We'd likely over due it in haste and kill a friendly from the shockwave lol.
Le Punch: Kill la Kill x One Punch
- Thread starter CornyBones
- Start date
We'd likely over due it in haste and kill a friendly from the shockwave lol.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
[X] Save Nonon
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, you want to broadcast reasons to not get within a hundred miles of us? Sucks that the fights won't come as often, but we woulda won those anyway.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, you want to broadcast reasons to not get within a hundred miles of us? Sucks that the fights won't come as often, but we woulda won those anyway.
(it's not a perfect fit I know, but I can't get rid of a feeling)
If the author was using Carnage Kabuto expy from OPM. Its an intentional call out to Kabuto's going berzerker to Eva Unit 01.
- Location
- England
[X] Save Nonon
-[X] "I've been treating this as an exercise in holding back that stops now"
-[X] "I've been treating this as an exercise in holding back that stops now"
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
Why would we care about the broadcast? It tells people that fighting us is suicide.
well that was unanimous. Now Nonon dies of embarrassment.
You punch a bug
The smiling face and cheeky grin of your brother. Your mom waving goodbye to you. Your father setting his hat on your head. The sensation of their hugs and well wishes brush against you,the heat of love and that particular sensation of safety and support.
They're the closest thing to your heart, and the only ones who you have ever felt truly comfortable with. They know why you're here, they know what you're looking for.
Whatever your decision, you know they support you. Father knows what choice you'd make.
It's not even a choice. Not really. Help those in need.
"You don't know me very well," you say, dropping a single red boot on the monitor. "If you did, then you'd know that was a stupid trick to pull." The weight of your foot flexes, crushing the monitor into a sputtering heap of electricity and wires.
"Satsuki," you say.
"Yes teacher?" She replies, landing on the rooftop, frantically scanning the horizon for any sign of Nonon.
"Help Hoka and Shinjiro."
She does not respond, not understand the implication.
"I've been treating this as an exercise in holding back," you explain. "That stops now."
At Honnoji, you knew you were fighting classmates. So you restrained the press to kill. In the city, you tapered back, to let them survive
You are an avalanche, and you descend. It is impossible to describe the sensation of moving so quickly that you scrape the faces off buildings, and create cyclones in your after trail, but you've heard it from others. Like a hellstorm, or a hurricane.
You lunge from building to building, each step sending a rippling crush of force flexing down the structures. The sound is thunder. Buildings curl like paper as you step through them without resistance, the concrete snapping apart. Smoke and fire curl away from you.
Time to squash a bug.
-
Nonon was ranting in her mind.
Go to the city, blow up some buildings, it'll be fun. Good way to blow off stress before all that paperwork back in Honnoiji catches up with you. Oh, whoops, looks like The Hick want's to come along, and Lady Satsuki is accompanying. Better chin up, look straight ahead. Gotta look nice for Satsuki. She needs this. Needs Nonon to help her salvage this day. This awful, awful day. Help her find some small victory in the sea of shit that today's been.
She didn't say it. Nonon could tell. It's in the eyes. The way they linger.
She's bending knee now, asking for education from The Hick with grace and poise. But it has to be tearing her up. It has to be shredding her insides. Nonon remembers the months after that first meeting. How Satsuki couldn't sleep, from the pain. The months of waking up with screams. The fear.
The….time with her mother….
A blow strikes Nonon's head and she flies backwards, crushing...something. She lost sense of direction a while ago. There's blood in her eyes, and she's firing her cannons wildly. Panic, fear, pain. It seeped into the Kamui, she could feel it, the nascent threads vibrating hungrily with her emotions. Unspooling, tightening, drinking the blood.
Nonon missed her monkey.
She wondered if she was going to die here.
Laughter, sharp and racheous, like a blade, filters to her ears. "I had hoped for something fierce to console myself with, but all I find is a shrimpy crawfish."
Nonon squared and fired her canons on the voice.
"Ohho~ cagey." it was behind her. A hand gripped her by the top of her hat. "But useless, hup~" The horrifying sound of fabric ripping, and she felt a wing on the suit break away, the garment writhing in its own agony now. A foot the size of her entire chest sledged into her, and she was again kicked airborne.
Pain was constant now, flooding out other feelings. She got a hand over her eyes, rubbing away the blood, spitting out a tooth. Rushing impact, as she flew through a window and knocked over a shelf of cans. She'd landed in a supermarket.
Dying in a supermarket would be the perfect capstone to the meeting with Tatsuki.
Trembling feet curled under her as Nonon got back to her feet. The damage was extensive, a wing was gone and her remaining cannon was spluttering. It could project force, but without flying she was trapped on the ground.
