> Stay right where you are.
> Prepare an illusion.
> Make one to both disorient AND greet her.
> Ask Hitomi for advice on how to talk Sayaka out of brutally killing you.
After taking a short moment to mentally lament your impressively bad luck, you gather your thoughts, trying to decide how to prepare for the imminent arrival of your latest house guest. Remembering the one already present, a thought occurs to you.
「So... you wouldn't happen to know how I might convince your friend NOT to attempt to kill me, would you?」you ask, moving your question in front of the girl still standing on Novella.
Hitomi looks up at you with a rather lost-looking expression.
"I- I... if Sayaka-san is a magical girl, and you- does that mean- this is all happening so fast, I-"
She pauses, seemingly trying to order her thoughts into some semblance of coherency.
"I... honestly do not know, Ashtaroth-san. This is hardly a situation I ever would have considered before today, and I'm afraid that I am... very,
very much out of my depth at the moment."
You sigh internally. Yeah, that's about what you thought.
「Well, I'll try to talk her down, but if that doesn't work, you should know that this probably IS going to come to blows.」
Honestly, you're not sure that a confrontation isn't basically inevitable at this point. You had a brief thought about sending Hitomi out to try and talk Sayaka down before she gets here, but assuming Sayaka even prioritizes her friend over a witch, she'll probably just assume that Hitomi's been witch kissed, or mind controlled, or something of a similar bent. You know you'd suspect something of that nature in the same situation, and since the solution to that sort of problem is generally just to kill the source of the magic causing it, that would probably only end up making things worse. Besides, Hitomi already told you she has no idea what she or you could possibly say to avert this, so better she just stays where she is and serves as a... well, you don't really want to say shield, but a deterrent? A reason for Sayaka to hold back and not attack you completely indiscriminately, at any rate.
...it's probably kind of rude of you to plan that without even telling Hitomi as much, but somehow you don't think she'd take too kindly to the idea. You'll apologize afterwards if you must.
You glance around at the void that surrounds you. The portal leading in from the giant road spiral is still gone, but you think you're going to go ahead and assume that Sayaka can get in here anyways, since you highly doubt that you can just wall her out that easily. That being said, you're not leaving — if you're going to be attacked, you'd prefer to be in the one place you can actually
use the totality of your abilities rather than anywhere else.
Speaking of which, you should probably start putting those to use before the magical girl actually gets here.
You start rearranging the shatterwords you've been using to speak with Hitomi into a simple greeting (
「Welcome Sayaka-san; please stay calm, your friend is safe.」), while simultaneously considering what sort of illusion you should make. What might give a magical girl pause to see upon bursting into a witch's inner sanctum? You're still planning on trying to avoid a fight altogether, so preferably something that won't necessarily ruin a peaceful approach...
Ah, that might work!
A few dozen feet in front of you, you begin to visualize a human figure — specifically,
yourself from not so long ago, decked out in full magical girl regalia. Hopefully, the unexpected sight of a second magical girl in the barrier will put Sayaka off balance long enough for you to explain that you're not a mindless monster. Heh, you can probably even hide yourself and explain
through the illusion, assuming you can have it make sound.
...come to think of it, why haven't you tried that yet? You've been talking to Hitomi for a good while, and explaining everything verbally would have been way more convenient than this whole shatterword-rearranging thing. You're annoyed you didn't think of this until just now.
You turn back to picturing yourself, trying to envision every little detail before you actually manifest the image. You need to make this as realistic as possible if you want to fool Sayaka... though, something already seems off. Are you forgetting something? It's not the outfit, you remember that just fine. The color scheme admittedly always struck you as a bit bizarre, but you liked it anyways, simply for being yours; something purely unique to you. Kind of like...
Realization strikes. Like your actual appearance.
That's what's off — you're just sort of visualizing generic human features right now, not your own, specific ones. Weird, those should be the easiest part for you to visualize, because of course you know what you-
Wait... did- did you have long hair, or short hair? And what color was it? White...? No, that was when you were first trying out your shapeshifting, you just did that as a test, didn't you? How can you not- your eyes, they were... no. Your legs, your arms, your
face...
