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Fanfiction of Norithics's Partners:2541", "count": "16", "submission_left_submission_id": "2160214", "submission_left_file_name": "3132837_AzureDreamer_act_11.rtf", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/3132/3132837_AzureDreamer_act_11.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/3132/3132837_AzureDreamer_act_11.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/3132/3132837_AzureDreamer_act_11.jpg", "submission_left_thumb_huge_x": "300", "submission_left_thumb_huge_y": "300", "submission_left_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_large_y": "200", "submission_left_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_left_thumb_medium_y": "120", "submission_right_submission_id": "2241604", "submission_right_file_name": "3259132_AzureDreamer_act_13.rtf", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/3259/3259132_AzureDreamer_act_13.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/3259/3259132_AzureDreamer_act_13.jpg", "submission_right_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/3259/3259132_AzureDreamer_act_13.jpg", "submission_right_thumb_huge_x": "300", "submission_right_thumb_huge_y": "300", "submission_right_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_right_thumb_large_y": "200", "submission_right_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_right_thumb_medium_y": "120" } ], "description": "Faced with the strongest opponent yet, Viola and her friends need to put aside their differences and work together as a team if they want to have any hope of survival.\n\n-\n\nBased off of Partners:2541 by [iconname]Norithics[/iconname], which can be read here;\n\n[smallpool]7049[/smallpool]\n\nIf you like this, please consider donating to my [url=https://www.patreon.com/azuredreamer]patreon[/url] so I can afford to write more stories like this!\n\nOnce again, we're gettin' close to the ending and the pace is picking up!", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Faced with the strongest opponent yet, Viola and her friends need to put aside their differences and work together as a team if they want to have any hope of survival.

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Based off of Partners:2541 by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNorithics\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t		\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNorithics\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
, which can be read here;

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\r\n\t\t\t\tPartners - 'Issue 1' by Norithics\r\n\t\t\t
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\r\n\t\t\t\tPartners - 'Issue 2' by Norithics\r\n\t\t\t
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\r\n\t\t\t\tPartners - 'Issue 3' by Norithics\r\n\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tpool: Partners, vol. 1\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tby Norithics\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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If you like this, please consider donating to my patreon so I can afford to write more stories like this!

Once again, we're gettin' close to the ending and the pace is picking up!", "writing": "“Let her go! Now!” Vienna found herself immediately gripped by a profound panic the likes of which she’d never really experienced before. Well, no, that was a lie. She’d absolutely experienced this exact panic several times before over the course of this whole stupid thing, coinciding with all the times Viola had almost gotten herself killed. She inked up on instinct, readying herself for a fight.\n\n“I would think twice, kid. Don’t want anything unfortunate to happen.” Makoto slightly twisted the sword she had pressed against Viola’s neck for emphasis, applying [i]exactly[/i] enough pressure not to break through the skin.\n\nVienna frowned. “I...”\n\n“Don’t worry, I don’t have any intentions of hurting anyone just yet. All you’ve gotta do is agree to play along.”\n\n“Fuck you. Let her go.” Vienna raised her hands and activated shields around Makoto’s arms.\n\nThe soldier rolled her eyes in mild exasperation. “Sniper.”\n\nOh. Right. The sniper. Vienna froze for just a moment, biting her lip in frustration. She could probably block Sunny’s shots with ease, but she couldn’t do that and also protect Viola at the same time. And, honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure she could move faster than the sniper, or even move faster than Makoto. “Fine,” she said, clearly not particularly fine with the situation even as she lowered her arms and de-inked. “You win.”\n\n“There we go. Does anyone else feel like making a stupid decision? No? Good, we can get down to business then.” She unceremoniously released Viola, removing the sword from its place against her neck. “Yuri’s waiting near the entrance to patch you up. Don’t want you bleeding out.”\n\n“We’ve got our own first aid supplies,” Vienna snapped.\n\n“Kid, I’ve seen your attempts at first aid. [i]Please[/i] just leave this to the trained medical professional.” She gestured at Ursula with the sword. “You too. I want you at the top of your game.”\n\n“Fuck you, I ain’t lettin’ your friend anywhere near me,” Ursula growled.\n\n“Oh my god,” Makoto said with a frustrated sigh. “Look, you just had a fucking fistfight with an accurate recreation of a guy Cap’n Comet [i]himself[/i] could barely beat. Please at [i]least[/i] let the medic have a [i]look[/i] at you.”\n\n“Yeah sure I’m just gonna let the bad guy just sort of do whatever he wants to me.”\n\n“Have you people never heard of the Hippocratic Oath?”\n\n“Fuck you.”\n\n“Look, if we intended to kill you do you [i]really[/i] think Ami wouldn’t have stepped in to stop us by now?”\n\n“[i]Fuck you[/i],” Ursula repeated as she pulled herself upright.\n\n“Oh my [i]god[/i] fine we can skip the medical attention, then. Go ahead and fight at a disadvantage! Whatever! I don’t care!”\n\n“Just tell us what you want,” Vienna interjected.\n\n“That’s easy.” Makoto pointed her sword at Ursula. “You. Fight me.”\n\n“You don’t gotta ask me twice.” Ursula raised her fist and shifted back into a boxing stance once more.\n\n“Wait, hold on,” Vienna said, putting a hand in front of Ursula. “Why?”\n\n“Because she looks[i] tough[/i]. Like [i]hell[/i] am I letting you all leave without fighting her.”\n\n“That’s it?”\n\n“Sounds like good enough reasoning for me,” Ursula said, smirking in spite of herself. “You and me, one on one. No outside help. That means your sniper friend stays out of it.”\n\n“That was the plan, yes. If any of your friends tries to interfere, though...” Makoto’s sentence trailed off, allowing the implication to hang heavily over everyone.\n\n“Ursula,” Vienna interjected, voice tinged with worry. “I don’t think you should fight her on your own. Remember the [i]last[/i] time you-”\n\n“I’ve got Delphi and she doesn’t have the drop on me. I’ll be [i]fine.[/i] Probably.”\n\n“Ursu-”\n\n“Vienna. Stop. If you interfere you’ll get [i]shot[/i].” It was Ursula’s turn to put a hand in front of Vienna. “‘No more close calls’, remember? That applies to you, too.”\n\n“... Fine. Just... Please don’t die, okay?”\n\n“I’ll try my best, babe. You do the same, okay?”\n\n“Right.” Vienna turned to leave the ring. “C’mon, Viola. Let’s get out of the way.”\n\n“R-right,” Viola muttered. She stood off to the side of Makoto, still shaking slightly from the sensation of the sword placed against her neck. “S-sorry.”\n\n“Wait, hold on,” Makoto said, caught slightly off guard. “Did... did you just apologize to [i]me?[/i]”\n\n“F-for the arm thing. You’re mad about it and-”\n\n“No I’m not.”\n\n“What?”\n\nMakoto shrugged nonchalantly. “You bluffed and I fell for it. Happens sometimes. Can’t let that kinda thing get to you.”\n\n“I, um. I thought you were doing this because-”\n\n“I told you why I’m doing this. I haven’t gotten to have a [i]real[/i] fight with a [i]real[/i] person in five hundred years. This is catharsis, pure and simple.” Makoto smiled, once again settling into an unsettlingly cheery mood. “No stakes, just a fight against a tough opponent for fun.”\n\n“There are stakes, though,” Viola said with a frown. “If we don’t get to Ami soon she’s going to launch the nukes, right?”\n\n“Hm? Oh, right, that.” Makoto shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, kid, it’ll be fine.” She gestured with her head. “Now get outta the ring before you get caught in the crossfire.”