- Location
- Around here
Well, Kyubey didn't know what servants were or that magecraft was its own thing separate from the Incubator magic system. So who even knows what the Kyubey collective knows at this point.
Confringentur 2; a Madoka Magica / Fate/Stay Night sequel
- Thread starter SVS
- Start date
- Crossover
He was also, allegedly, disposed of by said collective for being defective. So who knows if he even had perfect knowledge of what his kind knew.
- Location
- Around here
Oh, rest assured, he wasn't "allegedly" disposed of. He was disposed of. The "alleged" part is whether or not he was actually defective or if the rest of the Incubators just wanted him out of their hair because he'd fucked up so many ways to Sunday.
Day 27 Chapter 20
- Location
- Around here
[X] Plan: Controlled Burning
You hear them before you see – avert your eyes – them.
"Tomoe-san, Grief dampening, now!"
You feel Tomoe-san's ribbons tightly wrap themselves around your face, and as you feel her mana pulsing through the strands you find yourself breathing only slightly easier. "Akemi! Tomoe!" Tohsaka-san barks. "What the heck is going on-?" Tohsaka-san stops, as looming black shadows catch her attention. "What the heck is that-?"
"Don't look directly at it!"
Instead of focusing your eyes on the source of the massive black shadows, you instead focus on everything happening around you. The puddles of Grief that surround you are bubbling. The temperature in the air is rising as Grief cooks off in the presence of Sidonia's foul agitators. The puddles burst, and more vines sprout up from the ground. From the shadows of the surrounding streets, you see round two approaching.
Overhead, the ravens caw, fluttering their massive black wings. You don't look at the wings. Instead, you focus on your hands, on the wagging finger you use to conjure up a – for lack of a better term – igloo around yourself, Tomoe-san and Caster, and Tohsaka-san. From the only entrance to your icy pillbox, you raise your bow, and Tohsaka-san joins in beside you, aiming her muskets towards the familiars encroaching upon the entrance.
"Akemi, what the hell was that?" Tohsaka-san barks out. "Seriously, all these other stupid familiars you were fine with, but a couple of big birds and you go nuts? What the-?"
"Those birds are so full of Grief they cause our Soul Gems to accumulate excess corruption just from being in their presence," you say. "Looking at them just makes it even worse, somehow." You do your best to quickly formulate a plan, eventually settling on "We'll have to take them out without looking at them. We'll also need a way of dealing with everything else that's attacking up. Tohsaka-san, I need you to light the entire intersection up. Give it your biggest fireball and try to take as many of the smaller ones with you as possible. Tomoe-san-?"
"Caster and I will deal with the birds," Tomoe-san says. "Even if I have to shoot them blindfolded."
You feel a drop of cold water fall on your cheek. The intense heat given off by the boiling Grief is melting your igloo, slowly. Outside, you hear a loud scream, followed by a deafening sonic boom as several bright red beams slice through the roof of your icy pillbox. "That's our cue," you say. "Tohsaka-san; hit it."
Tohsaka-san almost looks like a comic book superhero the way she charges out of the igloo, striking a pose with her arms crossed, handfuls of gemstones bursting from her grip, and she lets them fly into the crowd of waiting familiars. You and Tomoe-san are forced to open fire as several of them charge Tohsaka-san while her hands are still full; your arrows freeze solid a trio of charging wolf familiars, which Tomoe-san shatters with well-placed musket balls.
"All right," Tohsaka-san says, readying a charge of mana in her outstretched finger. "Akemi, be ready to get us all out of here as soon as I let go, okay?" Before you even have a chance to ask Tohsaka-san what she means, you hear her cry out "One-hundred per cent maximum NO CHILL!" and she fires.
You have only a split second to work your magic before the bolt of mana connects with the glittering gemstone dust, so you do the best thing you can think of. You invoke the Isa rune, and call on a large pillar of ice that catapults you, Tomoe-san, and Tohsaka-san to safety right as the causing the intersection erupts into flames like an explosion. You narrowly manage to make your escape, and as soon as everyone is safely out of range of the blast, you invoke your Isa rune again, attempting to corral the flames with walls of ice. The walls do little to properly contain the intense heat from the licking flames, leaving your barrier looking like the wreckage of molten glass where the hottest flames touch their edges.
The actual artefacts of the intersection fare little better in the aftermath of the blast. Sides of buildings are left with scorch marks, windows melt or are blown out entirely, and anything made of metal comes out looking worse for wear; and your igloo-! Suffice it to say, there was no way you could have survived Tohsaka-san's explosion had you stayed down there. Well, maybe you could have, if you didn't mind spending the rest of your life looking like someone grilled you over a plate of sukiyaki.
Or at least until Oriko was able to heal you.
Tohsaka-san is breathing heavily. "Damn, that was… Maybe a little bigger than I'd intended it to be," she says. "But at least I'm pretty sure I got them all." Sidonia's massive birds – you're not looking at them – are joined by her smaller, flying vampire familiars, and Tomoe-san opens fire the instant one among their number opens its mouth to scream. "Well, okay, most of them. The ones that can't fly, at least."
"Don't worry about them," you say to Tomoe-san as you draw a bead on the nearest vampire familiar with your bow. "Tohsaka-san and I ca handle these ones. You just hit the big birds with everything you've got. Stay out of their line of sight, and don't be afraid to fire blind if you have to."
Without even checking in to affirm your decision, Tomoe-san gets to work. You hear the constant cannonade of her muskets firing as you and Tohsaka-san turn your attention to the smaller of Sidonia's flying familiars. Without any form of assistance from ground units, dealing with them is much easier than it as the first time around.
You grab Tohsaka-san by the hand and, taking your own advice, leap from the rooftop, rolling as you hit the ground of the next roof over, where you can take cover behind the entrance to the rooftop stairwell. Your target tracks you with its sonic scream, slicing through the roof of the stairwell as you draw a bead on it from a crouched position. Lying prone on the opposite side of the stairwell from you is Tohsaka-san, who casually flicks one of her gemstones towards the familiar. It shatters into glittering fragments as soon as it passes over the familiar's beam, exploding in its face and forcing it to stop its attack. That's your cue. You leap out from behind cover and loose, sending three arrows square into the chest – good lord why did Sidonia give these things breasts? – that explode on impact, spreading a wide splash of ice all over the familiar's chest. Tohsaka-san fires off another gemstone, this one keeping solid as it flies through the air like a bullet, shattering the familiar's chest open on impact.
