This is actually my biggest complaint with you guys as a player base: maybe I'm wrong, or maybe I'm just not remembering times it did happen, but I don't see much if any lateral thinking, or even just thinking about anything besides what would give you the biggest boom.
Lateral Thinking.
Kayleigh was a D-rank mage and that was fine.
She didn't care of worldwide fame or the ability to punch an Endbringer in the face and live to tell the tale. She cared about her friends and her ability to support them, and she dared to believe she was good at it even before she found out about her magical potential. Magic just gave her new ways to be here for them, to understand them better.
This understanding brought a sad revelation though.
Her friends were... how to say it... not very bright. It's like their enormous magical power went to their heads, just like parahuman powers tended to do.
Taylor was not stupid exactly. She was actually very smart and erudite and all in all wonderful girl. But she wasn't very imaginative. Her main method of problem solving was to kill it with fire. And if it wasn't working, she would try to kill it with more fire. And if it wasn't possible, she would freeze in confusion, her mind frantically trying to get how it's possible and what to do. And then she would try some other way to kill it with fire.
It worked usually, unsurprising considering Taylor's enormous power. The list of enemies who could match her was not that long. The list of enemies who could surpass her was very short.
Undoubtedly, Behemoth was the first in this list.
A week before his projected attack Taylor outlined her plan. Trap the Endbringer in the Recursion Field, overwhelm him with Breaker spells, pin him down long enough for support mages to teleport him into orbit.
Kayleigh understood it was a bad plan the moment she heard the word "overwhelm".
"But it's Behemoth we're talking about!" she protested. "You can't hope to overwhelm him with what basically is a big boom!"
"If a big boom is not enough, we just need a bigger boom," Taylor said with conviction. "And it's not like we have any other ideas," she added with a shrug.
"How about we attack his weak point for massive damage?" Kayleigh suggested.
"Impossible," Missy answered, shooking her head. "Behemoth doesn't have any."
"His eye looks like an obvious weak point," Dragon said. "But he was blinded several times and it didn't even slow him down."
But that couldn't be true. There always was some weak point, some end-around, some hidden vulnerability. One just needed to find it, instead of trying to solve the problem with brute force.
So while other girls continued to discuss Taylor's plan, Kayleigh searched for an alternative. She made some educated guesses, did some research and found out that nobody apparently tried out a simple and obvious idea that just had crossed her mind.
When Behemoth attacked, it quickly became obvious that Kayleigh was right.
Behemoth fell to the ground under the might of a Breaker spell, but recovered faster than anybody could have expected. He rose to his feet again, swatting away capes and mages who tried to keep him down. Then he went after the Breaker-capable mages, constantly attacking their positions with hurricanes of fire and lightnings, forcing them to retreat, preventing them from shooting another Breaker. Dozens of other capes and mages, who were attacking him from all sides trying to distract him, were utterly ignored as if they were insignificant flies.
Kayleigh watched the battle from afar, preparing an attack of her own. She readied her sniper rifle, loaded her special bullets and took aim. Behemoth was a good target. Big, at the very least.
She pulled the trigger.
The first bullet caused Behemoth to stagger. He turned in Kayleigh's direction and started to raise his hand, aiming at her.
The second bullet caused his arm to fall back to his side uselessly. Behemoth roared with anger and pain.
The third bullet caused him to fall. Then Kayleigh calmly sent another seven bullets in his body one by one to make sure he never got up again.
Silence fell over the battlefield. Mages and capes were looking at the Endbringer with confusion, trying to get what's happened. Samantha cautiosly approached Behemoth's body and started to prodding it with her sword.
"He's dead," she announced finally, her voice was full of bewilderment.
"He's actually dead."
"But how?" Laura's voice asked.
"Did someone see who did it?"
"That was me, actually," Kayleigh said modestly.
"Me and my silver bullets."
"Silver Bullet? A new spell?" Taylor asked.
"How did it bypass Behemoth's defense? Some kind of dimensional rupture?"
"No, silly, it's not a spell!" Kayleigh giggled.
"It's just bullets made of silver. I mean, it's obvious Behemoth is some kind of demon, what with his horns and all this flame. And I had an idea, if he's a demon he should be vulnerable to silver. And as you can see, I was right."
Cheers started around the battlefield, people were celebrating their sudden victory. Kayleigh looked at them, smiling proudly.
Taylor flew down to her, but she didn't look happy, more like disturbed.
"Taylor, is something wrong?" Kayleigh asked softly. "If that's about your plan-"
"Kayleigh," Taylor interrupted her. "I don't know how to say it. You just saved thousands of lives... But..." she sighed. "Kayleigh, werevolves are the ones vulnerable to silver, not demons. Demons' vulnerabilities are holy water, sanctified grounds and maybe salt, I think."
"Oh. Oooops?" Kayleigh rubbed her neck sheepishly. "It's good that Behemoth turned out to be a werewolf and not a demon then. I didn't even think about holy water."
Taylor gave her an incredulous look and then asked hesitantly, "Kayleigh, what kind of weapon you think will be effective against Leviathan?"
Kayleigh hummed thougthfully.
Three months later, when Leviathan made landfall, every cape and mage who had come to fight him was armed with wooden stakes and garlic necklaces. Leviathan took one look at them, turned away and fled.