As shadow fell over her, her opponent emerged through the hole in the wall.
A bodybuilder who's taken far, far too many steroids, was her first thought. If Gamagori had no fashion sense and had been born the color purple. Horns that swooped upward like a crescent moon, and green circulatory veins that flexed as it walked.
Wrist rubbing against her mouth, Nonon wiped away the blood on her face, Glowering at the enormous monster.
"You can still stand?" The monster gurgled, face contorting as muscle stretched into a carnivorous leer. "Impressive. You'll might make an intriguing appetizer before that Class President of yours."
Nonon saw an opening. "You shouldn't play with your food when a monster is behind you."
It leaped as though it'd been shot, whipping around with braced arms. She could see the blur of wings on it's back, and she added the image of a large rhinoceros beetle immediately came to her.
Ducking into a roll, she fired a cannon into the exposed back of the monster, the cannon sputtered and whined, before releasing a burst of sonic pressure that seared across the distance.
The creature whirled again, springing from arm, to leg in a flip that brought it out of the firing path of the blast. It crushed a series of shelves, and bounded after her laughing. "Getting cocky, I see."
Teeth tightening, Nonon tried to duck as the giant swept it's arm at her in a hug, but the impact collided with her in a freight train blow that carried her forward. Tightening an arm like a car vice around her midsection.
"Let's go for a run," it shouted
Wall, wall, wall. Broken on her. She fired off her cannon wildly.
"I admit, I thought that running from whatever that demon you brought with you would be a foolish waste of time. But then I saw it, and, well, my sense of scale has been expanded." It spoke conversationally, breaking drywall and plaster around her. "I must find other ways to entertain myself."
It dropkicked her into a parking garage. The metal of the car parted around her like a violent metal razer, gouging exposed flesh, and dribbling onto the ground around her.
"I have work to do. And I'd rather not attract the attention of that thing." It clasped both sides of her head, knocking off her immense hat. "So, goodbye."
Point blank, she fired her remaining cannon at into the herculean monstrosity. The sound of the symphony reverberated in her ears, as the blast propelled her free from its grasp, and she skidded over several cars to land clumsily on her feet.
Weak Kami, can't even fight a stupid bodybuilding rhino beetle.
The behemoth twisted a finger in it's ear, and yawned. "Annoying."
She was afraid. Why was she losing? What had she done to bring herself here. Hadn't she given up everything for lady Satsuki? What was she missing? Coughs rack her chest, and she feels more blood dribble across her lips. Why was she so weak?
A hundred wounds, accumulated over the course of the day, opened up all across her body. Her suit was more red than black now, and she could feel the threads that held it together quivering violently.
Huge, gargantuan foot falls, accompanied the monster striding to her. The shadow he cast overwhelmed her, a black silhouette, illuminated by a pair of burning green eyes.
"Cower in the shadow of the Asura Kabuto. The most powerful weapon of the Evolution College," he said, spreading arms wide and grinning with teeth the size of her hand.
A single hand raised high above her, tightening like the edge of an axe.
It didn't matter how she got here. What mattered was that she failed. These were her final moments. She had been too weak
"My only regret is that I'm going to die to something the color of a diseased grape," she hissed. "With a sweaty after coating." She choked down the knowledge of her own complete failure.
Asura laughs.
"Hey."
Asura shrieks.
The Hick has arrived, white cape billowing behind her as a building collapses in the distance. She holds one hand to her stupid hat and adjusts it over the bandanna.
"Y-you shouldn't be here! You're supposed to be stopping the broadcast!"
She shrugs, a look of boredom sticking to her face. "How about you let her go, and we get this over with."
The Monster maintains his grip on Nonon, holding her close as he bounds away from Tatsuki with desperate strides,.
"Okay then," Tatsuki says. There's the noise of a hurricane lunging, and Nonon's suddenly facing a rushing fist that screams of death.
Asura is using her as a shield, keeping Nonon between himself, and the lunging predator. Tatsuki snorts, and jukes to the side, zigzagging around the upraised girl and spinning her arm around in a helicopter strike.
He rolls away from it, repositioning Nonon with a snap, bursting through a wall and trying to evade Tatsuki's pursuit. She hears the explosion as the wall is sundered by thunder, collapsing into a cloud of grey smoke and rock.
Nonon manages to corral her fuzzy thoughts into a semblance of order. The Monster can't beat Tatsuki, so it's using the buildings to try and escape the problem. He uses Nonon as a barrier, a hostage to prevent Tatsuki from tearing his head off and redecorating the buildings with his spine.