But seriously. What could have possibly compelled Sidonia to give her familiars breasts? And to make them bigger than your mother's, to boot? Just what the hell was she thinking when that design choice crossed her drafting table? Was she drunk? Can witches even get drunk?
You know now is not the most appropriate time to be asking Tohsaka-san "Can witches get drunk?" as you're leaping from rooftops and trying to stay one step ahead of the sonic lasers being screamed in your direction by a host of big-breasted vampire-women familiars, but you just have to know.
Tohsaka-san breaks out of cover to blast the nearest approaching target with a gemstone. "Now is really not the time, Akemi!" she shouts, barely audible over the sound of her gemstone exploding in the familiar's face.
The familiar stunned, you take the opportunity to break cover and loose your arrows. "You're right, sorry," you say, not waiting for your arrows to finish splashing their frozen payload all over the familiar's face and shoulders before following your attack up with another volley. "But I just had to know, because I think Sidonia must have been drunk when she designed these things."
"What? No," Tohsaka-san says. "I'm pretty sure this was intentional." Your eyes bulge at Tohsaka-san's words. "Yeah, so, I'm not an expert or anything, but I think these are meant to be, like, some kind of Polish she-demon-thing. I don't remember the name, but they were definitely female. I'd call Franciscka to see if she knows, but I kind of don't want to deal with her right now, all things considered…"
When it's the insane, genocidal great-however-many-times-removed aunt of the mage in question that's causing your problems, you can understand why Tohsaka-san would be hesitant to reach out for answers.
You wonder if Tomoe-san and Caster are faring any better than you and Tohsaka-san are…
A cannonade of musket fire sounds in your ears, the first thing you're able to hear once the screaming sonic lasers of your own hideous foes are silenced. They bound off the armoured breastplates of the monstrous ravens with the sound of clashing steel, before they too are silenced by a deep, booming caw. You see a flash of gold as a portal to Caster's treasury opens, slicing across the path of a bird as it tries to swoop in to pick Tomoe-san up. It fails to penetrate, only managing to glance off the bird's armoured chest.
You can hear the sound of Tomoe-san's breathing; she's being run ragged fighting these monsters off. Even if she spares them only a passing glance, just enough to get a bead on her target before she closes her eyes and opens fire, it's still enough. The accumulating Grief is getting to her, even with the added surety of her Grief dampening, and you hold your breath in trepidation as she reaches for a Grief Seed, tapping it against the Soul Gem worn in her hair before standing upright and opening fire once again.
"Focus your weapons on my portals when I open them, master," you hear Caster say to Tomoe-san.; "And be ready to combine your weapon with mine. We shall spare your soul the burden of gazing upon their filth, and hit them with an attack that is sure to penetrate their armour."
"Yes," Tomoe-san says. "We shall."
You see Tomoe-san's eyes refocus, and her aim shifts; not towards the nearest of her monstrous targets, but on the golden portal opening up some meters away from it. Tomoe-san opens fire with a cry of "Tiro Finale!" and her bullet soars. Caster's portal aims itself on the bird and slings forth a sword, and when Tomoe-san's bullet meets the sword in mid-flight, the ribbon which the bullet is comprised of unravels, wrapping itself tightly around the sword and forming into the shape of a large spitzer bullet. With the deafening clang of metal piercing metal, the combination attack punches through the bird's armoured ribcage, sending a shower of Grief sprayed out into the air, as the defeated bird falls from the sky, impacting the ground below with a loud crash before melting into a puddle of Grief on the scorched street.
"Now, master, we turn our attention to the rest."
Tomoe-san casts her spent musket aside, readying two more without so much as missing a single beat. "Yes," she says, reaffirming her earlier commitment to her servant. "We shall."
You hear them before you see – avert your eyes – them.
"Tomoe-san, Grief dampening, now!"
You feel Tomoe-san's ribbons tightly wrap themselves around your face, and as you feel her mana pulsing through the strands you find yourself breathing only slightly easier. "Akemi! Tomoe!" Tohsaka-san barks. "What the heck is going on-?" Tohsaka-san stops, as looming black shadows catch her attention. "What the heck is that-?"
"Don't look directly at it!"
Instead of focusing your eyes on the source of the massive black shadows, you instead focus on everything happening around you. The puddles of Grief that surround you are bubbling. The temperature in the air is rising as Grief cooks off in the presence of Sidonia's foul agitators. The puddles burst, and more vines sprout up from the ground. From the shadows of the surrounding streets, you see round two approaching.
Overhead, the ravens caw, fluttering their massive black wings. You don't look at the wings. Instead, you focus on your hands, on the wagging finger you use to conjure up a – for lack of a better term – igloo around yourself, Tomoe-san and Caster, and Tohsaka-san. From the only entrance to your icy pillbox, you raise your bow, and Tohsaka-san joins in beside you, aiming her muskets towards the familiars encroaching upon the entrance.
"Akemi, what the hell was that?" Tohsaka-san barks out. "Seriously, all these other stupid familiars you were fine with, but a couple of big birds and you go nuts? What the-?"
"Those birds are so full of Grief they cause our Soul Gems to accumulate excess corruption just from being in their presence," you say. "Looking at them just makes it even worse, somehow." You do your best to quickly formulate a plan, eventually settling on "We'll have to take them out without looking at them. We'll also need a way of dealing with everything else that's attacking up. Tohsaka-san, I need you to light the entire intersection up. Give it your biggest fireball and try to take as many of the smaller ones with you as possible. Tomoe-san-?"
"Caster and I will deal with the birds," Tomoe-san says. "Even if I have to shoot them blindfolded."
You feel a drop of cold water fall on your cheek. The intense heat given off by the boiling Grief is melting your igloo, slowly. Outside, you hear a loud scream, followed by a deafening sonic boom as several bright red beams slice through the roof of your icy pillbox. "That's our cue," you say. "Tohsaka-san; hit it."
Tohsaka-san almost looks like a comic book superhero the way she charges out of the igloo, striking a pose with her arms crossed, handfuls of gemstones bursting from her grip, and she lets them fly into the crowd of waiting familiars. You and Tomoe-san are forced to open fire as several of them charge Tohsaka-san while her hands are still full; your arrows freeze solid a trio of charging wolf familiars, which Tomoe-san shatters with well-placed musket balls.