\n\n“... Right,” Viola muttered, once more completely at a loss. She turned and limped her way out of the ring.\n\n“And seriously, stop by Yuri and get that leg patched up. I [i]promise[/i] he’s not gonna do anything to hurt you.”\n\n“She’ll consider it,” Ursula said tersely.\n\n“Good.”\n\n“Are you okay?” Erin asked as Viola slipped through the ropes and out of the ring.\n\n“I’m fine,” Viola muttered in response. She was not [i]really[/i] fine – she was in a lot of pain and was bleeding fairly profusely. The back of her left pantleg was wet with blood enough to shine slightly, and walking was problematic. But, well, her mind was elsewhere.\n\n“You don’t [i]look[/i] fine, darling.”\n\n“My leg’s still attached, I’ll be fine.”\n\n“Viola,” Vienna said, simply and sternly.\n\n“Come on,” Erin added, slipping one of Viola’s arms over her shoulder. “We’re going to see that medic of theirs.”\n\n“... Are you sure about that?” Vienna said. “What if he-”\n\n“You and I are still fresh and ready to fight, darling,” Erin said. “I very much doubt that he’ll be able to stand up to the both of us. And putting that aside, Viola gave the impression he’s more straightforward than his fellows. If we’re going to get a straight answer out of anyone, my bet is on [i]him[/i].”\n\n“That makes sense, I guess. You okay with this, Viola?”\n\n“I’d like some straight answers.”\n\n“I meant, like, having one of the soldiers get close to you with your guard down.”\n\n“Oh.” Viola frowned. As much as she was hurting, right now her mind was more focused on the aforementioned answers. And, more than that, she was focused on what Makoto had said. She wasn’t entirely sure [i]why[/i], but she couldn’t take her mind off of it. Why was she so nonchalant about everything? Viola didn’t entirely know and that frustrated her for... [i]some[/i] reason. “... Maybe one of you should stay behind and keep an eye on the fight.”\n\n“Considering the sniper, we can’t interfere, even if it goes south,” Erin said. “Unfortunately, we have to leave this to Ursula. I trust her abilities.” She didn’t sound particularly confident in that statement, but she was right. They [i]couldn’t[/i] help Ursula if she needed help.\n\n“There’s not much point in one of us staying behind if we can’t do anything, yeah,” Vienna said, taking up a position on Viola’s other side. “What we [i]can[/i] do is pressure the medic guy to explain what’s [i]actually[/i] going on.”\n\n“Right...” Viola muttered as they walked back over to the elevator, where Yuri was waiting for them.\n\n“Pants off.”\n\n“Excuse you?”\n\n“You got shot in the leg. Your pants are in the way. I need you to take them off.” Yuri spoke tersely and matter-of-factly, which didn’t really sit well with Erin or Vienna.\n\n“We haven’t actually agreed to let you touch my sister, you know.”\n\n“That’s nice but you don’t get a choice.” He stepped forward and lifted Viola off of her friends’ shoulders. “I would rather not do this by force. Runs the risk of hurting the patient. Which is the exact opposite of what we want to happen.”\n\n“H-hey! Let her go!”\n\n“I’m not holding her anywhere,” Yuri responded simply, carrying Viola over to a nearby pillar. “Here. Not the [i]most[/i] comfortable, but it’s the best you’re going to get. Sit here.”\n\n“You can’t just-”\n\n“Shut up.” Vienna winced slightly. For someone who was supposed to be more straightforward than the others, Yuri sure was coming across as pretty hard to deal with. She hadn’t gotten to interact with Makoto very much, or with Bob and Sunny at [i]all[/i], so she didn’t really have much frame of reference. But if [i]this[/i] was better than they were, she found herself kind of glad she’d not had to talk to any of them yet. “Your sister’s bleeding out and you guys clearly lack the medical supplies to take care of it. I don’t. She’ll [i]probably[/i] not bleed to death by the looks of it, but she’ll still recover much quicker if a real doctor deals with it.”\n\n“With all due respect,” Erin said. “You’re a [i]pre-splice[/i] doctor. Likely you know about as much about treating Viola as I do.”\n\n“You’d be right if this required any kind of surgery or internal work. It doesn’t. She’s still technically human enough that basic patchwork that would work on me will work on her, too. Unless some stitches and a bandage makes post-splicers explode?” Erin didn’t respond. “I thought so. Now shut up and either help me get these pants off or get out of my way.”\n\n“Right...” Erin muttered to herself. She knelt down on one side of Viola, removing the backpack and putting it to the side – considering the bleeding, it was probably for the best for Viola to change into a fresh pair of pants. That was true regardless of whether or not she elected to allow this clearly hostile person to lay a finger on Viola. “Why are you helping us?” she asked.\n\n“Orders. We’re not supposed to let any of you die.”\n\n“You just said Viola was probably not going to die, though,” Erin retorted. “I’d appreciate a real answer, please.”\n\n“I’m a doctor,” Yuri said simply. “Helping people who are injured is literally my job description.”\n\n“I find it extremely difficult to believe that it’s as simple as that.”\n\n“It really is,” Yuri said with a shrug. “Five hundred years is a long time to hold onto complex motivations. I became a soldier because it was the easiest way to become a doctor and that was always my dream. Anything beyond that doesn’t matter any more because all the people involved except me have been dead for centuries.”\n\n“I... suppose that makes sense,” Erin said, not entirely convinced it made any sense at all.\n\n“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Being a combat medic, I saw a lot of people get hurt. A lot of people [i]die[/i]. Usually under my watch. And surprisingly it turns out that people dying when it’s specifically your job to make sure they don’t die is a really shitty feeling. Lie down,” he ordered, and Viola did so. “You, lift her leg up for me. Get the wound above her heart.”\n\n“Right.”\n\nThe patch of white fur on Viola’s leg was stained a dark red with blood, shiny and sticky. “It looks worse than it is, I think. Will have to wash it off, but this is barely a glancing blow. Might have some difficulties walking for a bit but that’s it.”\n\n“Just tell me what to do,” Erin said. “I’m sure Vienna is willing to help, too.”\n\n“The other rabbit? She already left.”\n\n“what”\n\n“I figured you’d noticed. She didn’t seem to be trying to be sneaky about it or anything.”\n\n“I absolutely did not notice her leaving. When did that even happen?”\n\n“Around when you spoke up. She went inside. My guess is she’s headed for the bleachers.”\n\n“What?!” Viola interjected before wincing in pain.\n\n“No sudden outbursts, you’ll hurt yourself.”\n\n“Why on [i]earth[/i] would she be doing that?” Erin said incredulously.\n\n“The whole reason any of this is happening is because we’ve got you pinned down with a sniper, right? I figure she’s planning on taking that out of the equation.”\n\n“Oh.” Erin frowned slightly. “And... you’re just going to let her do that?”\n\n“Fight’s already started. Sunny’s done her job.”\n\n“Why are you being so casual about this?!” Viola snapped, too deep in the grip of panic to care that said panic was making the pain worse. “She’s going to get herself killed!”\n\n“We’ve got orders not to kill any of you. Don’t panic.”\n\n“She has a gun!”\n\nViola continued to panic, struggling in Erin’s grip. “D-darling, he’s got a point. You’re making your wound worse.”\n\n“Don’t worry. I know Sunny better than any of you do, so I can safely say this absolutely isn’t going to go the way [i]either[/i] of you think it’s going to go.”\n\nViola frowned, violently unconvinced that Vienna was going to be alright. But, unfortunately, she wasn’t in the position to go help her – or drag her back kicking and screaming, either or.\n\n“I’m going to go talk sense into her,” Erin said, slowly lowering Viola’s leg.\n\n“I’d rather you stay here. I don’t [i]need[/i] the extra pair of hands, but it’ll make things go much quicker.”\n\n“But-”\n\n“Don’t worry,” Yuri repeated himself flippantly. “Sunny’s got godlike aim but she can’t throw a punch to save her life. Close the distance quick enough and she won’t even have time to fire.”\n\n“Okay, but what about the other way around? Don’t you want to make sure your friend doesn’t get hurt?”