A press of air blurs past them as Tatsuki flashes ahead, her fists sizzling with heat. Nonon tries to pull herself from his grip, but the fingers curl like titanium vices around her arm. Another lunge sucks the air out of her body and makes her wheeze.
Fighting a blackness at the edge of her vision, Nonon set her teeth, tightened her body, and braced her legs against the monster. No response, as the muscle rippled like liquid steel, but Nonon hadn't expected that.
Pressing her lone remaining cannon directly next to his face, she managed to choke out a sentence. "This one's for you."
The cannon fired.The force was threw Asura off. He stumbled, arms windmilling in desperation for a moment, an expression of terror creeping across his face, before the Tatsuki pounced. One moment there was a purple body gripping Nonon, the next there was the noise of a freight train and the monster was gone in a shower of blood that carpeted the building.
All that remained was a single arm that flopped limply to the ground, green blood spurting forlornly.
Nonon fell to a sitting position. The arm remained where it was, jerking and spasming.
Brushing off her shoulders, Tatsuki stepped between puddles of blood, cheerfully humming.
"You saved my life."
"Probably."
Nonon's throat squeezed shut, a sharp and prickly feeling squirming up her spine. It pressed against the back of her eyes like a slug composed of hooks and barbs. She tried to clamp it down, but the pain deep inside oozed out in tiny tears that stung worse than the collage of wounds. She tries to talk, but nothing comes out.
"You're welcome," Tatsuki says brightly. "I'm going to check you for wounds now."
"D-Don't tell me what to do," Nonon growls weakly. "I'm perfectly fi-" she stops, doubles over, and heaves a bloody stream of vomit on the floor. All the feelings of nausea and pain explode like a dam breaking. Weakness drags her to her knees, drags out gasping sobs.
Tatsuki says nothing. She leans over and holds back Nonon's hair.
Nonon felt too desperate to complain.
--
You can see where a nasty laceration curves along Nonon's scalp, oozing into the hair. The wound isn't serious at the moment, but without a proper binding, she'll lose more blood and likely fall unconscious. You look around the parking garage, but there is nothing you can readily use effectively to tie off the the head..
You run your hand up your face, and brush against your bandanna. A queasyness rolls up your stomach. You look around again, and yes, nothing else cloth-like has suddenly materialised. Fighting off the waves of self loathing and frustration, you dig your fingers into it..
"Not a word," you say to Nonon.
"What do you mea-"
You tug off your hat, pulling the bandanna with it. With a tight loop you tie it around the side of Nonon's head, checking the knot is tight. Fiddling with it, as a distraction.
"...Oh." whispers Nonon. Eyes tracing the contour of your... head. "Oh."
"Mrm," you growl. Strangling your emotions as you focus on administering care.
Nonon's hair is rumpled into rude masses of pink that tumbles over her face. She looks at you with wide eyes.
"Stop staring," you say.
"S-sorry." She drops her eyes.
"How do you get your hair that color?" you hiss in as a conversational tone as you can manage.
"Natural... pigment?" She replied, a blush creeping into her cheeks. "It's, uh, always been this shade." She tries to force it back into a symmetrical shape, despite the bandage throwing it off. Avoiding looking at you.
"So, do we still need to get the flag?" You say.
"Y-yes. Absolutely. The flag."
"Do you know where it is?"
"Let's try the central building, and if it's not there, then we can think up something else." Nonon pulls herself up, stumbles wobbly, and windmills her arms as she falls back down with a squeak.
Without thinking, your hand lashes out and catches the back of her shirt, pulling her back up. She eyes you with equal parts appreciation and humiliation.
"Walking might not be a good idea." You say, gently releasing her
"You'll have to carry me then." Nonon groans, placing a steadying hand on your shoulder. "I don't have wings anymore and we don't have any fast options." She beats her sole, tattered, remaining wing half heartedly.
You tilt you head, pulling your beanie down, "Okay, I guess."
Before she can object, you hoist her under one arm and spring into the sky. You hear her shriek wash away in the howling wind, as you accelerate high above the city.
You are ready to complete this business and go home. It has been a long day.
Your right hand tenses, quivering beneath the red fiber of your glove. Momentum carrying you above the city, you draw it back, feeling it humming with the force within.
"Knock knock," you mutter.
The central building is the size of a mountain. A temple fortress in size and mass. Scarred from Nonon's beams, but unsundered.
But as the final note, in the symphony of destruction that you have carved across the face of the city, you bring your fist down. The motif of the collapsed buildings is brought to cataclysmic resolution, as you fist propels forward with a roaring wind descending onto the city.