"All right," Tohsaka-san says, readying a charge of mana in her outstretched finger. "Akemi, be ready to get us all out of here as soon as I let go, okay?" Before you even have a chance to ask Tohsaka-san what she means, you hear her cry out "One-hundred per cent maximum NO CHILL!" and she fires.
You have only a split second to work your magic before the bolt of mana connects with the glittering gemstone dust, so you do the best thing you can think of. You invoke the Isa rune, and call on a large pillar of ice that catapults you, Tomoe-san, and Tohsaka-san to safety right as the causing the intersection erupts into flames like an explosion. You narrowly manage to make your escape, and as soon as everyone is safely out of range of the blast, you invoke your Isa rune again, attempting to corral the flames with walls of ice. The walls do little to properly contain the intense heat from the licking flames, leaving your barrier looking like the wreckage of molten glass where the hottest flames touch their edges.
The actual artefacts of the intersection fare little better in the aftermath of the blast. Sides of buildings are left with scorch marks, windows melt or are blown out entirely, and anything made of metal comes out looking worse for wear; and your igloo-! Suffice it to say, there was no way you could have survived Tohsaka-san's explosion had you stayed down there. Well, maybe you could have, if you didn't mind spending the rest of your life looking like someone grilled you over a plate of sukiyaki.
Or at least until Oriko was able to heal you.
Tohsaka-san is breathing heavily. "Damn, that was… Maybe a little bigger than I'd intended it to be," she says. "But at least I'm pretty sure I got them all." Sidonia's massive birds – you're not looking at them – are joined by her smaller, flying vampire familiars, and Tomoe-san opens fire the instant one among their number opens its mouth to scream. "Well, okay, most of them. The ones that can't fly, at least."
"Don't worry about them," you say to Tomoe-san as you draw a bead on the nearest vampire familiar with your bow. "Tohsaka-san and I ca handle these ones. You just hit the big birds with everything you've got. Stay out of their line of sight, and don't be afraid to fire blind if you have to."
Without even checking in to affirm your decision, Tomoe-san gets to work. You hear the constant cannonade of her muskets firing as you and Tohsaka-san turn your attention to the smaller of Sidonia's flying familiars. Without any form of assistance from ground units, dealing with them is much easier than it as the first time around.
You grab Tohsaka-san by the hand and, taking your own advice, leap from the rooftop, rolling as you hit the ground of the next roof over, where you can take cover behind the entrance to the rooftop stairwell. Your target tracks you with its sonic scream, slicing through the roof of the stairwell as you draw a bead on it from a crouched position. Lying prone on the opposite side of the stairwell from you is Tohsaka-san, who casually flicks one of her gemstones towards the familiar. It shatters into glittering fragments as soon as it passes over the familiar's beam, exploding in its face and forcing it to stop its attack. That's your cue. You leap out from behind cover and loose, sending three arrows square into the chest – good lord why did Sidonia give these things breasts? – that explode on impact, spreading a wide splash of ice all over the familiar's chest. Tohsaka-san fires off another gemstone, this one keeping solid as it flies through the air like a bullet, shattering the familiar's chest open on impact.
But seriously. What could have possibly compelled Sidonia to give her familiars breasts? And to make them bigger than your mother's, to boot? Just what the hell was she thinking when that design choice crossed her drafting table? Was she drunk? Can witches even get drunk?
You know now is not the most appropriate time to be asking Tohsaka-san "Can witches get drunk?" as you're leaping from rooftops and trying to stay one step ahead of the sonic lasers being screamed in your direction by a host of big-breasted vampire-women familiars, but you just have to know.
Tohsaka-san breaks out of cover to blast the nearest approaching target with a gemstone. "Now is really not the time, Akemi!" she shouts, barely audible over the sound of her gemstone exploding in the familiar's face.
The familiar stunned, you take the opportunity to break cover and loose your arrows. "You're right, sorry," you say, not waiting for your arrows to finish splashing their frozen payload all over the familiar's face and shoulders before following your attack up with another volley. "But I just had to know, because I think Sidonia must have been drunk when she designed these things."
"What? No," Tohsaka-san says. "I'm pretty sure this was intentional." Your eyes bulge at Tohsaka-san's words. "Yeah, so, I'm not an expert or anything, but I think these are meant to be, like, some kind of Polish she-demon-thing. I don't remember the name, but they were definitely female. I'd call Franciscka to see if she knows, but I kind of don't want to deal with her right now, all things considered…"
When it's the insane, genocidal great-however-many-times-removed aunt of the mage in question that's causing your problems, you can understand why Tohsaka-san would be hesitant to reach out for answers.
You wonder if Tomoe-san and Caster are faring any better than you and Tohsaka-san are…
A cannonade of musket fire sounds in your ears, the first thing you're able to hear once the screaming sonic lasers of your own hideous foes are silenced. They bound off the armoured breastplates of the monstrous ravens with the sound of clashing steel, before they too are silenced by a deep, booming caw. You see a flash of gold as a portal to Caster's treasury opens, slicing across the path of a bird as it tries to swoop in to pick Tomoe-san up. It fails to penetrate, only managing to glance off the bird's armoured chest.
You can hear the sound of Tomoe-san's breathing; she's being run ragged fighting these monsters off. Even if she spares them only a passing glance, just enough to get a bead on her target before she closes her eyes and opens fire, it's still enough. The accumulating Grief is getting to her, even with the added surety of her Grief dampening, and you hold your breath in trepidation as she reaches for a Grief Seed, tapping it against the Soul Gem worn in her hair before standing upright and opening fire once again.
"Focus your weapons on my portals when I open them, master," you hear Caster say to Tomoe-san.; "And be ready to combine your weapon with mine. We shall spare your soul the burden of gazing upon their filth, and hit them with an attack that is sure to penetrate their armour."
"Yes," Tomoe-san says. "We shall."