\n\n“Just because Sunny can’t throw a punch doesn’t mean your friend stands any chance of hurting her. Trust me on this, she’s got her own ways of surviving.”\n\n“That doesn’t fill me with confidence.”\n\n“Yeah, I figured. That’s enough talking, help me clean this blood up, then I’m going to need you to hold her still while I apply the stitches.”\n\n“Right...” Erin wasn’t particularly pleased with the abrupt change in topic. Patching up Viola was important, but Vienna’s situation was clearly more urgent. He [i]claimed[/i] things were going to be alright, but as she’d said; she wasn’t convinced. There was really only one thing she was certain about.\n\nAfter this was over she was going to have Words with Vienna.\n\n[center]~~~~~~[/center]\n\nThe way Vienna saw things, there was really only one thing she could do. After she was reasonably certain Yuri wasn’t going to attempt to poison Viola, she set out to take out the sniper. It made perfectly logical sense, to her at least. The biggest threat on the table was absolutely Makoto, but the sniper was a close second. And, more pressingly, the sniper was forcing them to play along. She [i]wanted[/i] to trust Ursula’s abilities as a fighter, she really did. But... she just couldn’t believe that the doberman was capable of beating an actual trained soldier with five hundred plus years of experience, superpowers or no. Not on her own, at least. And she [i]certainly[/i] didn’t trust the soldiers to play fair. Certainly, they hadn’t played fair in any of their encounters thus far. Ambushes, knockout darts, and using the threat of sniper fire to keep the girls in line.\n\nSo fuck it, if they weren’t going to play fair, neither was Vienna.\n\nIt was surprisingly easy to make her way into the bleachers. Considering that this was a recreation of a building that was ancient even by pre-splice standards, the layout wasn’t really all that different from a modern sports arena. Which made sense, she supposed. Why fix what wasn’t broken?\n\nThe [i]hard[/i] part was going to be finding the sniper. Vienna had a vague idea of what direction the shot had come from. Maybe. She was [i]pretty[/i] sure, at least. Probably. But even with that narrowing things down a little bit, the Colosseum was [i]huge[/i] and most of it was the stands. There was, at least, not an audience to contend with. That made things a bit easier – if Vienna saw a person, that was the sniper for certain. The problem was that she [i]didn’t[/i] see a person. The stands were completely and utterly empty aside from herself.\n\n“I don’t like this,” Edifice said tersely. “We should go back to the others.”\n\n“We’ve got superpowers on our side,” Vienna responded, inking up. “I can block her shots and then kick her butt.”\n\n“It’s easy enough to say that, but you still have to actually block her shots, Vienna.”\n\n“Yeah, that’s obvious.”\n\n“What I [i]mean[/i] is that if her reflexes are faster than yours you will die.”\n\nVienna winced. “I mean... It can’t be that bad, right?”\n\n“You saw what she did to Erin.”\n\n“Well, uh, maybe if I close the distance quickly enough-”\n\n“Vienna. A gun is still a gun even up close.”\n\n“But it’s a really [i]big[/i] gun, right? Probably pretty unwieldy and-”\n\n“She’s a [i]cyborg[/i]. And anyway even if that[i] would[/i] be a problem, she’s also a[i] soldier[/i] so[i] [/i]she probably has another smaller gun on her.”\n\n“Mnf.”\n\n“This was a bad idea, Vienna.”\n\n“... Maybe you’re right,” Vienna muttered. “But we’re here now.”\n\n“Yes but there’s nothing stopping us from leaving.”\n\nVienna bit her lip. “She shot Viola. Doesn’t matter if she’s probably going to be fine, I can’t just let that stand.”\n\n“Vienna-”\n\n“I don’t care what happens to me. Viola is more important.”\n\n“Vienna listen to yourself.”\n\n“I’m not letting them get away with hurting Viola!”\n\n“What will Viola do if you die?”\n\nVienna winced. “Fine. What do you propose I do, then?”\n\n“You’re much more useful down with Viola and Erin than you are up here alone.”\n\n“Fine. Fine! You’re right.” Vienna sighed as the heated emotions that had led her to this point dissipated. “I probably should have put more thought into this.”\n\n“That’s what I’m here for.”\n\n“Two heads are better than one?”\n\n“We can cover for each others’ emotional biases. That’s an advantage most people don’t have.”\n\n“I guess? Mostly so far it’s you covering for [i]my[/i] emotional biases.”\n\n“Yes, well, once we finish here and move on to Locksmouth, I’m probably going to have to ask you to return the favour,” Edifice replied. “For now, just take a moment to cool down and then let’s go back to the others.”\n\n“Yeah. Yeah, let’s just do that.” Vienna sighed, letting some of the tension evaporate. It wasn’t going to go away [i]entirely[/i] – there was an unfortunate baseline amount of stress from the situation. But at least she felt... better? Better. If only slightly. Enough that she felt comfortable de-inking.\n\nWhich turned out to be a mistake. Something like a hollow cylinder made of plastic or metal or something similar pressed up against the back of her head. She didn’t need to have experience being held at gunpoint to know that was what was happening here. Slowly, operating on instinct, she raised her hands in the air, and in return the gun was removed from her skull. Not that much had changed – it was still almost certainly trained on her head, and would probably kill her if fired. The soldiers at least seemed to specifically want to not kill them, so all Vienna had to do was not force the sniper’s hand.\n\nThe sniper – Sunny, if she recalled the name correctly – circled around, keeping her gun trained on Vienna. It was smaller than she would have expected, compact enough that even Viola could probably hold it one-handed. It was shaped like a gun, which was the most that Vienna could say. “I guess you were right,” she muttered sullenly. “She [i]does[/i] have a smaller gun.” The actual rifle was strapped to her back at a slight angle – it [i]had[/i] to be, because it was longer than she was tall. Hell, it was longer than [i]Vienna[/i] was tall. A big ugly hunk of dull black... whatever the fuck it was that guns were made of, with a long cylindrical tube thing that was probably where the bullets (or whatever it fired) came out of and a small telescope-looking thing attached. Vienna had, at least, been right that it was too unwieldy to use effectively in close quarters.\n\nBut, again, that was what the smaller gun was for. Sunny gestured downwards with it, and Vienna got the picture. Slowly, she lowered herself onto her knees, and then further, sitting down on her feet, hands still in the air. The sniper nodded slightly before, with one hand still keeping her gun pointed at Vienna, the other reached down and pulled out what appeared to be a pair of handcuffs. “You’re [i]kidding[/i] me.”\n\nSunny was not, in fact, kidding her. She circled back around behind the rabbit and shoved her so she was face down on the ground, quickly securing her arms behind her back with the cuffs and then sitting on her to make sure she didn’t get back up. The smaller woman wasn’t exactly very heavy, and were Vienna not handcuffed she’d probably be able to get up even [i]with[/i] Sunny sitting on her. But, well, she [i]was[/i] handcuffed. And Sunny still had two guns. Fighting back was absolutely not in the cards, not for now.\n\nNot until she came up with a plan of action.\n\n[center]~~~~~~[/center]\n\nUrsula was, understandably, on edge. She wasn’t at the top of her game, not after the beating she’d just taken. She’d [i]won[/i] the fight against the Marquess, but barely, and not without taking some serious blows first. And that had been a part of the game. As far as she could tell, Ami [i]wanted[/i] them to win in the end. Even if she [i]hadn’t[/i] abruptly discovered she had futuresight, she’d probably have been able to pull ahead and secure a victory [i]eventually[/i] – just a more narrow one.\n\nBut this [i]wasn’t[/i] part of the game. And Makoto had a fucking [i]sword[/i]. It was about two feet long, narrow and slightly curved with a single sharp edge. “So you’re not even gonna pretend to fight fair, then?” Ursula said, gesturing at the thing with her head.\n\n“I’ve seen your fights, kid. Don’t pretend you can’t handle an armed opponent.”\n\n“Still seems a bit unbalanced in your favour.”\n\n“If I wanted things to be unbalanced in my favour, I’d have a gun, not a katana.”\n\nUrsula frowned slightly. “I thought it was a sword.”