It caves like an egg. There is the sound of steel and concrete shattering, snapping, breaking. The sound of the wind echoing in a dragon roar that reverberates across the valley. The sound of a fortress crushed into a pulp.
"We should have led with that, " Nonon whispers, over the raging wind.
"Yes," you purr.
-
Not much is left after that. The Flag is buried in a pile of rubble that you excavate from beneath a forest of twisted concrete. Satsuki shows up, sporting several new cuts, carrying the unconscious Shinjiro, Hoka, and a briefcase covered in red stripes.
She seems happy, and says, "the fight was satisfactory" when you ask about it. The Professor's powerbase is crushed, and she with the loss of her flag she's unable to cause further trouble. The briefcase contains the data logs for her conversations outside the school, and will need to be analyzed back at the school.
Minka drops the helicopter into a clearing of rubble, brandishing a camera and saying something about, "Choice pics for the glory wall" as you pile into the transport.
As you fly home, the sun sets, casting an amber gold across the sky as a blue black darkness crawls across the sky. At some point, Satsuki falls asleep, hands gripping the hilt of her sword and her arms and legs coiling into herself in a defensive posture.
Ogure gushes for a while about your performance on the field, her and Minka both liberally using sound effects to recount the moments they found the most impressive. A smile creeps its way onto your face and into your bones. You are happy. It has been a good day. People know who you are, and you find yourself okay with it.
-
Nonon slides next to you, fiddling with her still messy hair. "Um."
You say nothing, perfectly relaxed, hands folded over your stomach. She tries again. Poking her fingers together and squirming beside you.
"So.."
Eyes closed, you hum quietly to yourself, waiting for what you know she's going to say.
"You have my gratitude for the assistance with the...bug man. "
"Mhmm." You nod, without opening your eyes.
An awkward silence grows. "When we get back, I'd like to talk with you about your plans for living arrangements."
You crack open an eye, looking her up and down. That gets your attention. You had been planning on the school assigning a dorm, buuut that was before you beat up the faculty. You haven't thought on what you want to do moving forward. And you have no idea where you'll be sleeping tonight.
Confidence blooms across Nonon's face, as she recognises the sudden uncertainty. "Ahh, I see you don't have plans then."
"N-no," you say. "I'll figure something out."
A feline need to pounce on your weakness, drives Nonon to settle in next to you. She crosses her legs authoritively, folds her hands in her lap, and adjusts her hat.
"I'd like to offer you my residence as a place to stay," Nonon croons. "Out of appreciation for your ah, services, and as a precursor to your entrance into the academic program."
You frown, folding your arms defensively, "You don't know that I'm going into academics."
Nonon's smile peels into a grin. "Oh, so boring fights interest you? A curriculum of crushing the weak beneath your red boots and hurling students through walls? Associating with monkeys that flex for fun?"
She pokes you in the arm, looks back down at it when she feels how hard it is, before shaking her head and looking back at your face. "You said it this morning, you're bored with fighting. You want something new to develop. I can offer you that, housing, and advice."
"Why would I need your advice?" You ask.
She shrugs. Fluffing her unkempt hair and sitting back. "To help with less "punchy" problems. Like finances, or economics, or history homework."
"Your offering to tutor me?"
"Assist you."
Pivoting, you turn your whole body to look at Nonon, "This morning you were talking about how little you trusted me, and how unwilling you were to just graciously open the door to me. Now you're offering me your house and time. Why?"
Nonon opens her mouth, closes it, then wilts into herself. "Because you saved my life, and because I think that being around you is the easiest way to learn more."
She gestures out the window. "Things are going to get more complicated. This was a rarity of a situation, where we knew what to hit and were free to use as much force as possible. It's not going to stay that way."
Here she hunches her knees up to her chest, cutting your view off of her eyes with her pink bangs. "I heard from Satsuki that you abandoned a chance to protect your family, because I was in danger. Thats"...-thats a lot to do for someone you just met. And at Honnoiji we always repay what we owe"
"My family can handle themselves," you say, tapping your knee,
"So can mine, but it's still a-" Nonon squeezes her knees, "a danger. And that doesn't answer my question. Why did you do that for me?"
Talking about why you do things doesn't come to you easily. The conviction behind your actions lies with a belief that villanry should be opposed, and the innocent protected. That is the definition of heroism. To what degree that entails personal sacrifice is unimportant.
"You were in danger and I was in the best position to stop it," you say. "My immediate responsibility is to those in front of me. No one can't predict the future." You tighten your fists.
"No. they can't." Nonon agrees with you. "So please humor my guilt and a let me make amends in preparation for… whatever comes next."