You see Tomoe-san's eyes refocus, and her aim shifts; not towards the nearest of her monstrous targets, but on the golden portal opening up some meters away from it. Tomoe-san opens fire with a cry of "Tiro Finale!" and her bullet soars. Caster's portal aims itself on the bird and slings forth a sword, and when Tomoe-san's bullet meets the sword in mid-flight, the ribbon which the bullet is comprised of unravels, wrapping itself tightly around the sword and forming into the shape of a large spitzer bullet. With the deafening clang of metal piercing metal, the combination attack punches through the bird's armoured ribcage, sending a shower of Grief sprayed out into the air, as the defeated bird falls from the sky, impacting the ground below with a loud crash before melting into a puddle of Grief on the scorched street.
"Now, master, we turn our attention to the rest."
Tomoe-san casts her spent musket aside, readying two more without so much as missing a single beat. "Yes," she says, reaffirming her earlier commitment to her servant. "We shall."
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- Around here
Not a whole lot to say here. While I tried to stick to the vote as outlined, the amount of explosion Rin ended up throwing out meant that our attempts to make an ice barrier of any sort were not going to be well received. Oops. So I hope nobody minds that staying out of the opens means ducking behind stairwells and leaping from rooftops, rather than hiding in the shadows and corners of buildings. But also Mami and Caster have a new combo move that I think is pretty snazzy and that I'm glad I got to show off. I wouldn't have been able to if we'd stuck someone other than Mami with the task of killing the Nachtkrapp.
PlaguePaladin
The Bird Lady
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's fine, this result was probably cooler anyways.
Hah, 'cooler'.
Hah, 'cooler'.
Just be glad she hasn't made a familiar that's actively trying to seduce you, Akemi.
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Yes, haha, that was my intention all along. Like how after Rin says "no chill" she makes a big fireball and there's no more ice. I totally planned that. /he totally didn't plan that
Come again? Why would one of Sidonia's familiars be trying to seduce Homura? I mean, for a while I was considering a familiar in the style of a Mare that would have continuously haunted and tried to corrupt Archer in his sleep, but he's not Homura, and that idea was scrapped because I decided I didn't need to do the same thing with both of Homura's parents. So where is this coming from?
It just sort of crossed my mind since both Kazumi and Homura had... thoughts about these particular familiars in these recent updates.
Then my mind sort of went to Sidonia making a Madoka look-a-like familiar and using it to seduce Homura to the dark side while she was still... distressed, from her recent break up with the actual Madoka.
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It's kind of hard not to have those thoughts when these are the only ones of Sidonia's familiars to have actual sex characteristics. And the fact that they've got bigger racks than the biggest racks each of our POV characters know just makes them stand out all the more. But more than that,
If Sidonia were going to make a familiar to seduce anyone, she'd best be suited making one to seduce herself, because honey, she needs to get laid.
PlaguePaladin
The Bird Lady
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Edit: Sounded kind of elitist-ish here; I'll just say that this would've caused an inconsistency with canon, as Archer was uncorrupted by the Black Grail even without the shroud. Uncorrupted mentally at least, physically, no.
Edit: Yeah, what I said here sounded creepy. I'll just remain with the fact that such a size is very considerable.
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You know, calling attention to the edits you make to something to get rid of them just makes other people more curious about what was said the first time around. But I digress.
Like I said, there was a reason that idea was scrapped. Several. But barring all other logical consistencies, it loses the surprise factor if it's already happened to one of our parents, and factoring in logical consistencies it makes more sense, and puts us in a more emotionally vulnerable position, if it's Minako getting sick because that's just a side effect of Sidonia's larger plan being put into action, rather than it being a targeted attack.
I don't know if that's being directed at me or not, but I'm not trying to be creepy by having Homura and Kazumi call attention to that. Homura in particular we know is very uncomfortable when it comes to discussing or thinking about intimacy and sexuality, so I feel that's something she would notice and be made very uncomfortable by.
PlaguePaladin
The Bird Lady
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In essence; first sentence was mostly the same but sounded like I was trying to insult you, second sentence talked about the size of Oriko's breasts in Oriko Magica compared to Magia Record (they are individually as big as her head in Oriko Magica on top of being disturbingly mishapen), and I thought I sounded creepy because of how much I was talking about the size of a teenager's tits. You're in the clear AFAIK.
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You were thinking about Oriko? I would have thought you were talking about Minako, since she's the one Homura has been comparing the Strzyga's busts to. Besides, Oriko is currently 17; she's legal in over half of all US states and in most of Europe.
That said, I myself have talked about how bizarre the proportions are in Oriko Magica. Kirika (who is shorter than Madoka according to MagiReco; Kirika here is slightly taller because I set her height before MagiReco gave her one) is shown on the cover of the second volume to be as tall as Oriko, and if you go strictly by the manga panels she looks almost as tall as Mami, which if you compare the height differences as seen strictly in the manga panels works out to make Oriko absolutely gigantic (I think my final calculations put Oriko Magica Oriko at ~180cm, which is 10cm taller than her MagiReco version and about 17~18cm taller than Confringentur Oriko; again, because I had to give her a height before MagiReco gave her one and I didn't want her to tower over over literally everyone else*) Heck, I've even had other characters remark that Oriko is rather well endowed for her age, so I wouldn't have thought you were being weird or creepy about it.
*Incidentally, Confringentur Oriko's height is the reason that Confringentur Caren is 165cm, rather than her canon listed height of 156cm; I didn't want Oriko's older cousin to be shorter than her, so I ended up adjusting Caren's height so that she was just taller than Oriko. Though can I say how weird it is that both the teenage Caren in HA and the adult Caren in Prillya have the same listed height when they're who knows how many years apart in age? Really, I'm just doing adult Caren a favour by giving her the height she should have had from the start.
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Day 27 Chapter 21
- Location
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[X] Plan: Ohmygosh Big Birds
The best I can do is kill the pain and hope I don't do more damage to the shoulder than has already been done."
"Niko, that sounds… Really dangerous."
You don't think you and Niko will have time to debate her chosen course of action. Overhead, dark shadows loom, massive birds gliding on outstretched wings too shredded to support them. You feel your soul growing hot the longer your gaze lingers. The air in your lungs grows hotter, and your skin prickles as the temperature all around you rises. Puddles of Grief, formed from the fallen corpses of the enemy familiars, bubble and boil as the heat rises, choking you and causing more vines to sprout where the Grief is thickest. The dark shadows come to a rest, staring down at you with gleaming eyeless sockets. Five of them surround you, all staring. One of them tilts its head, staring, considering you.
Those are some really, really big birds.