\n\n“A katana is a type of sword.”\n\n“There’s [i]types?[/i]”\n\n“Don’t worry too much, it’s mostly arbitrary. Katana is just the Japanese word for sword.”\n\n“I speak Japanese and I’ve never heard that word before in my lifetime.”\n\n“How many times have you ever felt the need to talk about swords in Japanese?”\n\n“... Okay, fair.”\n\n“Anyway, that’s enough banter. Get ready to fight.”\n\n“I’m plenty ready,” Ursula retorted, quickly shifting back into the same boxing stance she’d used against the Marquess.\n\n“I want you at the top of your game, kid. No holding back. That means bring out the goo thing.”\n\n“You said no outside help.”\n\n“Look, I don’t know how your weird goo thing works. All I know is that you’re pretty clearly [i]way[/i] stronger with it than without it. And that means this fight will be way more [i]fun[/i] with it than without it.”\n\n“So?”\n\n“The whole reason I’m fighting you is because it looks like it’d be fun.”\n\nUrsula’s frown deepened. That reasoning felt just as off [i]now[/i] as it did when it had first been put forward. But, on the other hand, somehow she couldn’t deny that she agreed with it. “Fine,” she said, dark blue ink quickly flowing out from nowhere and enveloping her body. “I’m gonna go all out, but you’d better return the favour.”\n\n“I intend to.”\n\n“Good.”\n\nMakoto made the first move, which was good. Ursula’s futuresight meant she had the advantage when [i]reacting[/i] to attacks. It took her a few seconds to realize that Makoto hadn’t actually taken the first move [i]yet[/i]. That was going to take some getting used to – she could already foresee it resulting in her taking a hit she didn’t need to if she wasn’t careful. But [i]this time[/i] it [i]didn’t[/i], which was the important thing for now. It gave her enough warning that by the time Makoto grasped her sword with both hands and swung it vertically at the doberman, she had already leapt to the side out of range. “Gonna hafta try harder than that.”\n\nMakoto didn’t respond beyond frowning and swinging her sword again, this time horizontally. And, again, Ursula had already jumped out of range of the swing. “Fine. Traditional kenjutsu bullshit was never my strong point anyway.” Makoto darted forward, much faster than she had been, swinging her sword with one hand, and then again and again. A veritable barrage of swings from every direction – and Ursula dodged them all easily. It helped that Makoto’s attacks were wild and big and telegraphed to hell and back. Ursula probably could have dodged them even [i]without[/i] knowing they were coming.\n\n“I could do this all day!”\n\n“I don’t like this.”\n\n“[i]Not the time.[/i]”\n\nDelphi, unsurprisingly, continued to talk directly into Ursula’s mind. “She’s making this too easy.”\n\n“It’s almost as if she just said she’s bad with swords.”\n\n“Ursula, you’ve seen her move before. She’s [i]absolutely[/i] capable of being faster than this.”\n\n[i]That[/i] gave Ursula pause – though not too much, Makoto was still pressing her attack. Yes, her movements were wild and clumsy. And [i]conspicuously[/i] slow. She’d not even [i]considered[/i] how badly that lined up with their previous encounter. And that wasn’t the [i]only[/i] thing that didn’t feel right about how the soldier was fighting. Yes, her attacks looked slow and clumsy, but... there were also no openings whatsoever. She could see the immediate future, so she knew for a [i]fact[/i] that there was no safe way to approach her, or at least not from the front. So the obvious next step was to try and get to her side. Ideally the left, as she was holding the sword with her right hand. Except she [i]couldn’t[/i]. Every time she tried to circle around, Makoto had already moved to face her and was throwing out another swing.\n\nAnd that brought up another thing that felt wrong. If Makoto was so in control of the flow of the fight that Ursula couldn’t actually get close enough to hit her, why hadn’t she been backed into a corner yet? It couldn’t possibly be hard to do – they were in a boxing ring, there was only so much space to move in. And yet Makoto seemed to be almost [i]intentionally[/i] throwing out attacks that encouraged Ursula to move [i]away[/i] from the ropes every time she got close. It was almost as if the soldier [i]wanted[/i] her to keep dodging.\n\nThat was when Ursula realized what was going on. “Shit. She’s trying to wear us out.”\n\n“I thought you’d figure that out way sooner. Honestly, I’m almost disappointed in you.” Makoto lifted the sword up, up, [i]up[/i], and then sent it crashing down directly into the floor of the ring hard enough that the sword embedded itself into the ground. Ursula dodged the large attack easily, of course – it, like every other attack Makoto had thrown out, was big and slow and telegraphed. But that wasn’t the [i]point[/i]. Ursula had been so focused on figuring out what Makoto was up to to notice until now, but her breathing was heavier, her chest felt like it was on fire, and her muscles felt sore. The sensations were muted, probably because she was inked, but the fact that she was feeling them at [i]all[/i] was worrying. Clearly, she’d been exerting herself more than she’d thought.\n\nAnd, while she was busy having this realization, Makoto kept right on pressing her offence. She continued forward, making a grab at Ursula’s neck that the doberman dodged – barely. She tried to put as little effort into her evasion as she could, but she couldn’t just [i]let[/i] herself get grabbed by the throat. So instead she moved out of the way of the strike before it happened. Circled around behind Makoto and attempted to throw a quick right hook.\n\nA right hook that was immediately aborted as Makoto pulled the sword out of the ground and slashed upwards, once again forcing Ursula backwards. She [i]barely[/i] managed to successfully dodge that attack. Her movements were getting slow and sluggish. Her breath came slower and heavier. “What happened to being able to keep this up all day, kid?” Makoto said with a smirk.\n\nUrsula did her best to not let the taunting get to her. She’d already seen how badly letting her temper get away from her could potentially go in the fight against the Marquess. If she wanted [i]any[/i] chance of winning this, keeping levelheaded was going to be crucial. Or else she’d end up doing something [i]stupid[/i] and [i]impulsive[/i] that would get her killed like charge headfirst into the blender with blind aggression.\n\n“... Wait,” Ursula muttered to herself.\n\n“Wait?” Delphi replied.\n\n“I’ve got a plan.”\n\n“Oh no.”\n\n“I’m gonna charge headfirst into the blender.”\n\n“[i]What?![/i] That’s a [i]terrible[/i] plan!”\n\nBut it was too late for Delphi to be the voice of reason because Ursula had already made her move. She stopped her retreat and instead, with a loud and enthusiastic battlecry, decisively stepped forward and grabbed the sword by the blade with both hands.\n\nIt [i]hurt[/i]. A [i]lot[/i]. But not [i]nearly[/i] as much as it probably should have. The pain was undeniably there, but it felt distant and dulled even as the blade sank into Delphi’s gooey flesh (flesh? Whatever Inklings had in place of flesh.) Ursula didn’t intend to give it enough time to really cause any serious damage, though. She tightened her grip (which hurt a [i]lot[/i] but she powered through it) and [i]twisted[/i] with all her strength, accompanied with a knee to Makoto’s gut. The combination was enough to wrench the sword out of the soldier’s grip.\n\nUrsula had to move quickly from there. Any hesitation, and she had no doubts that Makoto could retrieve her sword with ease if given the chance. So she didn’t give her one. The only minute hesitation came from flipping the sword around – she didn’t even bother [i]trying[/i] to properly hold the thing. That would have taken too long. And anyway, she had [i]no[/i] earthly idea how to effectively use a sword in combat. So instead she did something that just about [i]anybody[/i] could do, regardless of skill level, and shoved the thing into Makoto’s torso as hard and deep as she fucking could.\n\nMakoto stumbled backwards slightly, and Ursula took that opportunity to back off. Put some distance between herself and her opponent and prepare for whatever Makoto did next. [i]If[/i] she did anything next. Typically getting two feet of metal shoved through your chest was enough to end most fights. This wasn’t most fights, though, she realized as Makoto slowly reached up and grabbed the sword’s hilt. “Not bad,” she said with a smirk. “I honestly didn’t see that coming! You probably could have won there if you’d pressed the offensive.”