Higher Education (Open, Party of Three)

[Tristan Carter]

Tristan was curious about some of the other areas that he hadn't been in. After all, a broad area of exploration was key to finding out the cause of all of the strange happenings. Besides, where better to find information than at a university? 

The boy was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved, red tee. His chest plate was over the shirt and bulky, but Tristan had gotten used to it. He could deal with it so long as he didn't take the brunt of the attacks. He was only worried about the sort of enemies that may appear. After all, he had no experience here. 

What a way to learn.

[Kate Minola]

Kate had dared to go exploring in an area she hadn't before, one of the local universities. She stuck the folding map she carried to orient herself, annotated with observations about the 'dark' world, into her back pocket and walked on. She had a half-baked theory that the creatures here might be tougher than what she was used to fighting, but that would have to be seen.

As she wandered around, she saw someone in the distance. Squinting in the gloom, she recognized the form. That was the kid named Tristan. She ran into him quite a bit, it seemed. It wasn't a bad thing, given that he was a pretty capable fighter. She wasn't sure if he'd seen her so she just walked in his direction casually, hands in her pockets and her bow hanging on her shoulder as usual.

[Yumina Makino]

As much as Yumina "enjoyed" fighting the same monsters every night, it was still important to explore new areas. Who knows, maybe there's some section where all the enemies are pathetic and she could rack up tons of experience without breaking a sweat. It's wrong to cheat to get ahead, but struggling for no reason would just waste everyone's time. And time is precious.

So tonight Yumina decided to look around Waseda University, as the area still looked like what she remembered. The familiar areas were a good place to start, since she knew where to hide if necessary. Idly twirling the knife in her hand, Yumina continued searching for an easy target. Taking on too much at once invalidated the point of practicing. Nobody got experience points for running away. . .did they? In any case, the idea of fighting was starting to become more routine. At least, it wasn't as scary as the first night.

She probably didn't need their help, but there were two regular people nearby. If anything happened she could probably get one of them to distract a couple enemies. Yumina followed Kate follow that guy. She could try talking to them once they weren't so far away. Yelling would attract the wrong kind of attention.

[Satanick]

Deadly Wheel
Resist: Fire
Weak: Elec
Skills: Fatal End, Counterstrike, Infuriate

Vibrant Drive
Resist: Pierce
Weak: Elec
Skills: Viper Smash, Twin Shot, Media

Dubious Sand
Repel: Pierce
Weak: Strike, Slash
Skills: Tetrakarn, Makarakarn, Magaru

Deadly Wheel
Resist: Fire
Weak: Elec
Skills: Fatal End, Counterstrike, Infuriate

[Tristan Carter]

Tristan turned as he heard approaching footsteps. Apparently, he wasn't the only one who decided to look around the university campus. There were two girls approaching him. Kate, whom he recognized and worked well with, and another girl that he didn't recognize at all. Are there still people I haven't met? Tristan asked himself. Eh, I suppose that's a good thing. That means theres more than just the handful I have met.

Before he could greet the two and introduce himself, a group of creatures appeared. Two of them, seemingly clones of each other, approached Tristan immediately. They looked like wheels with lion heads, not that the boy cared. The two wheels spun around in a three-sixty, but Tristan didn't feel a thing. Slash attacks? Not what I would have expected from a tire, but all the better for me. He smiled as Odysseus materialized. Suddenly, one of the shadows was enveloped in a towering mass of darkness. The wheel was still alive, sadly. Not that Tristan wouldn't cure that condition.

The damaged shadow tried another slash attack, while the other one tried to do something that didn't quite connect. Tristan responded by finishing off the first wheel and damaging the second. The shadow tried the attack again with still no effect. With a sigh, Tristan put it out of its misery.

[Kate Minola]

"Hey Tristan, nice night to kick some butt, right?" Kate said a little merrily when they all got ambushed by Shadows - as usual. "How are you? It's Yumina, right? I'm not very good with names."