"We're not out of this one yet," Lancer says, stepping in front of you with her spear ready as more familiars approach. Beside you, Saki and Mirai do the same, readying their weapons as they form a lopsided triangle around you and Niko. "Here they come."
Lighting and fire surge all around you as Saki and Mirai open fire. The second wave of familiars scatter; the attack is avoided, but they've bought your team precious seconds you can use to come up with a better plan than whatever it was Niko was thinking. "Niko, I need you to-"
Niko doesn't need to hear you finish giving orders. She hits the ground, forming barriers all around you in the shape of a little hut. It's not much, but "This'll make it harder for everything else to get to us," Niko says, leaning her injured arm against the side of the wall, clutching at it as she stares out from one of the tiny windows. "But we'll still need to deal with it before those things can-"
A loud scream cuts through the roof of Niko's shelter with a burst of red. "Breach our defences," Niko says, her voice dropping by several octaves as she does so. "You know, just like that." Niko's breathing is heavy, and you see her clamp down harder on her injured shoulder. You don't know what to do. Your brain is still addled, screaming at you that Niko is injured that you're having a hard time concentrating on anything else.
You bet the old you could have figured something out even in this situation.
"Mirai, try to make your flame attacks as precise as possible," Niko says. "Go for single-target pinpoint strikes if you can, rather than trying to hit everything at once." Niko turns to Saki, and says "I'll need you and Mirai hitting those bird things. Take them out as fast as possible. I get the feeling those are the ringleaders of this little circus Sidonia's seen fit to throw at us."
"You got it." Mirai gives her sword a shake, and you watch as it folds in on itself to become a slim, delicate-looking pink wand. How the heck did she get such a tiny wand out of such a big sword? "Shall we, my love?" asks Mirai, offering her hand to Saki in dramatic fashion."
"Of course," Saki replies, sounding like the perfect gentleman counterpart to Mirai's lady. "We shouldn't keep the ladies waiting."
The pair stick their heads out of the windows, and take aim. "We'll focus on bringing down one target at a time," Saki says. "Kazumi, can you make sure Lancer backs us up by taking care of the ones on the ground?"
"Sure!" you call out. "Lancer, if you heard them, we need you-!"
"Taking care of the enemies on the ground," Lancer says. "Of course, master. It would be my pleasure." Without missing a beat, Lancer flicks her finger and invokes her Tiwaz rune – you almost forgot the name, but it's the one you see Lancer using most often, so you'd be pretty ashamed of yourself if you'd actually forgotten for real – and moments later you hear a pained yelp coming from outside of the barrier. You poke your head out one of the windows to find that she's impaled one of the wolf familiars.
"Nice shooting, Lancer!" you call out, letting the rest of the assembly have a "Limiti Esterni!" "You got that one without even looking!"
"I was hardly trying," Lancer says. "But if you want me to take this a bit more seriously, master, then I shall."
The back wall of the shelter lights up in brilliant shades of pinks, purples, and whites, as Saki and Mirai let off another round of lightning and fire. The roaring flames and crackling arcs of lightning drown out the pained crowing of whatever unfortunate victims their attacks make contact with. Saki pumps her first and gives a triumphant cry of "Got one!" but Mirai has to fall back. She pulls herself back, all the way inside the shelter, and reaches in her pocket for a Grief Seed, which she wastes no time in touching to her Soul Gem.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine,' Mirai says to you. She doesn't sound like she's fine. "Maybe. It's like… The longer I had my head out there with Saki, the harder it got to breathe, until it felt like my lungs were on fire and I had to pull back in to recover."
As Mirai speaks, you see Saki also withdrawing, and she applies a Grief Seed to her Soul Gem as well. "Do you think it's something in the air?" Niko asks. "There's so much ambient Grief around us from the first wave of familiars we had to kill… Maybe that's what's causing it."
You poke your head out from a window again, as if that would either confirm or deny Niko's theory. You see Lancer; she's flung herself out from behind the safety of the shelter and is currently carving a brutal path of destruction through any and every familiar in sight. She slashes through an approaching wolf with her spear, before turning around and planting a firm kick into the side of another and sends it flying, where it impacts the side of a building. Without wasting a second, she calls on the Tiwaz rune, and a wall of spears erupts from under her feet, spreading outwards to skewer both wolves as Lancer leaps high into the air over her wall of weapons. While still airborne, Lancer invokes her Tiwaz rune again, calling for a second spear to appear in her hands, which she flings at one of the vampire familiar, bringing it down as well before she lands, repeating the process all over.
As you watch Lancer, you feel the tug of her mana against your soul growing more and more intense, as though she's draining you at a faster rate than before, but Lancer herself shows no sign of slowing down. "I don't know," you say. "Lancer's out there kicking butt, and it doesn't seem to be affecting her at all."
"Then maybe it's something else," Niko says.
"Yeah, well we don't have time to sit around here and debate what's causing it," Mirai says. "So we'll just have to finish up first and then try to figure it out!" Saki joins Mirai for round two; the pair stick their heads and weapons out of the shelter's windows, and let loose with another volley, letting the crackling of their lightning and the roar of flames drown out the pained crowing of their enemies.
You join in too sticking your head and your staff out of a window, unleashing a powerful "Limiti Esterni!" into the crowd of familiars, before turning to watch the progress Saki and Mirai are making, just in time for Niko to call out "Incoming!"
A beam of red slices through the side wall just as soon as the words leave Niko's lips. For a moment, it looks like the two were able to dodge the attack, and Saki recovers and lets loose with balled lightning on the flying, big-tittied vampire familiar, but Mirai is slower to move. That's when you see it.
"Mirai!"
Mirai's right foot is no longer attached to her leg.
"Don't worry about me!" Mirai calls out, cutting off Saki before she can break rank and rush to Mirai's side. "Just get back in there and keep blasting them! I'll be fine!"
You can see the reluctance and worry written on Saki's face. But in the interest of keeping the fight going, she steels herself, picks herself up off the floor, and goes back to the window. "Come and get some, you bastards!" Saki cries out, slinging back her arm and casting out a ball of lightning with a dramatic heave of her arm. "That's for Mirai!"
