late than never, right?"

"Of course." Satori took the moment of small talk to get a head start on reaching into Nanoha's mind. "Shall we get down to business, then?"

"Sounds good to me," Nanoha faced her, closing her eyes and concentrating on her Struggle Bind spell to bring it to the forefront of her mind - the mechanics of it, the necessary equations, and the strategic use thereof.

There was very little visual indication of Satori using her ability; no hand gestures or glowing light or anything of the sort. The only sign that she had begun was the Third Eye's gazed fixed on Nanoha's heart. Satori closed her eyes as she dug deeper into the thoughts Nanoha was pushing to the forefront of her mind. Mechanics, strategy... All useful, all relevant, although she'd probably but her own twist on most of it. It would need a new name, too, if she was going to turn it into a proper spell.

"Hmm..." Satori muttered as she listened. "I think I've got the basics, at least."

She really didn't like the thought of Satori digging through her precious memories, but told herself that the other girl had given her word to not touch anything she hadn't agreed to.

"Let me know when you're ready to put it into practice," she responded, trying not to let her discomfort show through.

As it turns out, trying not to let her discomfort show was a futile effort, as the thought of trying to not let her discomfort show was bright and visible in her mind. Oh, well; it's not like Satori wasn't used to making others uncomfortable.

"Yes, that should be enough." Satori idly brushed some of the lingering mountain dust off her shoulder as she took to the air, her plantsuit being reimagined as her customary dress. "If it's a battle, then I won't look into your memories, but it would hardly be practice if I didn't monitor your surface thoughts."

"That's fine," Nanoha agreed, already in her Barrier Jacket.

She hefted Raising Heart in her hands, tightening her grip on the Device. "You can go ahead and start."

"I will!"

Satori shot away from Nanoha immediately. She knew she was at the disadvantage in terms of speed, though, so she'd have to make Nanoha work to approach. She extended both hands to the sides, and from each emerged a wide, spiral-shaped sweeping beam, the two spiraling in opposite directions and overlaping into a surprisingly complex pattern.

Nanoha took flight, following Satori as fast as she dared, weaving around the spiraling beams - there was no time to stop and figure it out; if she stopped moving it would probably be the end of it.

As she flew, balls of magenta energy sparked to life around her, shooting in front of her at Satori to hopefully disrupt her concentration. This was one fight where she DIDN'T want to stay at range.

Satori traced the flight trajectories of the incoming orbs from Nanoha's mind, and used that to dodge them with small, controlled motions. Nanoha clearly wanted to make this a close-range battle... Satori smiled. Let's play things your way, then, human girl.

(( BGM: Satori Maiden ~ 3rd Eye (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wktQ3XSnnXY) ))

"Memory Sign - Brain Fingerprint!"

From the Third Eye emerged several dozen small, intense green orbs of light. Rather than approach Nanoha, they flew out in random directions, to random points in space... then vanished. Without giving any hint as to what she was planning, Satori took the offensive with a hail of small, green bolts of energy.

A trick? No, a trap. Nanoha knew she couldn't afford to second-guess herself here. But then again, she knew that she might well be taking the other girl's bait. If she was, though... she'd just have to adjust and roll with the punches.

"Strike Flame."

Nanoha swerved around the small barrage Satori flung at her, flying in an upward arc that sent the two on a collision course. Wings of shimmering magical fire sprouted from either side of Raising Heart as she shifted her grip to a close combat-oriented one.

"I wonder..." Satori slowed, turning to face her opponent.

"...did you keep track of where all of those orbs went?"

As soon as she finished the sentence, every one of the vanished orbs reappeared at once as sizeable explosions of green energy, one of them not at all far from where Nanoha was at that moment.

Nanoha's combat instincts fired the moment Satori spoke, and she quickly set up a shield - but as she had no way of knowing from which directions the blast would come, she'd had to modify the spell to more of a bubble shape... which meant it was weaker.

The blast broke through her shield, flinging her to the side with the force of the impact. Still, Nanoha tried to ignore the flash of pain, regaining control of her flight after a heartbeat or two ... and continuing on her path to close the distance with Satori.

Satori was expecting Nanoha to recover about as quickly as she did, but the spell wasn't broken yet. She continued her retreating battle, laying down another field of vanishing mines as she did so.

Brain Fingerprint's strength wasn't in offensive power. It didn't even need to hit to be successful. No, the power of the spell was primarily psychological. In order to close distance, Nanoha would have to split her concentration between dodging Satori's direct barrage and trying to keep track of the positions of the invisible orbs, the complexity of the task combined with the uncertainty of when they'll go off adding layer after layer of paranoia to the battle.