The pink haired girl doesn't say anything, just sitting beside you. She is incredibly small curled into herself like this. "I can't abide being a liability," you hear in a whisper
Silence returns to the helicopter.
-
[] Academics
[] Athletics
-
Interlude:
[] The Second Triplet
[] The High Queen
[] The Martial Artist
They're the closest thing to your heart, and the only ones who you have ever felt truly comfortable with. They know why you're here, they know what you're looking for.
Whatever your decision, you know they support you. Father knows what choice you'd make.
It's not even a choice. Not really. Help those in need.
"You don't know me very well," you say, dropping a single red boot on the monitor. "If you did, then you'd know that was a stupid trick to pull." The weight of your foot flexes, crushing the monitor into a sputtering heap of electricity and wires.
"Satsuki," you say.
"Yes teacher?" She replies, landing on the rooftop, frantically scanning the horizon for any sign of Nonon.
"Help Hoka and Shinjiro."
She does not respond, not understand the implication.
"I've been treating this as an exercise in holding back," you explain. "That stops now."
At Honnoji, you knew you were fighting classmates. So you restrained the press to kill. In the city, you tapered back, to let them survive
You are an avalanche, and you descend. It is impossible to describe the sensation of moving so quickly that you scrape the faces off buildings, and create cyclones in your after trail, but you've heard it from others. Like a hellstorm, or a hurricane.
You lunge from building to building, each step sending a rippling crush of force flexing down the structures. The sound is thunder. Buildings curl like paper as you step through them without resistance, the concrete snapping apart. Smoke and fire curl away from you.
Time to squash a bug.
-
Nonon was ranting in her mind.
Go to the city, blow up some buildings, it'll be fun. Good way to blow off stress before all that paperwork back in Honnoiji catches up with you. Oh, whoops, looks like The Hick want's to come along, and Lady Satsuki is accompanying. Better chin up, look straight ahead. Gotta look nice for Satsuki. She needs this. Needs Nonon to help her salvage this day. This awful, awful day. Help her find some small victory in the sea of shit that today's been.
She didn't say it. Nonon could tell. It's in the eyes. The way they linger.
She's bending knee now, asking for education from The Hick with grace and poise. But it has to be tearing her up. It has to be shredding her insides. Nonon remembers the months after that first meeting. How Satsuki couldn't sleep, from the pain. The months of waking up with screams. The fear.
The….time with her mother….
A blow strikes Nonon's head and she flies backwards, crushing...something. She lost sense of direction a while ago. There's blood in her eyes, and she's firing her cannons wildly. Panic, fear, pain. It seeped into the Kamui, she could feel it, the nascent threads vibrating hungrily with her emotions. Unspooling, tightening, drinking the blood.
Nonon missed her monkey.
She wondered if she was going to die here.
Laughter, sharp and racheous, like a blade, filters to her ears. "I had hoped for something fierce to console myself with, but all I find is a shrimpy crawfish."
Nonon squared and fired her canons on the voice.
"Ohho~ cagey." it was behind her. A hand gripped her by the top of her hat. "But useless, hup~" The horrifying sound of fabric ripping, and she felt a wing on the suit break away, the garment writhing in its own agony now. A foot the size of her entire chest sledged into her, and she was again kicked airborne.
Pain was constant now, flooding out other feelings. She got a hand over her eyes, rubbing away the blood, spitting out a tooth. Rushing impact, as she flew through a window and knocked over a shelf of cans. She'd landed in a supermarket.
Dying in a supermarket would be the perfect capstone to the meeting with Tatsuki.
Trembling feet curled under her as Nonon got back to her feet. The damage was extensive, a wing was gone and her remaining cannon was spluttering. It could project force, but without flying she was trapped on the ground.
As shadow fell over her, her opponent emerged through the hole in the wall.
A bodybuilder who's taken far, far too many steroids, was her first thought. If Gamagori had no fashion sense and had been born the color purple. Horns that swooped upward like a crescent moon, and green circulatory veins that flexed as it walked.
Wrist rubbing against her mouth, Nonon wiped away the blood on her face, Glowering at the enormous monster.
"You can still stand?" The monster gurgled, face contorting as muscle stretched into a carnivorous leer. "Impressive. You'll might make an intriguing appetizer before that Class President of yours."
Nonon saw an opening. "You shouldn't play with your food when a monster is behind you."
It leaped as though it'd been shot, whipping around with braced arms. She could see the blur of wings on it's back, and she added the image of a large rhinoceros beetle immediately came to her.