As Mirai struggles to pull herself to safety, you see the remains of her leg cracking with arcs of mana as her rest of her leg tries to repair the damage. The key word there being tries, because Mirai's regeneration module isn't putting in all that much work. You can hear the way her leg is sputtering, see the regeneration stalling as it fails to regrow the missing tissue; and what's worse is the way Mirai's face has gone completely pale, and how her breathing sounds strained.
"Niko… What the hell is going on?" Mirai asks. "Why the hell isn't my leg regenerating?"
"I… I don't know." You can see the wheels in Niko's head come to a complete stop at Mirai's question, and for a brief moment, you see her hand twitch as she tries to reach for her phone, as if checking data she can see with her own eyes will help her figure the answer out any faster. She stops herself, and says "It might have to do with how much ambient Grief is in the air right now. Your module already has a lower safe threshold than everyone else's because of how low your reserves are, and I didn't program my modules to take things like ambient Grief into account. But it shouldn't be failing on you entirely like this."
With no other option, Niko has to reach over Mirai's body, grab her severed foot, and reattach it manually with her magic. She presses Mirai's foot up against her stump, claps her hands together – though at this point, it's more like clapping her left hand against her right, which is now hanging limply at her side – and lays her left hand on Mirai's leg. "That should work," Niko says. "It might be a little lopsided against your other leg, but it should hold, and it's nothing Assassin can't fix once we're done here."
Mirai struggles to right herself, leaning against the wall – not the wall with a smoking hole sliced into it by the vampire familiar, thankfully – and pushing herself up against the wall, as Niko hands her another Grief Seed. "Here," Niko says, as Mirai wordlessly accepts the Grief Seed. "I won't even say that you owe me one, because it's my fault your module failed in the first place. I didn't program it to account for ambient Grief, after all."
"Don't be an idiot," Mirai says. She's unsteady on her feet, and you see her struggle to keep her balance as she swipes the Grief Seed from Niko, tossing it back to her after she's used it. "Tell me one time ambient Grief has ever been a problem for us before. I can't fault you for something you'd have no reason to think of."
Still on unsteady feet, Mirai attempts to lean her head out from behind cover. Pressed up against the wall for stability, she pokes her wand arm out the window, and rejoins Saki in giving the familiars hell. With Lancer still out there fighting as fiercely as she possibly can, and with Niko still needing to apply pressure to her injured arm by leaning it against the wall – it's looking really bad now; it's still bleeding pretty badly, and there's deep veins of black trying to crawl up her neck from where she was injured – all you can do is join Saki and Mirai and fight as best as you can.
"Limiti Esterni!"
Do you
[ ] Hold your position and keep fighting until the job is done
[ ] Call for reinforcements
-[ ] Stay and fight alongside your reinforcements once they've arrived
-[ ] Fall back as soon as reinforcements have arrived; Mirai and Niko need medical attention
-[ ] Who do you call for reinforcements?
--[ ] Akemi and her team
--[ ] Kaoru, Berserker, and Umika
--[ ] Anyone else that's free and can get to you quickly (write-in your preferences)
[ ] Fall back immediately; Mirai and Niko need medical attention from someone more capable than themselves
When you're done fighting, do you
[ ] Get back to work doing what you were doing
[ ] Return to base and wait for Akemi to get the rest of the team together
[ ] Get medical attention for Mirai and Niko
[ ] Finish up what you were doing once the fighting is done
[ ] Other (write-in)
The best I can do is kill the pain and hope I don't do more damage to the shoulder than has already been done."
"Niko, that sounds… Really dangerous."
You don't think you and Niko will have time to debate her chosen course of action. Overhead, dark shadows loom, massive birds gliding on outstretched wings too shredded to support them. You feel your soul growing hot the longer your gaze lingers. The air in your lungs grows hotter, and your skin prickles as the temperature all around you rises. Puddles of Grief, formed from the fallen corpses of the enemy familiars, bubble and boil as the heat rises, choking you and causing more vines to sprout where the Grief is thickest. The dark shadows come to a rest, staring down at you with gleaming eyeless sockets. Five of them surround you, all staring. One of them tilts its head, staring, considering you.
Those are some really, really big birds.
"We're not out of this one yet," Lancer says, stepping in front of you with her spear ready as more familiars approach. Beside you, Saki and Mirai do the same, readying their weapons as they form a lopsided triangle around you and Niko. "Here they come."
Lighting and fire surge all around you as Saki and Mirai open fire. The second wave of familiars scatter; the attack is avoided, but they've bought your team precious seconds you can use to come up with a better plan than whatever it was Niko was thinking. "Niko, I need you to-"
Niko doesn't need to hear you finish giving orders. She hits the ground, forming barriers all around you in the shape of a little hut. It's not much, but "This'll make it harder for everything else to get to us," Niko says, leaning her injured arm against the side of the wall, clutching at it as she stares out from one of the tiny windows. "But we'll still need to deal with it before those things can-"
A loud scream cuts through the roof of Niko's shelter with a burst of red. "Breach our defences," Niko says, her voice dropping by several octaves as she does so. "You know, just like that." Niko's breathing is heavy, and you see her clamp down harder on her injured shoulder. You don't know what to do. Your brain is still addled, screaming at you that Niko is injured that you're having a hard time concentrating on anything else.
You bet the old you could have figured something out even in this situation.
"Mirai, try to make your flame attacks as precise as possible," Niko says. "Go for single-target pinpoint strikes if you can, rather than trying to hit everything at once." Niko turns to Saki, and says "I'll need you and Mirai hitting those bird things. Take them out as fast as possible. I get the feeling those are the ringleaders of this little circus Sidonia's seen fit to throw at us."
"You got it." Mirai gives her sword a shake, and you watch as it folds in on itself to become a slim, delicate-looking pink wand. How the heck did she get such a tiny wand out of such a big sword? "Shall we, my love?" asks Mirai, offering her hand to Saki in dramatic fashion."
"Of course," Saki replies, sounding like the perfect gentleman counterpart to Mirai's lady. "We shouldn't keep the ladies waiting."
The pair stick their heads out of the windows, and take aim. "We'll focus on bringing down one target at a time," Saki says. "Kazumi, can you make sure Lancer backs us up by taking care of the ones on the ground?"
"Sure!" you call out. "Lancer, if you heard them, we need you-!"