...you can't remember them. You can't remember what you looked like.
Why can't you remember what you-?!
The dramatic noise of a portal ripping its way into existence sounds out from your left, and things suddenly start happening very, very fast.
You spin towards the origin of the noise, spotting the newly opened hole in the void just in time to see Sayaka charge right through it, now holding a large, ornate-looking sword in one hand. At the sight of the magical girl, you're immediately overcome by the desire to
have her, to
take her, to make her
one with you... which you quickly throw off, but the distraction lasts long enough for Sayaka to notice you in turn and begin sprinting in your direction. Before you can even present your message, she springs off the ground in a flying leap, soaring towards you with her sword held back to strike.
You mentally curse, your memory concerns forced out of mind for the moment as you attempt to move out of Sayaka's immediate trajectory. You
almost succeed — she misses, falling about two feet short, but that's close enough for her sword, which she thrusts out with the blade pointed down and digs into the top of Tome like a climbing hook. Keeping her grip on the hilt, Sayaka manages to prevent herself from actually falling, while you involuntarily rear back in pain from having a sizable piece of sharp metal shoved into you at high speed.
"Hang on Hitomi!" Sayaka yells as she dangles from the side of Tome.
"S-Sayaka-san!" Hitomi yells back from atop Novella. "Please, stop! You don't need to fight her!"
Sayaka doesn't reply, instead forming another sword in her off hand and skewering that one into you as well. The sensation is akin to that of a doctor, already performing a rather poor injection with a very large needle, suddenly deciding that a second one is required, and then for some reason choosing to jam it into you with as much force and as little care as possible. You're not sure how damaging it actually is, but it REALLY hurts, as the soundless scream you let out in response to it attests.
Hitomi is still talking, possibly to you, as you think you hear your name, but with the pain you're currently in you're not really processing anything she's saying. Desperate to get Sayaka's swords out of you, you begin thrashing Tome around while flinging shatterwords at the girl who made them, trying to force her to let go. The angle is horribly awkward since she's literally hanging off of you, and the shrapnel produced from the few hits you manage ends up hitting Tome as well, but fortunately the pitch black fragments simply sink into the pages like ink, rather than lacerating them as they rightfully should. Less fortunately, they don't seem to be hitting hard enough or directly enough to make Sayaka let go, as despite sustaining numerous cuts and a heavily sliced up cape, she hangs on to her weapons with an iron grip, her weight digging their points ever deeper into Tome's pages.
Finally, you manage to tag the stubborn magical girl square in the face, which in tandem with a well-timed thrash sends Sayaka tumbling through the air, weaponless. Before you can feel any true measure of relief however, another glowing music platform forms beneath her in midair, which she lands on in a crouch and uses to immediately spring back at you. Already partway off the ground, she's able to aim even higher than before, and is too close for you to avoid this time — Sayaka lands atop Novella with enough force that she shreds some of the paper beneath her feet, which hurts a bit like a bad scrape would. The tremor she sends though the floating book in the process also ends up knocking Hitomi off balance, where all your wild flailing failed to do so.
Sayaka takes a step towards Hitomi, only to be forced to dodge to the side as you frantically sweep two of your ribbons at her, all thoughts of talking her down shoved aside in favor of self-preservation. Sayaka is mere
feet away from the tower of straps that is your body, which you're pretty sure even just one of those swords of hers won't have any difficulty slicing right through; you need to get her off of Novella, off of
you, before she can get the chance-!
"Hitomi, grab my hand!" Sayaka cries, stretching out an arm as she ducks away from a ribbon and jumps over a second. You're trying to smack her off of you before she thinks to rearm herself, but the tiny fraction of you that isn't currently panicking is also trying to ensure you don't sweep Hitomi off of you in the process, limiting your avenues of attack.