Ducking into a roll, she fired a cannon into the exposed back of the monster, the cannon sputtered and whined, before releasing a burst of sonic pressure that seared across the distance.
The creature whirled again, springing from arm, to leg in a flip that brought it out of the firing path of the blast. It crushed a series of shelves, and bounded after her laughing. "Getting cocky, I see."
Teeth tightening, Nonon tried to duck as the giant swept it's arm at her in a hug, but the impact collided with her in a freight train blow that carried her forward. Tightening an arm like a car vice around her midsection.
"Let's go for a run," it shouted
Wall, wall, wall. Broken on her. She fired off her cannon wildly.
"I admit, I thought that running from whatever that demon you brought with you would be a foolish waste of time. But then I saw it, and, well, my sense of scale has been expanded." It spoke conversationally, breaking drywall and plaster around her. "I must find other ways to entertain myself."
It dropkicked her into a parking garage. The metal of the car parted around her like a violent metal razer, gouging exposed flesh, and dribbling onto the ground around her.
"I have work to do. And I'd rather not attract the attention of that thing." It clasped both sides of her head, knocking off her immense hat. "So, goodbye."
Point blank, she fired her remaining cannon at into the herculean monstrosity. The sound of the symphony reverberated in her ears, as the blast propelled her free from its grasp, and she skidded over several cars to land clumsily on her feet.
Weak Kami, can't even fight a stupid bodybuilding rhino beetle.
The behemoth twisted a finger in it's ear, and yawned. "Annoying."
She was afraid. Why was she losing? What had she done to bring herself here. Hadn't she given up everything for lady Satsuki? What was she missing? Coughs rack her chest, and she feels more blood dribble across her lips. Why was she so weak?
A hundred wounds, accumulated over the course of the day, opened up all across her body. Her suit was more red than black now, and she could feel the threads that held it together quivering violently.
Huge, gargantuan foot falls, accompanied the monster striding to her. The shadow he cast overwhelmed her, a black silhouette, illuminated by a pair of burning green eyes.
"Cower in the shadow of the Asura Kabuto. The most powerful weapon of the Evolution College," he said, spreading arms wide and grinning with teeth the size of her hand.
A single hand raised high above her, tightening like the edge of an axe.
It didn't matter how she got here. What mattered was that she failed. These were her final moments. She had been too weak
"My only regret is that I'm going to die to something the color of a diseased grape," she hissed. "With a sweaty after coating." She choked down the knowledge of her own complete failure.
Asura laughs.
"Hey."
Asura shrieks.
The Hick has arrived, white cape billowing behind her as a building collapses in the distance. She holds one hand to her stupid hat and adjusts it over the bandanna.
"Y-you shouldn't be here! You're supposed to be stopping the broadcast!"
She shrugs, a look of boredom sticking to her face. "How about you let her go, and we get this over with."
The Monster maintains his grip on Nonon, holding her close as he bounds away from Tatsuki with desperate strides,.
"Okay then," Tatsuki says. There's the noise of a hurricane lunging, and Nonon's suddenly facing a rushing fist that screams of death.
Asura is using her as a shield, keeping Nonon between himself, and the lunging predator. Tatsuki snorts, and jukes to the side, zigzagging around the upraised girl and spinning her arm around in a helicopter strike.
He rolls away from it, repositioning Nonon with a snap, bursting through a wall and trying to evade Tatsuki's pursuit. She hears the explosion as the wall is sundered by thunder, collapsing into a cloud of grey smoke and rock.
Nonon manages to corral her fuzzy thoughts into a semblance of order. The Monster can't beat Tatsuki, so it's using the buildings to try and escape the problem. He uses Nonon as a barrier, a hostage to prevent Tatsuki from tearing his head off and redecorating the buildings with his spine.
A press of air blurs past them as Tatsuki flashes ahead, her fists sizzling with heat. Nonon tries to pull herself from his grip, but the fingers curl like titanium vices around her arm. Another lunge sucks the air out of her body and makes her wheeze.
Fighting a blackness at the edge of her vision, Nonon set her teeth, tightened her body, and braced her legs against the monster. No response, as the muscle rippled like liquid steel, but Nonon hadn't expected that.
Pressing her lone remaining cannon directly next to his face, she managed to choke out a sentence. "This one's for you."
The cannon fired.The force was threw Asura off. He stumbled, arms windmilling in desperation for a moment, an expression of terror creeping across his face, before the Tatsuki pounced. One moment there was a purple body gripping Nonon, the next there was the noise of a freight train and the monster was gone in a shower of blood that carpeted the building.
All that remained was a single arm that flopped limply to the ground, green blood spurting forlornly.