"Taking care of the enemies on the ground," Lancer says. "Of course, master. It would be my pleasure." Without missing a beat, Lancer flicks her finger and invokes her Tiwaz rune – you almost forgot the name, but it's the one you see Lancer using most often, so you'd be pretty ashamed of yourself if you'd actually forgotten for real – and moments later you hear a pained yelp coming from outside of the barrier. You poke your head out one of the windows to find that she's impaled one of the wolf familiars.
"Nice shooting, Lancer!" you call out, letting the rest of the assembly have a "Limiti Esterni!" "You got that one without even looking!"
"I was hardly trying," Lancer says. "But if you want me to take this a bit more seriously, master, then I shall."
The back wall of the shelter lights up in brilliant shades of pinks, purples, and whites, as Saki and Mirai let off another round of lightning and fire. The roaring flames and crackling arcs of lightning drown out the pained crowing of whatever unfortunate victims their attacks make contact with. Saki pumps her first and gives a triumphant cry of "Got one!" but Mirai has to fall back. She pulls herself back, all the way inside the shelter, and reaches in her pocket for a Grief Seed, which she wastes no time in touching to her Soul Gem.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine,' Mirai says to you. She doesn't sound like she's fine. "Maybe. It's like… The longer I had my head out there with Saki, the harder it got to breathe, until it felt like my lungs were on fire and I had to pull back in to recover."
As Mirai speaks, you see Saki also withdrawing, and she applies a Grief Seed to her Soul Gem as well. "Do you think it's something in the air?" Niko asks. "There's so much ambient Grief around us from the first wave of familiars we had to kill… Maybe that's what's causing it."
You poke your head out from a window again, as if that would either confirm or deny Niko's theory. You see Lancer; she's flung herself out from behind the safety of the shelter and is currently carving a brutal path of destruction through any and every familiar in sight. She slashes through an approaching wolf with her spear, before turning around and planting a firm kick into the side of another and sends it flying, where it impacts the side of a building. Without wasting a second, she calls on the Tiwaz rune, and a wall of spears erupts from under her feet, spreading outwards to skewer both wolves as Lancer leaps high into the air over her wall of weapons. While still airborne, Lancer invokes her Tiwaz rune again, calling for a second spear to appear in her hands, which she flings at one of the vampire familiar, bringing it down as well before she lands, repeating the process all over.
As you watch Lancer, you feel the tug of her mana against your soul growing more and more intense, as though she's draining you at a faster rate than before, but Lancer herself shows no sign of slowing down. "I don't know," you say. "Lancer's out there kicking butt, and it doesn't seem to be affecting her at all."
"Then maybe it's something else," Niko says.
"Yeah, well we don't have time to sit around here and debate what's causing it," Mirai says. "So we'll just have to finish up first and then try to figure it out!" Saki joins Mirai for round two; the pair stick their heads and weapons out of the shelter's windows, and let loose with another volley, letting the crackling of their lightning and the roar of flames drown out the pained crowing of their enemies.
You join in too sticking your head and your staff out of a window, unleashing a powerful "Limiti Esterni!" into the crowd of familiars, before turning to watch the progress Saki and Mirai are making, just in time for Niko to call out "Incoming!"
A beam of red slices through the side wall just as soon as the words leave Niko's lips. For a moment, it looks like the two were able to dodge the attack, and Saki recovers and lets loose with balled lightning on the flying, big-tittied vampire familiar, but Mirai is slower to move. That's when you see it.
"Mirai!"
Mirai's right foot is no longer attached to her leg.
"Don't worry about me!" Mirai calls out, cutting off Saki before she can break rank and rush to Mirai's side. "Just get back in there and keep blasting them! I'll be fine!"
You can see the reluctance and worry written on Saki's face. But in the interest of keeping the fight going, she steels herself, picks herself up off the floor, and goes back to the window. "Come and get some, you bastards!" Saki cries out, slinging back her arm and casting out a ball of lightning with a dramatic heave of her arm. "That's for Mirai!"
As Mirai struggles to pull herself to safety, you see the remains of her leg cracking with arcs of mana as her rest of her leg tries to repair the damage. The key word there being tries, because Mirai's regeneration module isn't putting in all that much work. You can hear the way her leg is sputtering, see the regeneration stalling as it fails to regrow the missing tissue; and what's worse is the way Mirai's face has gone completely pale, and how her breathing sounds strained.
"Niko… What the hell is going on?" Mirai asks. "Why the hell isn't my leg regenerating?"
"I… I don't know." You can see the wheels in Niko's head come to a complete stop at Mirai's question, and for a brief moment, you see her hand twitch as she tries to reach for her phone, as if checking data she can see with her own eyes will help her figure the answer out any faster. She stops herself, and says "It might have to do with how much ambient Grief is in the air right now. Your module already has a lower safe threshold than everyone else's because of how low your reserves are, and I didn't program my modules to take things like ambient Grief into account. But it shouldn't be failing on you entirely like this."
With no other option, Niko has to reach over Mirai's body, grab her severed foot, and reattach it manually with her magic. She presses Mirai's foot up against her stump, claps her hands together – though at this point, it's more like clapping her left hand against her right, which is now hanging limply at her side – and lays her left hand on Mirai's leg. "That should work," Niko says. "It might be a little lopsided against your other leg, but it should hold, and it's nothing Assassin can't fix once we're done here."
Mirai struggles to right herself, leaning against the wall – not the wall with a smoking hole sliced into it by the vampire familiar, thankfully – and pushing herself up against the wall, as Niko hands her another Grief Seed. "Here," Niko says, as Mirai wordlessly accepts the Grief Seed. "I won't even say that you owe me one, because it's my fault your module failed in the first place. I didn't program it to account for ambient Grief, after all."
"Don't be an idiot," Mirai says. She's unsteady on her feet, and you see her struggle to keep her balance as she swipes the Grief Seed from Niko, tossing it back to her after she's used it. "Tell me one time ambient Grief has ever been a problem for us before. I can't fault you for something you'd have no reason to think of."
Still on unsteady feet, Mirai attempts to lean her head out from behind cover. Pressed up against the wall for stability, she pokes her wand arm out the window, and rejoins Saki in giving the familiars hell. With Lancer still out there fighting as fiercely as she possibly can, and with Niko still needing to apply pressure to her injured arm by leaning it against the wall – it's looking really bad now; it's still bleeding pretty badly, and there's deep veins of black trying to crawl up her neck from where she was injured – all you can do is join Saki and Mirai and fight as best as you can.