This was Satori's battle, and it would be decided by strength of mind, not strength of arms.

This time, however, Nanoha was paying attention to where the mines were... and she stopped just outside their blast radius, hovering in midair. She was beginning to get the feeling that this style of approach wasn't going to work the way Satori was playing.

But that was all right. She could play many different ways.

She lowered Raising Heart, pointing a slender index finger at her opponent and taking a page from Teana's book. "Crossfire... Shoot!" Of course, she'd had a bit of time to modify the gunner's spell, which manifested itself as a quartet of energy orbs surrounding a quartet of spiraling beams.

The beams flew directly at Satori, but Nanoha never expected them to hit. The spheres, however, would home in on her however she dodged the straightforward portion of the attack.

Satori quickly picked up on what Nanoha was doing from her mind, but didn't have time to properly evade both parts of the attack. She dodged very slightly to one side and moved forwards, grazing narrowly along the path of the beams and causing the homing spheres to gather behind her in pursuit. She then turned her back to Nanoha, extending both hands to raise a barrier between her and the incoming shots.

She grimaced under the force of the impact, but the shield held. Satori, however, now had her back turned to her opponenet...

Nanoha wasn't naive enough to think that just because Satori was facing away from her, it didn't mean she had freedom to act - her opponent was a mind reader, after all.

"Struggle Bind."

Time to check out the spell you just learned, Satori.

There's always a gulf between theory and practice. This is what kept Satori from dodging the spell in time.

Satori couldn't see Nanoha as the restraints locked down on her limbs, but even without the Third Eye she would have been able to tell what Nanoha's next move was going to be. She concentrated as hard as she could on what she knew about counteracting a bind spell, and set to work breaking free. It came down to a race to see whether or not she could escape the Bind before Nanoha's next attack came.

Nanoha knew Satori knew this was coming, but hopefully she could pull it off before the girl worked her way out of the bind. Raising Heart was aimed downrange at her foe, light shining from the spearhead... and the moment she knew her aim was true, she fired.

"Divine... Buster!"

There was an explosion as Divine Buster impacted the mountain, filling the air with smoke and debris. Then, from within the cloud...

"Bind Spell - Memory Repression."

From a point directly behind Nanoha, four tendrils of pale blue light extended outwards, each one wrapping itself around one of Nanoha's limbs and pulling them tightly together. Satori cleared the air around her with a wave of force, the right side of her outfit heavily singed. Looks like she made it out just in time.

Now for the counterattack. Satori pointed one hand towards Nanoha, complicated runic pink circles expanding at her feet. Very familiar ones.

Three rings of energy aligned past the end of her arm, and a point of pink light gathered in her palm.

"Divine... Buster!"

Nanoha was a hair too slow to dodge Satori's counter-bind, though she immediately started to struggle free... though as she realized what the other girl was planning, she hesitated for a moment in surprise. Is she really...?

She knew she wasn't going to work her way out of the bind in time. For a moment, Nanoha couldn't help but remember back ten years ago to a situation very like this one.

Nanoha braced herself, as the blast hit her head-on.

Edited 2010-06-06 00:34 (UTC)

Satori made the mistake of relaxing upon seeing the direct hit. She smiled as she drifted slowly towards the ground. "I believe this qualifies as my victory."

And as the mountain wind slowly dissipated the cloud of smoke from the attack, a silhouette gradually became visible. Nanoha's Barrier Jacket was singed and slightly torn, but she was still upright. "Not quite, Satori."

That had hurt, but she'd had much worse in the past.

Once more, Raising Heart came down to point at her foe, though the light that sparked at its tip was brighter, this time. "Excelion..."

"Flash Move."

To the naked eye, Nanoha winked out of existence, disappearing from view. In reality, however, she'd merely moved at a blindingly fast speed ... to end up right behind Satori as she finished her first spell incantation at point-blank range.

"...BUSTER!"

Satori had seen the move coming, of course. Unfortunately, her surprise at the battle not ending where she had expected it to, combined with Nanoha's speed, meant that she had no chance to evade the attack.

As she hopelessly raised a barrier, Satori had flash of memory - A fight not long ago, not too dissimilar to this...

When Satori hit the side of the mountain, the battle was distinctly over.

Nanoha exhaled, trying to shake the sharp sting of Satori's spell from her limbs. That had hurt.

"Are you all right?" She called down after the girl.

After a moment, Satori picked herself up into a sitting position, rubbing the back of her head and hoping the dull throb there wouldn't last too long. "I'll survive."

Nanoha's Barrier Jacket faded back into the plantsuit as she floated down to where Satori was sitting. "That was a pretty impressive use of the Bind," she complimented the mind-reader. "Nice job."

