trans_9 | Damn Paperclip [Open]

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Damn Paperclip [Open]

Julian glared at the paperclip. Or, rather, the charred shard of metal that used to be a paperclip, which was sitting on the floor of an otherwise empty sensorium.

He had tried to pick it up and move it, something that should be a simple task for a telekinetic like him, but his precision control was still shot to hell. He ended up using too much energy in too small a space, which resulted in an explosion.

For the fifth time in a row.

It was getting annoying. He used to have perfect control. Hell, he was on the verge of learning how to disassemble molecules. Now, thanks to Emma unleashing him into overdrive, he can move a mountain through sheer force of will, but can't pick up anything smaller than an SUV without exploding it.

He was getting better at it with practice, but it was slow and frustrating. But damn it all to hell if he was going to ask for help. He could do this on his own. He'd just have to try again.

Which he did, having the sensoriums make another paperclip for him. All he had to do was concentrate, focus, grab hold of it, lift it and then.... then shield his eyes from shrapnel as that one exploded too.

"Dammit..."

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"And if I win..." he rolled that thought around for a moment, but decided to be nice and let her off the hook. "You keep the nicknames, without complaint. Sound fair?" Not like he was going to lose anyway. She really was only working with one arm.

Nanoha sighed - she really didn't like those nicknames. "...all right, I can agree to that." Even if she only had one good arm, it should be all right. She could still fly, after all.

"Axel Fin."

The translucent wings on the back of her heels shimmered to life, lifting her a good two or so feet off the ground where she hovered. Nanoha tightened her grip on Raising Heart. "Ready when you are."

And a few seconds later, she'd learn that wouldn't give her much of an advantage, as Julian floated into the air with ease.

"Stacy, count it off."

||3... 2... 1... FIGHT!||

And no sooner had the word been given, had he launched himself straight towards Nanoha.

An advantage, perhaps not - but Nanoha had always considered herself a person of the sky. It set her at ease just to be able to fly, and she knew that she was good at it. However, this wasn't a match she thought she could win just by the straight application of overwhelming force (at least, not yet) - her Linker Core was still recovering from the use of the Blaster System, and she didn't want to overwhelm it. So she'd have to play smart.

As Julian flew forward, Nanoha flew backwards and up, leaving three small magenta orbs the size of softballs in her path - if Julian wanted to continue pursuing her, he'd have to either change course or run head-on into them. And the moment he changed course, she'd just send them homing in on his position.

He did change course, and he noticed the orbs following him as he did. He decided to take a detour and zip around and through the suspension cables holding up the bridge, trying to see if he could shake them, or at least delay them, then he made a beeline straight for her.

No such luck, Julian. The orbs aren't following you automatically, Nanoha's controlling them manually - and she has a lot of practice leading targets. With a thought, she sent one of them flying on a path that would take it directly between the two of them and automatically detonate in a burst of energy the moment Julian got too close.

The other two would be coming around in a pincer movement from the top and bottom, to hopefully catch him if he dodged either way.

If he couldn't lose them by out maneuvering them, brute force would have to do. He broke off pursuit, and fired an energy blast at the orb that was coming between them, then he quickly located and fired on the other two.

He then headed to the left, not wanting to give her a fixed target to aim at, and tried to locate her again.

All right, so he had ranged capabilities, too - she'd have to keep that in mind. Slowly but surely, she'd figure her opponent out, and hopefully she'd be able to figure out how best to deal with him before too long.

He could fly, and he could take out her shots one at a time. The combat instructor inside of Nanoha decided that it was time for a more difficult test. The moment Julian broke off his attack approach, Raising Heart spoke at Nanoha's mental command: "Axel Shooter."

Where you had only been dealing with three orbs before, Julian, there were a good deal more sparking to life all around Nanoha - at least eight or nine, probably more. "Shoot!" The mage flung her non-injured arm out, and the barrage sliced through the air at her opponent, all of them curving on slightly different trajectories to make it much harder to dodge. Quantity had a quality all of its own.

Granted, Julian wasn't good at multi-directional targeting yet, but that was only where precision counted. Rather than even attempt to dodge, he flew right into the middle of the whole cluster. He then let out a short burst of energy from his body that went out in every direction.

Somewhat wasteful, yes. But when you're aiming at all directions at once, it's rather hard to miss.

Hm. She'd have to remember that he could do that for next time. But right now, he was closing fast, and so Nanoha went on the defensive - a flat disc of hard magenta light sprung to life at the palm of her hand.

"Round Shield."

It was met head-on by a shield of his own, and the two energy barriers were engaged in a classic push-off.

"What's wrong, Dallface? Don't want to settle this up close and personal?"

The mouthing off was just a distraction, though. If she was paying attention to the details, she might have noted that he hadn't looked directly at her the whole time. She also might have heard, over the sound of their shields clashing, the brief sound of metal wrenching and tearing from the bridge below, somewhere behind her. That would be Julian yanking out one of the street lamps and pulling it at her from behind, hoping to catch her of guard.

It wouldn't be the first time an opponent had tried that trick on her. Nanoha's head whipped around as she caught the sound of the groaning metal, and extended her other hand - on her injured arm, which made her fight a wince - to create a second shield to hold the impact off.

"Why do you talk to women like that, anyway?" Nanoha's tone seemed conversational, a little grit in her voice the only indication that she was managing two shields at the same time. In the next instant, before Julian could respond, she squeezed the hand operating the shield facing him into a fist. "Barrier Burst!"