"No, Sayaka-san, listen!" Hitomi protests, pushing herself back to her feet. "She isn't dangerous!"
"What-?! No, you don't understand what this thing IS Hitomi!" Sayaka shouts.
She makes a grab for the other girl, but misses as you grab her first, lifting Hitomi off Novella with your back-right ribbon before
slamming the oversized book shut on Sayaka with your other three. It falls back open nigh-immediately, but the unorthodox attack stuns Sayaka long enough for you to heave Novella upwards, sending her flying off of you and even higher than before into the air.
...a scant second later, you realize that probably wasn't the best move as Sayaka quickly reorients herself and summons yet another glowing music platform to kick off of, sending her screaming back down at you like a tiny human meteor. Berating yourself for just giving her more momentum, you lash out with your still-damaged front-left ribbon, aiming to slap her out of the air.
"HAAAAAAAA!!!"
Your ribbon is abruptly bisected where your wrist would be as Sayaka forms a sword mid-fall and slices right through it. She then lands on Novella again, bounces off, and slashes through the ribbon holding up Hitomi as well.
It takes your mind a moment to catch up before the pain actually hits, causing you to almost fall out of the air in shock. Dimly, through the excruciating sensation of having half your limbs lopped off in the span of a second, you notice that Sayaka seems to have caught Hitomi in a princess carry — the other half of your severed ribbon still wrapped around her like a sheet — and is now racing away from you. You take the opportunity to glance down at the remnants of your limbs, trying not to freak out.
Okay- okay, calm, you're fine; you can fix this! All your wounds healed themselves after you subsumed Saar, so after this is over you can just find something else to do that to, and your arms should regrow themselves! Surely! Definitely!
...hopefully...
Desperately trying not to think about it, you use your two remaining ribbons to yank out the pair of swords still stuck in Tome, your opposition still running in the other direction. Seems Sayaka IS at least concerned enough about her friend to place her safety over killing you, not that it seems to have helped you all that much thus far. You wouldn't have thought she'd just
charge you like that after realizing Hitomi was standing on you, but she didn't even hesitate...
Sayaka skids to a halt some indistinct distance away and sets Hitomi down, loudly telling her to stay put as she turns back towards you. She's immediately stopped however when Hitomi grabs her by the arm and spins her back around, saying something that you can't quite make out from here.
A small hope kindles within you that Hitomi might still be able to convince Sayaka to
calm the hell down, but it dies a quick death when Sayaka shakes her off and turns to face you again, looking no less inclined to shove a sword down your nonexistent throat than she has since arriving. She's at least put some distance between her and you again, so maybe you can finally start making an effort on the diplomacy front yourself, remote as the possibility of it working seems at this point. You have to at least
try, no matter how tempting it is to just start beating Sayaka into the ground as retribution for your recently amputated arms — at least in part because, judging by how this is going so far, you wouldn't even be successful at it.
You move to finally present your shatterword greeting, inappropriate though it seems after all that, only to belatedly realize you used the vast majority of the sentence you had prepared trying to make Sayaka let go of you. Improvising, you tear apart the few words you have left and reform them into two new ones-
「STOP, LISTEN」
-that are immediately pierced through by a pair of flying swords, which only narrowly miss hitting you as well as they whiz past your straps like extremely oversized darts. Sayaka is already forming another set, at which point you decide that enough is enough, and fill the entirety of the void with an illusion of choking, utterly black fog.
...how boring.
Between one moment and the next, you've completely blanked sight for everything and everyone around, yourself included. Slightly calmer, you move away from your previous position, drifting aimlessly into the cloud of darkness you've created.
Phew... okay, Sayaka shouldn't be able to see two feet in front of her face right now, so any further attacks should be stalled for the moment. Maybe you can try actually "talking" to her now that you're both effectively blind? Due to getting... sidetracked, you didn't get the chance to test if you can do that before she stormed her way in here, but if she's going to smash your shatterwords before you can even assemble them, it's probably your best bet.