\n\n“I [i]stabbed you[/i].”\n\n“Cyborg.”\n\n“... Oh. Right.”\n\n“It’s gonna take a [i]lot[/i] more than this to put a stop to me,” Makoto said as she pulled the sword out. There was, Ursula noted, no blood on it. “Gotta admit, though, you’ve kinda made me rethink how I’m approaching this fight.”\n\n“How so?” Ursula asked, hoping to keep Makoto talking. The longer she monologued, the more time [i]Ursula[/i] had to rest and recover.\n\n“See, it’s been a long time since I’ve fought like this. Ami’s games were always about [i]plans[/i] and [i]strategies[/i] and coming up with clever bullshit to win or else she’d get [i]bored[/i]. And then before that it was my time in the JSDF which was all about [i]plans[/i] and [i]strategies[/i] and following orders from rich old assholes who had never so much as thrown a fucking punch in their lives.” She held up the sword and looked at it wistfully. “But that shit? That ain’t me. I’m not a planner. I’m not a strategiser. That’s not what I’m [i]good[/i] at.”\n\n“And what [i]are[/i] you good at, then.”\n\nMakoto violently tossed the sword aside, out of the ring entirely, with enough force that it embedded itself in the ground. “I’m a [i]thug[/i]. Plain and fucking simple. I beat the shit outta punks like you with my bare hands. Teach ‘em their fuckin’ places.” She reached up and grasped the collar of her bodysuit and tore, pulling it open at the seams and then removing the top half entirely, along with the harnesses, in one quick motion.\n\nShe discarded the tattered remains, leaving her clad only in pants, boots, and some bandages that concealed most of her breasts. They didn’t exactly leave [i]much[/i] to the imagination, though they were significantly more modest than the typical understickers. Most of her toned, muscular flesh was visible, giving Ursula a good look at the tattoos that covered just about every inch of flesh. Swirls of red and blue and green and black forming patterns of clouds and wind, stopping at her wrists and neck and a large stripe of clean flesh down the middle of her torso. She turned, giving Ursula a good look at her back, and the centrepiece; a stylized image of a wolf from which all the rest of the ink seemed to flow. “Take a good look. Getting to see my ink is a rare privilege. Sign of respect.”\n\n“It’s... impressive.” Intimidating was probably a better word for it. Something about the design made Ursula’s hair practically stand on end.\n\n“Took me [i]years[/i] to get it finished,” she said as she turned back around. She rolled her neck slowly over her shoulders and cracked her knuckles. “Now, let’s fight for [i]real[/i].”\n\n“Shit,” Ursula muttered under her breath.\n\n“This is a good thing, right?” Delphi said as Ursula raised her fists and shifted her feet. “She’s probably more vulnerable like this, and she doesn’t have the sword anymore. That evens the playing field.”\n\n“Hell no, I’ve seen this exact thing in like a [i]billion[/i] martial arts movies. She took her shirt off, we’re [i]fucked[/i].”\n\n[center]~~~~~~[/center]\n\nVienna had not yet managed to come up with a plan of action. Escaping wasn’t the issue. Sunny wasn’t particularly heavy, though she got the impression that she wasn’t being sat on with the intent of keeping her in place. The sniper’s attention was on the field, monitoring the other two girls and making sure they didn’t do anything they weren’t supposed to. Which really put how [i]bad[/i] her so-called plan had been into perspective. Of [i]course[/i] Sunny had known she was coming. It turns out trying to get the drop on someone who was specifically watching you to make sure you didn’t do exactly that wasn’t going to work out. Stupid.\n\nAnd now she was literally directly on top of her. Vienna couldn’t do [i]anything[/i] without Sunny knowing it. There was nothing stopping Vienna from getting up, but Sunny would know and Sunny had a gun. Getting out of the handcuffs would be easy, all she’d have to do is ink up and just sort of goo her way out of them. But Sunny would [i]know[/i] and Sunny had [i]a gun[/i]. Vienna could fairly easily get the gun away from Sunny using her force fields, but she needed her hands free to do that. And she could [i]get[/i] her hands free, but [i]Sunny would know[/i] and [i]Sunny had a gun[/i].\n\nThat was the extent of what Vienna had come up with so far. Anything she could think of to proactively get out of this mess would only serve to get her shot. If she inked up first she could at least [i]probably[/i] survive a shot or two. Maybe. But she didn’t really want to find out for sure. And, obviously, staying uninked and starting a fight was a death sentence. She didn’t know enough about guns to be able to say for [i]certain[/i] – maybe she could power through getting shot and pull out a win? But that would still leave her with a gunshot wound. And they still had Ami’s game to deal with. They’d already had to wait to recover from debilitating wounds [i]once[/i]. And it was pretty clear at this point that Ursula was going to be left completely out of commission after this was dealt with. She was their best fighter, and if Vienna [i]also[/i] ended up needing to recuperate that just left one person to protect Viola. And...\n\nWell, Vienna felt bad to even think it, but Erin had very thoroughly demonstrated herself prone to panic attacks at inopportune moments, making her a less than ideal bodyguard. And, regardless of her protestations to the contrary, Viola wasn’t a fighter [i]period[/i]. Someone had to make sure she was safe.\n\nShe had to think this out. Just jumping into things without any kind of forethought or planning would get her hurt, and as established getting hurt was unacceptable. The problem was that it wasn’t possible to get out from under Sunny without the sniper being aware of it. So, obviously, step one was to figure out a way to get Sunny [i]off[/i] of her. Some sort of distraction. But then once again, that brought up the problem that there was just about nothing she could do without Sunny knowing. The [i]best[/i] case scenario would be for the distraction to not come from her at all. Which would actually not be [i]too[/i] hard to manage. Sunny wasn’t paying any attention to [i]her[/i] – she didn’t [i]need[/i] to, that’s why she was being sat on – all her attention was instead on Viola and Erin. So therefore all Vienna needed to do was get Viola and Erin to do something that would get all of Sunny’s attention.\n\n... Which raised the issue of how the [i]fuck[/i] did she manage [i]that[/i] without being able to move her hands.\n\nOr at least not being able to move them [i]much[/i]. Not enough to meaningfully use her powers, at least. But she didn’t [i]need[/i] to use her powers. She just needed to signal Erin. And maybe, just maybe, she had enough wiggle room to manage that.\n\n[center]~~~~~~[/center]\n\n“Okay. That should do it. You can put her leg down now – [i]carefully[/i]. Slower than that.”\n\n“Okay,” Erin replied tersely as she lowered Viola’s leg as slowly as she could without just continuing to hold it in place. Yuri had been [i]very[/i] particular about what she needed to do, and had very clearly not been impressed with her aptitude as an assistant.\n\n“Avoid putting too much strain or weight onto it for a while. Don’t want to risk tearing the stitches and making this whole thing pointless.”\n\n“Whatever,” Viola said. She and Erin both seemed to be running extremely low on patience, but the rabbit in particular very much had her mind elsewhere. “Can I put pants on now?”\n\n“Yes.”\n\n“Good. Erin, give me some spare pants.”\n\n“Right,” Erin replied as she dug through the backpack. “We’re starting to run low on spares so we’re going to need to maybe try to [i]avoid[/i] getting blood all over our clothing from now on instead of actively seeking it out.”\n\n“Wait, how are we running low? You changed, I need new pants...”\n\n“We weren’t exactly planning to be gone for more than a few hours,” Erin said. “There’s enough here for all of us to change outfits completely [i]once[/i].”\n\n“I guess that’s also why we’ve got no water.”\n\n“Yes.”\n\n“You don’t have [i]water?[/i]” Yuri interjected.\n\n“You stay out of this,” Viola snapped.\n\n“You’ve been down here for three days with no water. That’s a [i]very[/i] long time to go without water. I don’t know enough about post-splice biology to say for sure, but pre-splicers could last maybe a hundred hours or so in ideal conditions.”