"Wow, that was great!"

Suddenly, Koishi! And she's floating two feet to Nanoha's right, despite not being there a second before.

"You seem pretty strong, y'know."

"It was an improvement, at least." Satori sighed. "I'm still not used to fighting without rules--"

Suddenly, Koishi! Satori didn't like being surprised, but was at least used to it from this particular source. "You were here from the beginning, I assume."

Indeed: Suddenly, Koishi! Nanoha started a bit as the girl appeared right next to her, but quickly composed herself. "Ah... Koishi-chan, you startled me!"

"Erm... thanks, though! Your sister put up a good fight."

Edited 2010-06-06 01:36 (UTC)

"Yeah, she did!" Koishi said, giggling. "Which is surprising, since sis really isn't that good at fighting. Or at least, that's how she used to be."

Ouch, poor Satori. At least that last bit was kind of a compliment?

"That would be your specialty, wouldn't it, Koishi?" Satori was willing to forgive a bit more insubordination in this case, because it was her sister.

She turned back to Nanoha. "Koishi here as both a habit of and a knack for sneaking up on people. She definitely doesn't meany any harm by it."

Nanoha shook her head. "Oh, I don't think she did. It was just a bit of a surprise, that's all!"

"And you shouldn't underestimate your sister like that, Koishi-chan," Nanoha said breezily. "Being able to know what the opponent does is quite the advantage in a fight, isn't it?"

"Yup, I'm definitely the better fighter!" She nodded at Satori before turning to Nanoha. She didn't mean to sound like she was making fun of her sister or anything like that... she was just telling the truth.

"And I guess it's a useful ability... But it's a lot more fun when you don't know what your opponent is thinking!"

"Fun or not, you should get some practice in yourself, Koishi." Satori looked at her light-hearted younger sister, wondering not for the first time how well she'd be able to adjust to life here. "There's going to be fighting, and our enemies don't have any interest in the Spell Card rules."

Nanoha's gaze floated over to Satori. "This isn't the first time I've heard you mention rules. What are they?"

"The world I come from has many youkai wielding immense power." Satori launched into an explanation, hoping this would clarify her background coming into their two duels. "If they were allowed to fight without restraint, then Gensokyo and everything around it would surely be annihilated. Thus, the Spell Card Battle rules were created as a compromise to allow open conflict without threatening the existence of our world."

Satori opened her hand, and created above it a simple visual aid - a small point of light dodging and weaving between dozens of dots, lines, and orbs, the image collapsing when it got hit. "The rules are simple - battles are fought one on one, with each person using their most beautiful and elegant spells to crush the spells of their opponent. Battles are fought to the first direct hit, rather than to the death, or until one person no longer has any power with which to fight back."

"I bet Nanoha would be really good at it!" Koishi said. Sure, she had only seen the other girl fight just this one time, but that magic... bind spells aside, it definitely looked similar to a Spell Card battle. And that last attack totally reminded her of a certain witch back home, so Koishi would be lying if she said she wasn't interested in a sparring match with the other girl.

"What do you think, sis?"

"I wonder." Satori glanced between Koishi and Nanoha. "I'd like to see her fight a certain shrine maiden."

"That sounds like a very interesting ruleset," Nanoha affirmed. "Your attacks were very... well, elegant is a good word for it, I think."

She paused at the back and forth between the two, feeling as though she were missing something. "Er, what about a certain shrine maiden?"

"Reimu Hakurei! She's the shrine maiden of one of the shrines back home." Koishi said. "She's really strong. Strong enough to beat both me and sis!"

Oh, how Koishi wished Reimu (and Marisa) was here. Sure, there were a couple of people here that caught her interest, but none as much as those two.

"Yes, she's very powerful." That fight rested a bit less warmly in Satori's mind than it did in Koishi's. After all, Reimu had been the one to barge into Satori's home uninvited on some inexplicable errand. "I wonder how she'd compare to Nanoha."

"Huh. So she has spells like the two of you, then?" Nanoha paused for a moment, wondering what other sorts of people there were in the world these two came from - most shrine maidens she knew weren't the fighting type.

"I'd like to meet her someday, then."

"You should come with us when we're allowed to go home again, and you can meet her then!"

Yup, Koishi still hasn't heard about the whole "worlds completely destroyed" thing.

Koishi's curiosity had taken over when she saw the Sensoriums were in use, and her interest was piqued when she saw her sister and Nanoha. It was easy enough to use her powers to make sure neither of them would notice her; if she could stroll unnoticed past a mountain occupied by tengu, this would be a piece of cake.

So she hovered in the air, close enough to hear them, and watched. And waited.

Rematch [Semi-Open]

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