Nonon fell to a sitting position. The arm remained where it was, jerking and spasming.
Brushing off her shoulders, Tatsuki stepped between puddles of blood, cheerfully humming.
"You saved my life."
"Probably."
Nonon's throat squeezed shut, a sharp and prickly feeling squirming up her spine. It pressed against the back of her eyes like a slug composed of hooks and barbs. She tried to clamp it down, but the pain deep inside oozed out in tiny tears that stung worse than the collage of wounds. She tries to talk, but nothing comes out.
"You're welcome," Tatsuki says brightly. "I'm going to check you for wounds now."
"D-Don't tell me what to do," Nonon growls weakly. "I'm perfectly fi-" she stops, doubles over, and heaves a bloody stream of vomit on the floor. All the feelings of nausea and pain explode like a dam breaking. Weakness drags her to her knees, drags out gasping sobs.
Tatsuki says nothing. She leans over and holds back Nonon's hair.
Nonon felt too desperate to complain.
--
You can see where a nasty laceration curves along Nonon's scalp, oozing into the hair. The wound isn't serious at the moment, but without a proper binding, she'll lose more blood and likely fall unconscious. You look around the parking garage, but there is nothing you can readily use effectively to tie off the the head..
You run your hand up your face, and brush against your bandanna. A queasyness rolls up your stomach. You look around again, and yes, nothing else cloth-like has suddenly materialised. Fighting off the waves of self loathing and frustration, you dig your fingers into it..
"Not a word," you say to Nonon.
"What do you mea-"
You tug off your hat, pulling the bandanna with it. With a tight loop you tie it around the side of Nonon's head, checking the knot is tight. Fiddling with it, as a distraction.
"...Oh." whispers Nonon. Eyes tracing the contour of your... head. "Oh."
"Mrm," you growl. Strangling your emotions as you focus on administering care.
Nonon's hair is rumpled into rude masses of pink that tumbles over her face. She looks at you with wide eyes.
"Stop staring," you say.
"S-sorry." She drops her eyes.
"How do you get your hair that color?" you hiss in as a conversational tone as you can manage.
"Natural... pigment?" She replied, a blush creeping into her cheeks. "It's, uh, always been this shade." She tries to force it back into a symmetrical shape, despite the bandage throwing it off. Avoiding looking at you.
"So, do we still need to get the flag?" You say.
"Y-yes. Absolutely. The flag."
"Do you know where it is?"
"Let's try the central building, and if it's not there, then we can think up something else." Nonon pulls herself up, stumbles wobbly, and windmills her arms as she falls back down with a squeak.
Without thinking, your hand lashes out and catches the back of her shirt, pulling her back up. She eyes you with equal parts appreciation and humiliation.
"Walking might not be a good idea." You say, gently releasing her
"You'll have to carry me then." Nonon groans, placing a steadying hand on your shoulder. "I don't have wings anymore and we don't have any fast options." She beats her sole, tattered, remaining wing half heartedly.
You tilt you head, pulling your beanie down, "Okay, I guess."
Before she can object, you hoist her under one arm and spring into the sky. You hear her shriek wash away in the howling wind, as you accelerate high above the city.
You are ready to complete this business and go home. It has been a long day.
Your right hand tenses, quivering beneath the red fiber of your glove. Momentum carrying you above the city, you draw it back, feeling it humming with the force within.
"Knock knock," you mutter.
The central building is the size of a mountain. A temple fortress in size and mass. Scarred from Nonon's beams, but unsundered.
But as the final note, in the symphony of destruction that you have carved across the face of the city, you bring your fist down. The motif of the collapsed buildings is brought to cataclysmic resolution, as you fist propels forward with a roaring wind descending onto the city.
It caves like an egg. There is the sound of steel and concrete shattering, snapping, breaking. The sound of the wind echoing in a dragon roar that reverberates across the valley. The sound of a fortress crushed into a pulp.
"We should have led with that, " Nonon whispers, over the raging wind.
"Yes," you purr.
-
Not much is left after that. The Flag is buried in a pile of rubble that you excavate from beneath a forest of twisted concrete. Satsuki shows up, sporting several new cuts, carrying the unconscious Shinjiro, Hoka, and a briefcase covered in red stripes.
She seems happy, and says, "the fight was satisfactory" when you ask about it. The Professor's powerbase is crushed, and she with the loss of her flag she's unable to cause further trouble. The briefcase contains the data logs for her conversations outside the school, and will need to be analyzed back at the school.
Minka drops the helicopter into a clearing of rubble, brandishing a camera and saying something about, "Choice pics for the glory wall" as you pile into the transport.