\n\n“I said [i]shut up[/i].”\n\n“Viola, darling, I think maybe you need to calm down.”\n\n“I’m as calm as I’m getting any time soon.”\n\n“Give me five minutes and I can get you some canteens.”\n\n“What?”\n\n“I’m [i]honestly surprised[/i] you’re capable of functioning at all having gone almost three days without water. Like I said several times so far, we very specifically want you to [i]not[/i] die.”\n\nViola frowned. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t expect any thanks.”\n\n“I didn’t,” Yuri responded before leaving.\n\n“Um. Pants, please,” Viola said after a moment of awkward silence.\n\n“Oh, yes, right.” Erin tossed a pair of sweatpants that were ironically almost indistinguishable from Viola’s usual clothing to the rabbit. “Please be careful putting them on.”\n\n“They’re just pants, I- ow!” Viola winced. “Okay. Bending my knees is problematic. U-um, could you maybe...”\n\n“Of course, Darling. Hold still.”\n\n“Mnf.” Viola closed her eyes and tried [i]really hard[/i] not to think about how close Erin’s boobs were to her thighs. “Thanks I can handle the rest without bending I think.”\n\n“Do you want a hand getting up?”\n\n“Yes, please.”\n\nWith some help from Erin, and a significant amount of futile effort trying not to think about Erin’s boobs, Viola managed to stand up. [i]Staying[/i] standing was a bit more difficult, and she ended up leaning on a nearby pillar for support. “Can you walk on your own?”\n\n“If I have to, yeah, I think so.”\n\n“Well, I don’t think you [i]have[/i] to for now at least. I can act as a human crutch outside of emergencies.”\n\n“U-um,” Viola said with a slight blush. “If, um. If you’re going to do that, c-could you maybe, um...”\n\n“Is something wrong, darling?”\n\n“N-no. It’s fine.” God why did she have to be so [i]hot?[/i] “H-how are you holding up?”\n\n“Certainly better than I have any rights to, considering.” She flexed her right arm in emphasis. “I suppose I should ask you the same, but I think I can guess.”\n\n“Mnf,” Viola grunted. “... I’m worried about Vienna.”\n\n“I’m sure she’s fine, darling,” Erin said in her best attempt at being reassuring.\n\n“I wish I could be that confident.”\n\n“If she’d been shot, we would have heard it.”\n\n“I guess so...” Viola said, clearly not convinced.\n\n“I-” Any further conversation was interrupted by Erin’s PET ringing. “Oh!”\n\nViola perked up immediately. That wasn’t an emergency alert signal, that was a [i]call[/i]. It was [i]possible[/i] it was Ami, she supposed. But Ami didn’t really have a [i]reason[/i] to call them right now. And she couldn’t think of a single other person who might be on the other end that she wouldn’t be happy to hear from. It could be fucking [i]Lars[/i] for all she cared and she’d be overjoyed. “Answer it!” she said urgently, as though Erin wasn’t almost certainly feeling the exact same way.\n\n“R-right,” Erin stammered, pulling her PET out and picking up the call. “He-”\n\n“Get [i]off[/i] of me!”\n\nViola could feel the colour draining from her face. That was Vienna.\n\n“Wh-” Erin attempted to ask what was going on, but was immediately interrupted by Vienna on the other end.\n\n“Don’t!” she shouted, leaving a conspicuous pause before continuing, “[i]sit[/i] on me you [i]asshole[/i].” Erin opened her mouth to say something, but Viola immediately slammed a hand over her snout, placing the other index finger over her mouth in the universal symbol for silence. “What, you think you can just handcuff me and then sit on me and I’m out of the fight?” Vienna continued. “My friends are going to [i]notice that something’s up any minute now[/i]. Erin could easily figure out exactly where we are with her growth powers and Viola wouldn’t have a hard time sneaking up on you with her invisibility powers. There’s [i]no way[/i] you could deal with all three of us at once. And then we’re going to be able to help Ursula without any interference!”\n\nViola and Erin looked each other in the eye as Vienna started to repeat herself – presumably in case they didn’t immediately pick up on what was going on and what the plan was. Neither Erin nor Viola needed it. The mouse quickly hung up and nodded. “Are you ready?”\n\n“Why are we wasting time talking, she needs [i]help[/i].”\n\n“I-”\n\n“And where do you two think you’re going?”\n\n“Oh god [i]dammit[/i].”\n\nYuri was carrying what seemed to be a sort of belt or harness with several canteens strapped to it, which he dumped on the ground. “It’s like your friend said. Sunny probably couldn’t handle all three of you at once. So I’m going to make sure she won’t [i]have[/i] to handle all three of you at once.” With that, he calmly pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Erin. “Sit down,” he ordered.\n\n“Right,” Erin muttered. “Plan B then.” She took a confident step forward. “I don’t think you’ve quite thought this through very thoroughly.”\n\nYuri’s facial expression remained static, completely unintimidated. He moved his thumb to a lever looking thing on the top of the gun that he [i]slowly[/i] moved. There was a soft click. “I said sit down.”\n\n“You should have aimed at Viola.”\n\n“She’s not a threat. You are.”\n\n“Exactly why you should have aimed at her.”\n\nErin moved as quickly as she was capable of. She wasn’t faster than Yuri was on the trigger, but she didn’t [i]need[/i] to be. The first shot collided with her thigh [i]after[/i] it had been enveloped in ink, the projectile passing harmlessly through to the other side. Mostly harmlessly – it left a big hole that took a moment to heal, and it [i]hurt[/i] like a [i]motherfucker[/i]. But it didn’t [i]stop[/i] her, and by the time he’d fired his second shot she’d grown to her maximum height and it was [i]far[/i] too small to pose any kind of real threat.\n\nHe didn’t manage to get a third shot fired before Erin’s foot collided with his chest and sent him flying into a nearby pillar. “Viola, I can handle this. Deal with Vienna’s situation.” No response. “... Viola?”\n\nViola was already gone. Erin sighed wearily. “Well, they [i]are[/i] sisters, I suppose.”\n\n[center]~~~~~~[/center]\n\nUnfortunately, Viola wasn’t entirely sure she’d be very [i]useful[/i] against Sunny. She had a plan, sort of. She just wasn’t sure it was a [i]good[/i] plan. And, honestly, most of it was for [i]after[/i] she rescued Vienna and they dealt with Sunny. She could sneak up on her pretty easily with her powers, but after that it was all improvisation. She’d briefly stopped to take the inertial dampener out of the backpack. It was fairly hefty, so maybe she could use it as a sort of improvised bludgeon. But she’d grabbed it for a [i]reason[/i] and that reason [i]wasn’t[/i] to hit Sunny with. She didn’t want to run the risk of breaking it and not being able to enact the actual main part of her plan.\n\nWhich unfortunately didn’t leave her with much in the way of options. Maybe find a big rock? But the arena’s floor was mostly dirt, and considering that this stupid place was apparently more than two thousand years old in the real world, the [i]recreation[/i] was entirely intact so she couldn’t rely on finding some convenient rubble. For similar reasons, there didn’t seem to be any other potential improvised weapons lying about.\n\nThere was, she supposed, Sunny’s gun. The big one was obviously out of the question – Sunny was probably [i]using[/i] it. But it was also big, probably [i]too[/i] big to use in close quarters or in a situation where you needed to shoot [i]fast[/i]. So she probably had a smaller gun on her somewhere, like the one Yuri had used to threaten Erin or the one Bob had used to threaten [i]her[/i] back when all this had started. The problem [i]there[/i] was that it was [i]on[/i] her. Actually getting it away from her was probably beyond Viola’s abilities. And even if it [i]wasn’t[/i], she had no idea how to fire a gun so she’d probably be reduced to using it as an ineffective bludgeon.\n\nSo she had to go with plan D, then. The inertial dampener, a rock or rubble, and stealing Sunny’s weapon were all out of the question, and Viola was probably not capable of winning in a fistfight even factoring in Aubrey.\n\nBut [i]Vienna[/i], on the other hand, was probably more than a match for the sniper. All Viola had to do was create an opening.