The shield detonated in a point-blank explosion of magical energy aimed directly at Julian and his own barrier.

"Becaus-ahh!!" The explosion caught him of guard, and while his shield took the worst of it, it was still more than enough to drive him back and put some distance between them.

"Cute," he remarked, briefly pondering his next move. He decided to land back on the bridge, hoping to make her come down towards him. He'd have the advantage at that level.

Oh, no. Nanoha remained in the air about six feet above the ground, slowly moving around Julian in a circle to prevent him from easily planning anything based on the terrain. "You can think about your answer if you want."

She held out a hand again, pointing one slender finger at her opponent. Teana's move really was a useful one, come to think of it. "Crossfire... Shoot!"

Three beams of sparkling magenta light shot from her finger, spiraling around each other in a triple helix as they closed the distance between the two of them very, very quickly - and they were accompanied by another trio of the magical orbs from before, which Nanoha intended to send off following Julian the moment he dodged.

Except Julian was a telekinetic. The entire terrain is both his weapon and his shield.

Julian didn't dodge. Instead, a large piece of the asphalt in front of him was quickly and violently uprooted, and it took the hit from the crossfire that was meant for him.

"I talk that way to women because it doesn't waste time." And neither did he, as he went straight to what he did best, being offensive. He fired several more energy blasts at her, those these behaved differently than any he fired before. None went straight at her, instead, some arced overhead before coming down at her, and a trio went wide at either side, then closed back in on her.

Above her and to the sides. But not in front of her. "Flash Move."

Nanoha vanished. Or, rather, appeared to vanish as the spell temporarily boosted her speed to levels far beyond what the naked eye could catch - and as the wind rushed past her ears, she flew forward through Julian's barrage, reappearing behind him.

As she flickered back into view, Nanoha was already in the middle of swinging her staff down at her opponent's back, the head of the weapon glowing with power that would unleash itself in a large explosion once it made contact. "Flash Impact."

A teleporter of some kind? That, he wasn't expecting. The explosion caught him full on and sent him reeling.

First knockdown goes to you, Dollface.

Nanoha exhaled as she flew back, feeling beads of sweat begin to dot her forehead. So far, so good - she had some more breathing room now, so she leveled Raising Heart at Julian and waited for him to get to his feet. "It doesn't waste time doing what? Finding out what they actually want, or what's important to them?"

There was a scoff from Julian as he picked himself up. "Like I need to know any of that.

"I let them know what I want, and if they want the same thing, great. If they don't? Hey, that's cool, but now I'm not gonna waste any more of my time and I think I'll go talk to that other hot chick over there."

He noticed her pointing her staff at him, but hell if he was going to give her a chance to use it. Once he was ready for the fight to continue, he used his powers to try to yank Rising Heart out of her hands.

"But you didn't here. Here, you just started forcefully and didn't back off even when it was clear that she didn't want--" Nanoha was cut off as she felt an invisible force suddenly give her Device a sharp tug. Though she tried to hold on to it, her injured arm couldn't quite withstand Julian's telekinetic mind, and the staff flew from her hands.

But she was quick, and no sooner had it left her grasp than she was already pointing at Julian for a repeat attack. "Crossfire Shoot!"

Julian flew up into the air, taking Rising Heart with him. He didn't touch the staff itself, figuring that Nanoha likely had a failsafe or two built into the thing, but kept it levitated in the air near him, for the moment.

"You're making too big a deal about that." One could almost hear the eyeroll in his voice. "I try to be nice, but nooooo... gotta be the bad guy."

He fired a stream of energy down at the bridge, which, initially didn't seem to do much damage. At least until more sections of the bridge were blasted out of the ground and towards Nanoha.

"You weren't being nice at all," Nanoha countered. "You were just trying to get what you wanted, even when it made her uncomfortable." She deftly dodged the parts of the bridge that Julian threw at her - aerial combat was something she'd been doing for years - and tried to figure out how to get her Device back. She could do magic without it, but it'd be much, much more difficult. Like doing large-level division without a calculator.

Of course, the weapon was sentient in its own way, and still bound to her. A quick thought, and the device spoke from where it hovered near Julian. "Strike Flame."

Large 'wings' of the magenta magical energy Nanoha used spouted from both sides of the golden spearhead. It was unlikely that they'd cut Julian too badly without any real force behind them, but Nanoha gambled that it'd throw him off nonetheless, and made her move - flying up at full speed to hopefully snatch her weapon out of the air.

"Oh, for crying out loud, I was trying t--" Yeah, he was right to figure there was a trap in there, somewhere. He was far enough away that he didn't get caught full on, but still decided to put some distance between him and her staff. He launched it over the side of the bridge and towards the water, then maneuvered himself over the water, figuring she'd go after her weapon.

And right you were, Julian - Nanoha swiftly followed Raising Heart as it fell out above the water, narrowly plucking it out of the air and skidding to a stop mere feet before she would have been out of bounds.

Perfect. From above, he dropped a wide energy dome on her, one that was steadily shrinking.

"Now, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted... I was insistent that she come in and sit down because I was worried about her. Seriously, Sweetheart looked like she was gonna fall over if she had to keep searching the ship looking for you. It wouldn't do to have someone trip over her in the halls.

"The fact she's cute and would be bangable once she healed up was an added bonus."

And this is another reason why people though Julian had evil potential, he loved monologging when he should be finishing off an opponent.

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