Envisioning a soothing female voice resonating throughout the fog and requesting a ceasefire, you attempt to alter your illusion to incorporate it. Success is... mixed. The attempt feels weirdly correct, as if it
should be possible for you to utilize illusory sounds, but you don't hear anything, so presumably it failed. Strange...
You try again, and this time you DO hear a voice. Specifically Sayaka's, followed by a strange
whooshing noise-
Something comes hurtling through the air and slices into the side of Novella, sliding between two pages like a razor-sharp bookmark. You let out another silent cry of pain, even as a second, similar object nicks one of your already injured ribbons as it passes you by. You blindly pull out the presumed sword as a loud, strangely echoing clang seems to ring out from all around you. How did she-?!
The whooshing noise repeats, and you feel two more projectiles whistle past, discernible in the blackness only by the air that they displace along the way. Again, the same loud clanging sounds out, as if someone abruptly dumped a half dozen kitchens' worth of silverware on the floor. You frantically move to one side, but that doesn't help, as you once again both feel and hear something fly dangerously close to where your stalk-like body connects to Tome, followed by yet more noise. What
is that, some sort of echolocation ability?! Whatever the case, Sayaka clearly has some way of locating you, in which case your illusion is actually only helping her get the drop on
you right now, so-!
You dispel the illusion, already moving to avoid the assault that you assume is inbound, and-
Swords.
You can't stop yourself from briefly looking around in awe. Dozens upon dozens of identical ornate blades have been scattered in virtually every direction, as if someone set off some sort of sword
bomb in the middle of the area. There's enough of them to let you actually "see" the usually invisible floor simply by looking at the plane they're all lying on. Sayaka, standing at the center of it all with Hitomi curled up on the ground near her feet, looks up at you and smirks.
...holy
hell, you thought all that clanging was some sort of ability, not- was she seriously just making volleys of upwards of twenty swords at a time and throwing them in every direction at once, hoping that maybe one or two would hit you? That's
ridiculous; just how much magic does she HAVE if she can afford to make weapons en masse like that and toss them around aimlessly like they cost her nothing?!
Sayaka rushes toward you again, a confident grin on her face. Damn it, you thought you'd have time to prep more shatterwords, but you didn't, so now you have nothing to even slow her down with, except-
Thinking fast, you throw the sword you just pulled out of yourself, followed by the two you removed from Tome earlier, which you haven't actually had a chance to put down yet. One goes wide, while Sayaka smacks the second out of the air and gets lightly slashed on the arm by the third, but continues in her headlong charge without slowing down for a moment. Damn it...
Fear begins to overtake you as you float backwards, quickly losing ground to the approaching magical girl. A non-violent resolution pretty clearly isn't in the cards anymore, but you'd have discarded the notion a while ago if you thought you truly had a better chance at coming out on top in violent one, which you don't. You're not fast enough to keep up with Sayaka in general, and she's about to be in close quarters with you again, where you have no real way to stop her, or even slow her down. You have literal seconds to think of a way to save yourself, and your mind is coming up completely blank, she's going to
kill you; no, no, NO-!
A new illusion blooms across the void.
Let's make something more interesting this time...
[-] An abandoned palace with oddly canted surfaces. The walls are bedecked with crystalline masks; the floors overflown with a black, bubbling ichor.
[-] A turbulent ocean frozen in time. Unmoving tsunami-sized waves collapse over buildings of scale and coral, lit from within by a pulsing glow and crackling with violet lightning.
[-] A giant bird's nest perched atop a tower of tentacular plants. Small creatures pretending to be rocky platforms hover in the air nearby, while an undulating aurora obscures the stars above.
[-] An arid plain torn asunder by the steps of ancient behemoths. Brilliant slivers of living light writhe throughout the area, jealously guarding their territory, while plumes of ash form enormous hands as they rise from crags in the ground.
[-] Write in. This world is ours to create, and ours alone.