While Tristan dealt with the two wheel things, Kate was about to tackle the big one with the multiple legs when she was hit - swept right off her feet, more like - by a blast of wind. It swept the entire field but it caught Kate the most because she was right in the middle of its range.

"What the hell?" she blurted, getting up and groping around for her glasses.

She put them on and stared at the... er, thing that attacked her. It looked like an hourglass and it jiggled strangely as if mocking her.

Kate angrily fired an arrow at it, but to her shock, the arrow just bounced right off it... and came whistling at her! She gasped and ducked, feeling the shaft of the arrow fly right over her head.

Sonofabitch that thing can reflect attacks? she thought.

She lowered her bow and summoned Antiope. Before she could attack, the Shadow did a stupid little dance and seemingly coated itself with a magical shield.

"Oh you've gotta be shitting me," she mumbled.

She had Antiope attack with a fire skill first, to see if the shield would dissipate. Kate uttered a very vulgar curse when the fire spell just bounced off the shield and came right back at her! In fury, she told Antiope to attack immediately with a slashing attack while the Shadow blasted her again with another wind spell.

To her rather sadistic delight, when Antiope's slashing attack connected, it did a number on the damn thing and knocked it on its ass. It was so dazed that Kate had time to issue a second slashing attack that finished it off.

[Yumina Makino]

They left her to deal with the big guy. Alright, this could work. To start with, Yumina weakened the enemy to make this job easier. Once she began to stab the shadow guy, it became obvious that he wasn't really bothered by any of the attacks. Maybe he had some innate protection, like how her blazer resisted sword moves. Perhaps the enemies here were just a lot tougher. There'd be time to analyze that later.

It's not like she had any other way to cause damage, and asking for help was for cowards, so on with the stabbing. Maybe another debuff too.

Right before the robot guy managed to hit her, a gust of wind from somewhere else on the battlefield struck Yumina in the back. Now distracted, she took a second to attempt to figure out which enemy had attacked her. Probably not the giant wheels--although one did use a more wide range skill that managed to reach her. Nothing happened to the human, who barely seemed troubled by any of fighting going on.

Simply looking in his direction started to piss Yumina off. Guess there's no reason to care what everyone else is doing. Nothing bothered them, with their dumb swords and stupid magic. Bro's obviously too good for these casual mode scrubs. Well, he's not the only one that can show off.

She would have complained even without the wheel's spell forcing her to stay angry, but rage helped divert her attention away from the enemy she had been fight. Turns out the shadow thing she had damaged knew how to heal itself. Great. While she wasn't looking it probably recovered--no, forget it. Stop thinking. Kill this guy and go home already.

Each thrust ended up being more forceful than the last. The giant appeared to be taking more damage His attack missed, and she just kept going. Dude started feeling better by now and pulled back his arm-pole-thing. The shadow performed a 360 degree swing that not only landed, but knocked Yumina into a nearby building. A brief crunch accompanied the fracturing of the wall. As she peeled off the wall all the unnatural anger slowly faded.

As much as that hurt, Yumina figured there wasn't much to cry about it. Battle's not over. She had to get Charm to work (and fast) before the enemy made it over. He had already started moving, limiting her chances to prevent a follow-up from happening. First cast did nothing. Second attempt also failed. Already regretting this decision--but too far in to stop now--she had Oberon cast one more time. Once the pink glow of success began to surround the approaching monster, Yumina let out a sigh of relief.

Which turned into a cough. Shadow guy seemed to note that his new ally had been injured, and started to heal the poor girl. Honestly, the recovery felt so good she didn't really want it to stop. However, it had to end early. Those other people would inevitably come over to check on her, and this guy had to die before then. Using Debilitate drained more energy than expected, but whatever. Only a few more attacks and she could go home.

After another wave of healing, Yumina began her third round of combat. The giant seemed confused by this betrayal, only to realize in vain that his friend had stabbed him in the back. The sight of his body disappearing did not make Yumina feel better. That was too much work to be satisfying. The only consolation was the fact that she managed to do it without outside help. Next time. . . it'd be smarter to have someone else do most of the fighting. This was too much effort for no reason.