As you fly home, the sun sets, casting an amber gold across the sky as a blue black darkness crawls across the sky. At some point, Satsuki falls asleep, hands gripping the hilt of her sword and her arms and legs coiling into herself in a defensive posture.
Ogure gushes for a while about your performance on the field, her and Minka both liberally using sound effects to recount the moments they found the most impressive. A smile creeps its way onto your face and into your bones. You are happy. It has been a good day. People know who you are, and you find yourself okay with it.
-
Nonon slides next to you, fiddling with her still messy hair. "Um."
You say nothing, perfectly relaxed, hands folded over your stomach. She tries again. Poking her fingers together and squirming beside you.
"So.."
Eyes closed, you hum quietly to yourself, waiting for what you know she's going to say.
"You have my gratitude for the assistance with the...bug man. "
"Mhmm." You nod, without opening your eyes.
An awkward silence grows. "When we get back, I'd like to talk with you about your plans for living arrangements."
You crack open an eye, looking her up and down. That gets your attention. You had been planning on the school assigning a dorm, buuut that was before you beat up the faculty. You haven't thought on what you want to do moving forward. And you have no idea where you'll be sleeping tonight.
Confidence blooms across Nonon's face, as she recognises the sudden uncertainty. "Ahh, I see you don't have plans then."
"N-no," you say. "I'll figure something out."
A feline need to pounce on your weakness, drives Nonon to settle in next to you. She crosses her legs authoritively, folds her hands in her lap, and adjusts her hat.
"I'd like to offer you my residence as a place to stay," Nonon croons. "Out of appreciation for your ah, services, and as a precursor to your entrance into the academic program."
You frown, folding your arms defensively, "You don't know that I'm going into academics."
Nonon's smile peels into a grin. "Oh, so boring fights interest you? A curriculum of crushing the weak beneath your red boots and hurling students through walls? Associating with monkeys that flex for fun?"
She pokes you in the arm, looks back down at it when she feels how hard it is, before shaking her head and looking back at your face. "You said it this morning, you're bored with fighting. You want something new to develop. I can offer you that, housing, and advice."
"Why would I need your advice?" You ask.
She shrugs. Fluffing her unkempt hair and sitting back. "To help with less "punchy" problems. Like finances, or economics, or history homework."
"Your offering to tutor me?"
"Assist you."
Pivoting, you turn your whole body to look at Nonon, "This morning you were talking about how little you trusted me, and how unwilling you were to just graciously open the door to me. Now you're offering me your house and time. Why?"
Nonon opens her mouth, closes it, then wilts into herself. "Because you saved my life, and because I think that being around you is the easiest way to learn more."
She gestures out the window. "Things are going to get more complicated. This was a rarity of a situation, where we knew what to hit and were free to use as much force as possible. It's not going to stay that way."
Here she hunches her knees up to her chest, cutting your view off of her eyes with her pink bangs. "I heard from Satsuki that you abandoned a chance to protect your family, because I was in danger. Thats"...-thats a lot to do for someone you just met. And at Honnoiji we always repay what we owe"
"My family can handle themselves," you say, tapping your knee,
"So can mine, but it's still a-" Nonon squeezes her knees, "a danger. And that doesn't answer my question. Why did you do that for me?"
Talking about why you do things doesn't come to you easily. The conviction behind your actions lies with a belief that villanry should be opposed, and the innocent protected. That is the definition of heroism. To what degree that entails personal sacrifice is unimportant.
"You were in danger and I was in the best position to stop it," you say. "My immediate responsibility is to those in front of me. No one can't predict the future." You tighten your fists.
"No. they can't." Nonon agrees with you. "So please humor my guilt and a let me make amends in preparation for… whatever comes next."
The pink haired girl doesn't say anything, just sitting beside you. She is incredibly small curled into herself like this. "I can't abide being a liability," you hear in a whisper
Silence returns to the helicopter.
-
[] Academics
[] Athletics
-
Interlude:
[] The Second Triplet
[] The High Queen
[] The Martial Artist
All interludes occur, but you won't know what happens in each one. They all take place at roughly the same time.
Also this marks the start of the major arc for the quest. I'll recap if you'd like, and take some questions if you have them.
Also this marks the start of the major arc for the quest. I'll recap if you'd like, and take some questions if you have them.
- Location
- England
[X] Academics
[X] The High Queen
[X] The High Queen
- Location
- va
[X] Academics
[X] The Second Triplet
[X] The Second Triplet
Conceptualist
Best Mega Sceptile
- Location
- I'm on the internet. Duh.
[X] Academics