"Limiti Esterni!"
Do you
[ ] Hold your position and keep fighting until the job is done
[ ] Call for reinforcements
-[ ] Stay and fight alongside your reinforcements once they've arrived
-[ ] Fall back as soon as reinforcements have arrived; Mirai and Niko need medical attention
-[ ] Who do you call for reinforcements?
--[ ] Akemi and her team
--[ ] Kaoru, Berserker, and Umika
--[ ] Anyone else that's free and can get to you quickly (write-in your preferences)
[ ] Fall back immediately; Mirai and Niko need medical attention from someone more capable than themselves
When you're done fighting, do you
[ ] Get back to work doing what you were doing
[ ] Return to base and wait for Akemi to get the rest of the team together
[ ] Get medical attention for Mirai and Niko
[ ] Finish up what you were doing once the fighting is done
[ ] Other (write-in)
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- Location
- Around here
The ambient Grief and the pressure of fighting Nachtkrapp without knowing not to look at them is getting to Saki and Mirai, MIrai in particular. She and Niko are both going to need to be put back together again when this is all over. Fortunately, Caren and Nightingale are far better at doing that than all the king's horses, so Humpty Dumpty Mirai and Niko will not be. Unfortunately, they still have to make it out of this one alive.
Obviously, attempting to depict the amount of progress being made in this fight was a lot trickier, since this time we haven't blown up the shelter. While that's a good thing, it means that Kazumi's view of the fighting is limited to what she sees her friends doing, and what she sees when she sticks her head out of a window to give'em hell herself. So if it seems like less is being accomplished here, don't worry. That's probably unintentional.
Now, the reason I staggered the updates this way, rather than focusing on one fight at a time, was so that you guys couldn't just vote to have one team go and reinforce the other team when they were done fighting. Obviously, if these two battles are happening simultaneously, that wouldn't really be possible, so to avoid giving the impressing that it was possible on a timeline perspective, I broke the fighting up like so.
Obviously, attempting to depict the amount of progress being made in this fight was a lot trickier, since this time we haven't blown up the shelter. While that's a good thing, it means that Kazumi's view of the fighting is limited to what she sees her friends doing, and what she sees when she sticks her head out of a window to give'em hell herself. So if it seems like less is being accomplished here, don't worry. That's probably unintentional.
Now, the reason I staggered the updates this way, rather than focusing on one fight at a time, was so that you guys couldn't just vote to have one team go and reinforce the other team when they were done fighting. Obviously, if these two battles are happening simultaneously, that wouldn't really be possible, so to avoid giving the impressing that it was possible on a timeline perspective, I broke the fighting up like so.
PlaguePaladin
The Bird Lady
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'll be honest, I've got no clue.
- Location
- Around here
Well, damn. Fair, but still damn. I'll try to come up with something better later if I think of anything, but for now, I guess damn it is.
- Location
- Around here
And now is later. I've gone and tried to give some direction to whatever the hell is going on, and hopefully this is good enough. After this, we should probably get the Saints up to speed on the Nachtkrapp and why fighting them in a bunker was a smart decision, and we should test Mirai's ability to keep Ramesses fueled now that she's got that Mystic Code we made for her. We'll also need Niko to be healthy enough to help Archer, Oriko, and Lancer make their combined all-purpose Soul Gem protection charms as well as program regeneration modules for each member of the Quintet. Among other things, if anyone has anything they'd like to add.
[x] Plan Help! Help!
-[x] Call for reinforcements
--[x] Fall back as soon as reinforcements have arrived; Mirai and Niko need medical attention
---[x] Mikuni has some long ranged attacks to snipe the flyers. Plus, that older woman was her cousin, right? Contacting her means she can get in touch with Lancer's sister's Master and send her to help.
-[x] Get medical attention for Mirai and Niko
--[x] Seriously get them help; Assassin, the Quintet, even Jyubei if you have to. You're pretty sure you're going to have nightmares about seeing the grief perverting and twisting Niko's body like this.
-[x] Call for reinforcements
--[x] Fall back as soon as reinforcements have arrived; Mirai and Niko need medical attention
---[x] Mikuni has some long ranged attacks to snipe the flyers. Plus, that older woman was her cousin, right? Contacting her means she can get in touch with Lancer's sister's Master and send her to help.
-[x] Get medical attention for Mirai and Niko
--[x] Seriously get them help; Assassin, the Quintet, even Jyubei if you have to. You're pretty sure you're going to have nightmares about seeing the grief perverting and twisting Niko's body like this.
PlaguePaladin
The Bird Lady
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] NMS
Thanks, man.
Thanks, man.
- Location
- Around here
You know, @PlaguePaladin, I was doing some thinking, and it dawns on me that Cú Chulainn's position on Irish reunification is a question that is completely valid to ask, given the fact that he's currently alive and living with Bazett. So where do you think he would fall on the matter? Would he be in favour of a united Ireland, or would he prefer to see Ulster kept separate from invaders who could come from the rest of Ireland? What do you think Bazett's position would be? Actually, on that note, just how bad do you think the Troubles were in the Fate universe with magecraft being a party in play?
PlaguePaladin
The Bird Lady
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think Cu would be against unification, more out of principal than personally caring himself, Cu having been a fairly loyal figure in Irish myth (he wasn't named after a guard dog for nothing). As for Bazett, I'm not sure she'd really care herself, being born in modern Ireland, but she's sycophantic towards Cu, so she might follow him.
As for The Troubles, I don't think there were any mages that would be significant players outside of mind-controlling authorities, as most magi are secluded or at the very least try not to influence the outside world all that much. Sorry for the boring answers.
As for The Troubles, I don't think there were any mages that would be significant players outside of mind-controlling authorities, as most magi are secluded or at the very least try not to influence the outside world all that much. Sorry for the boring answers.
- Location
- Around here
A divided Ireland means that Ulster (or at least the majority of Ulster) remains with the UK; the same UK that Scotland is part of. I just think it's funny that our favourite pair of servant sisters could show up at Cu's door, no passport required, and kick his arse. Not that a lack of a passport would stop them from kicking his arse if they really felt like it, but it's the thought of them being countrymates that counts. Even if, probably, not a one of them recognises the authority of the UK's government and wouldn't see themselves that way.
Don't mind me. I'm just musing.