\n\nThankfully, they weren’t particularly hard to find considering that the stands were empty aside from them and Vienna was still loudly objecting to being sat on. They weren’t even too far away from the entrance. Viola moved extremely slowly and carefully, making her way to where they were and circling around behind them.\n\nAs a result, she didn’t make it before Sunny pulled the trigger and fired at Erin. Viola’s heart caught in her throat, if only for a moment, but the giant mouse barely reacted. She was just [i]too big[/i] for bullets to be particularly effective. Sunny clicked her tongue sharply in frustration, before preparing to fire a second shot. Viola didn’t intend to give her that chance.\n\n“If it didn’t work the first time, It’s not gonna work the second time! Now [i]get offa me![/i]” Sunny didn’t react, of course. Vienna didn’t expect her to. Erin was acting as a distraction, which meant that [i]hopefully[/i] Sunny’s attentions were off of Viola. But unfortunately that was hard to verify because, again, she was being sat on. Vienna wriggled slightly, though with no real intent of actually throwing Sunny off – anything more than a token effort would probably get her shot. The [i]actual[/i] goal was to keep the sniper distracted and not able to properly shoot. If she was [i]really[/i] lucky, it would be enough to make her move to steadier ground, at which point she could finish this. All she needed was for Sunny to not be on top of her anymore.\n\nSunny did not decide to move to steadier ground. She didn’t get the chance, because an invisible rabbit tackled her from behind, knocking her to the ground and causing her to drop her big gun. “Leave my sister alone!” Viola screamed, wrestling with the smaller woman. The two of them rolled over each other several times – which moved them both a decent distance away from the big gun.\n\nVienna saw her opportunity and inked up, using Edifice’s gooey texture to easily escape the handcuffs. From there it was just a matter of putting one shield around the big gun and another around one of Sunny’s arms. “Viola! Let go!”\n\nViola did so, jumping back slightly to put some space between herself and Sunny. That was everything that Vienna needed – she flung her arms upwards and then dropped the shield, sending both Sunny and her gun into the air and over the side of the Colosseum. “There. Problem solved.”\n\nVienna de-inked and then [i]immediately[/i] charged forward to hug Viola. “I’m sorry.”\n\n“It’s okay,” Viola responded, de-inking and hugging Vienna back. “You’re okay now, that’s all that matters.”\n\n“No, no, I don’t mean I’m sorry for getting captured. I mean... About earlier.”\n\n“Oh.”\n\n“You just proved me wrong. You [i]can[/i] handle yourself and I was just being a neurotic jerk.”\n\n“Don’t say that,” Viola responded, hugging her sister tighter. “You were [i]right[/i].”\n\n“I was?”\n\n“Sort of. I [i]can’t[/i] handle myself, not alone. [i]None of us[/i] can. You went off alone and got captured. Ursula tried to fight that Marquess guy alone and [i]barely[/i] won. And there’s no [i]way[/i] I would have survived tackling Sunny if you hadn’t been here to get rid of her.”\n\n“I... guess,” Vienna said, not sounding entirely convinced. “Erin seems to be handling herself just fine.”\n\n“Yeah but Erin’s twenty feet tall and is fighting the team medic. It’s not a very fair fight.”\n\n“I guess. I just kinda don’t see what you’re getting at.”\n\n“What I mean is that I don’t think we’re going to be able to win this if we can’t work together.”\n\n“[i]That[/i] I can get behind,” Vienna responded. “We’re... kind of not good at that, are we?”\n\n“We dealt with Sunny together, didn’t we?”\n\n“That doesn’t really count as teamwork.”\n\n“I held her in place and you punched her. Sort of. If that’s not teamwork, what is?”\n\n“I [i]guess[/i], but...” Vienna sighed. “I mean, when was the last time you and I actually talked to each other? Like, just you and me, one on one?” Viola opened her mouth to respond, but Vienna interrupted. “[i]Before[/i] coming down here, I mean.”\n\nViola didn’t have an answer to that.\n\n“You’re right, though. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with this if it weren’t for you and Erin.”\n\n“Yeah...” Viola broke the hug, turning and walking over to where she’d stashed the inertial dampener. “Speaking of teamwork, I... Think I have a plan to deal with Makoto. But we’re [i]all[/i] going to have to contribute.”\n\n“A plan?”\n\n“Yeah.” Viola picked up the inertial dampener. “You’re... Probably not going to like it, though.”\n\n“I-” Vienna stopped herself. “I’m going to trust you. Just tell me what the plan is.”\n\n“Okay,” Viola said, before taking a deep breath and then doing just that.\n\nVienna pursed her lips tightly. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t like it.”\n\n[center]~~~~~~[/center]\n\nIt didn’t take long for Ursula to realize that she’d made a mistake. Let herself get complacent. Maybe even a bit cocky. Gotten too confident in her futuresight, and thus had forgotten that it didn’t [i]matter[/i] if she knew what was coming if she wasn’t fast enough to react to it. And, unfortunately, though she might have been able to manage that with the boost from being inked if she were at the top of her game, right now she [i]wasn’t[/i] at the top of her game. The fight with the Marquess had [i]already[/i] taken a lot out of her, and then Makoto had actively attempted to wear her out and Ursula had completely failed to notice until it was too late.\n\nNow the fight was kicking into high gear and she absolutely needed to be at the top of her game, and here she was exhausted and sore and running purely on adrenaline. Being inked helped a [i]bit[/i], reducing what she was fairly certain would be agony to just a dull burning ache that lurked in the background. But it didn’t change the fact that her reflexes were slowed to a crawl. Which wouldn’t have been quite as much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact even a glancing blow from Makoto felt like getting slammed by a runaway freight train.\n\nAnd that one glancing blow [i]snowballed[/i]. Left her dazed and stunned long enough to take a much more solid blow to the chest, and then another. Punches and kicks came flying faster than Ursula was capable of keeping track of. Scattered enough, thankfully, that Delphi seemed to be staying intact for now. But who knew how long that’d keep up? She tried to throw in some kind of counterattack, attempt to reclaim some momentum, but her punches were just as sluggish as her reflexes. She was just too [i]slow[/i] to get any hits in.\n\nUrsula could feel her heart sinking as she realized she wasn’t going to win this.\n\n“Y’know, I [i]did[/i] warn you,” Makoto said in between blows. “I gave you the chance to back off, take some time to recover and get patched up and shit. You can’t say this isn’t your own damn fault.” She paused her beatdown and backed off. “This isn’t any fun. Too one sided. Tell you what, I’ll let you throw the next punch. No strings attached! You can even take all the time you need to recover.”\n\n“Host,” Delphi interjected warily. “This is clearly a trap.”\n\n“No shit.” Ursula glared. “Lemme guess. You said you’d let me throw the next punch but you didn’t say you’d let me [i]land[/i] it?”\n\n“You got me, you got me,” Makoto said, raising her hands defensively.\n\n“I’m not an idiot, you know,” Ursula growled in response. Though honestly she was kind of [i]feeling[/i] like a bit of an idiot right now.\n\n“Hey, don’t feel too bad, kid. As far as I’m concerned, being a bit stupid’s a good thing. I can respect that more than I can respect scheming assholes. You’ve just gotta figure out how to be a bit smarter about fighting people, that’s all.”\n\n“Izzat what you’re calling it? ‘cause I’d sooner call it not fighting fair.”\n\n“This isn’t boxing, kiddo. No rules in a street fight. I’m just trying to make this a bit more interesting, but it seems like you don’t really appreciate my efforts. So I guess that means it’s time to end it.” This was it, Ursula supposed. She closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable finishing blow.\n\nA finishing blow that didn’t come. Slowly, she opened one eye, and then the other. At first, she didn’t really see much of anything – the fight had left her vision slightly blurred, and it took a moment of concentration for things to come into focus and for her to register Makoto just [i]standing[/i] there. Her arms were spread outwards, clearly not of her own will given how she was struggling. It took [i]another[/i] few moments for the thing she was struggling against to come into proper focus, though Ursula already had an idea. Thin white lines forming a vague spherical wireframe around both of Makoto’s wrists.\n\n“Yeah, I’d say it’s time to finish this alright,” Vienna said.\n\n“Wh- get [i]off[/i] of me you little [i]shit![/i]” Makoto said, yanking an arm forward with enough force to shift one of the force fields, just a bit. Vienna stumbled forward slightly but very quickly steadied herself and pulled it back.\n\n“Gimme a minute, I’m just a distraction.”\n\n“Wh- oof!”\n\n“Ursula!” Viola shouted from... somewhere. Ursula couldn’t actually see her. But, again, she had an idea. “Turn your inertial dampener on! Max power! Quickly!”\n\nUrsula didn’t stop to think. Didn’t stop to consider that this wasn’t particularly sportsmanlike, whatever it was. Didn’t even take a second to try and figure out what the plan was. She spoke, on reflex more than consciously. “Oral code: Pillowfight.”\n\nViola made herself visible as she retreated to the edge of the ring, at which point Vienna dropped the shields. Both, Ursula idly noted, were inked. But she only noted that fact idly, because most of her attention was on Makoto, and on the straps over her shoulders and the bulky hunk of metal they held on her back. Ursula took a moment to feel vindicated in her preference for straps over threadlink when it came to that particular bit of kit. The soldier’s arms dropped to her sides in slow motion, moving like she was submerged in molasses. “What the fuck is this?!”\n\n“This,” Ursula said tersely. “Is an inertial dampening field turned up to full force. It took me [i]years[/i] of practice to be able to move at [i]all[/i] when it’s turned up this high. It’s not [i]just[/i] a matter of overpowering the field. You’ve gotta know how to compensate for it and how to deal with its presence. Which you [i]don’t[/i].” Ursula took her time walking towards Makoto – she needed a moment to recover her strength, after all.\n\n“This doesn’t seem very sportsmanlike.”\n\n“Yeah, well, it’s like you said. Ain’t no rules in a streetfight, [i]bitch[/i].”\n\nUrsula grabbed Makoto by the throat with her right hand – not particularly tightly. She didn’t intend to [i]strangle[/i] her opponent, just hold her in place. She [i]would[/i] have grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, but that wasn’t an option for obvious reasons. She pulled her left fist back, and then flung it forward with all her strength. “Oral code: Full Impact!” she shouted just before her punch would have hit the field and come to a stop, resulting in exactly what the oral code implied. The force of the punch [i]would[/i] have been enough to send Makoto flying, and it [i]did[/i], just a bit. “Oral code: Pillowfight.”\n\nMakoto continued to fly, but in slow motion. Ursula calmly circled around to her side, clenching her fists together and lifting them above her head before sending them crashing down like a hammer. “Oral code: Full Impact,” she cried just before they connected, slamming into Makoto and sending the soldier crashing down onto the ring hard enough to bounce. This time, Ursula didn’t bother to turn the inertial dampener field back on – she just stomped the woman’s chest as hard as she could before she got the chance to recover. And then again and [i]again[/i] and [i]again[/i], boot colliding with chest over and over in a way that would have seriously injured a normal human. Ursula didn’t give a shit. Makoto had been shish kebabed by a fucking sword and had barely even [i]flinched[/i]. This hadn’t been [i]nearly[/i] enough to finish things.\n\n“Ursula, get outta the ring.”\n\n“She’s not done yet.”\n\n“I know, but you’ve been fucked up pretty badly. We need you back in fighting order as soon as possible.”\n\n“Ugh,” Ursula grunted. Vienna was [i]right[/i], but there was no [i]way[/i] this was enough to finish her off. “Gimme five minutes.”\n\n“Don’t worry, darling,” Erin interjected. “I believe I’ve got a much more efficient way to deal with this problem.”\n\n“Waddaya mea-” Ursula started, but didn’t finish before Erin abruptly grew twenty feet tall. “Ah. Yeah, that’d do it. Gimme a sec to get outta the blast radius.”\n\n“Take your time, darling.”\n\n“Oral code: Pillowfight,” Ursula said, ensuring that Makoto wouldn’t be going anywhere while she cleared her way out of the ring. Once Erin was satisfied that there was no risk of crushing her packmates, she turned around, facing away from the ring. And then she [i]jumped[/i]. Not particularly high – she didn’t [i]need[/i] to jump particularly high. The important thing was the slight backwards angle of the jump and the fact that she lifted her legs in the air as she did it.\n\n“Oral code: Full Impact.”\n\nMakoto stared upwards. “Son of a [i]bitch[/i],” was the last thing she managed to say before Erin’s ass collided with the boxing ring with enough force to completely demolish it and to leave a mousebutt shaped crater in the arena’s dirt floor.\n\n“And that’s [i]that[/i] dealt with. I’m going to stay here for a moment to make absolutely certain she’s out of the fight.”\n\n“Good idea. What about the sniper?”\n\n“Me and Viola dealt with her,” Vienna said. “I threw her out of the arena and I threw her gun in a different direction to make absolutely sure she was out of the fight.”\n\n“What about medic dude?”\n\n“He gave up,” Erin said with a shrug. “He said that I was, and I quote, significantly above his paygrade. Oh, yes, speaking of which, we’re no longer running low on water.”\n\n“Nice.” Satisfied that they were no longer in any danger, Ursula collapsed backwards, de-inking and splaying on the ground. “I’m gonna pass out for a hundred years if that’s okay with y’all.”\n\n“Don’t rest just yet,” Erin said. “Have something to eat and some water first.”\n\n“Fair enough. I, uh, don’t think I’m gonna be able to get up anytime soon, though.”\n\n“Here, let me help you.” Viola quickly rushed over to Ursula’s side and did just that, pulling the larger girl into a sitting position. “Are you okay?”\n\n“Better’n I would be if you guys hadn’t interfered. Thanks.”\n\n“It was Viola’s idea,” Vienna said, taking up a spot on Ursula’s other side.\n\n“No foolin’? Well, hey, it fuckin’ worked out [i]great[/i]. Good job, Viola.”\n\n“I just, um. I just figured we’d do better if we teamed up. You know?”\n\n“Clearly you figured right. Maybe there’s something to this whole havin’ a functional relationship thing.”\n\n“Well, ideally after we get out of here we’re not going to have much further need to fight,” Erin said. After a moment’s thought, she continued, “But I suppose it [i]is[/i] nice to get along again. It’s... been a while.”\n\n“There [i]is[/i] still Echelon,” Vienna said. “I’d rather [i]not[/i] have to fight her, but I don’t think we should ignore the reality that we might not get a choice in the matter.”\n\n“Yeah...” Viola didn’t really like thinking about it, but unfortunately Vienna was right. No matter how this ended up turning out, the only way she could foresee this ending [i]without[/i] fighting Echelon was if Ami beat them and launched the nuclear bombs, or if [i]Osoth[/i] beat [i]Echelon[/i] before they managed to get out of Ami’s game. “I guess we’ll just have to take things as they come.”\n\n“Yeah, well, I’m not fighting [i]anyone[/i] any time soon,” Ursula said. “I can’t [i]move[/i].”\n\n“We’ve still got time left,” Vienna said. “Hell, we’ve probably got more time than we did [i]before[/i] we got a supply of water.”\n\n“Speaking of which, could I have some water? I literally can’t remember the last time I drank anything.”\n\n“Oh, shoot,” Erin muttered. “I didn’t think to bring them.”\n\n“I’ll go get them,” Viola volunteered, pulling away from Ursula’s side. “It’s not that far.”\n\n“Don’t forget about your leg,” Vienna said. “I’ll go.”\n\n“We can both go.”\n\n“You can barely stand straight. It’s [i]fine[/i], I’m in the best shape of all of us.”\n\n“Strictly speaking, I would probably be in the best shape of any of us right now, darling,” Erin said.\n\n“Yeah, but we need you to keep Makoto in place.” Vienna stood up. “It’s [i]fine[/i], I can carry some water bottles on my own. You all just stay here.” With that, she turned to head towards where the canteens had been left.\n\nAnd immediately froze up.\n\n“Bravo!” Bob said with an insufferable smirk, slowly clapping his hands. “Impressive work. [i]Damn[/i] impressive work! I don’t think I’ve seen anyone beat Makoto in a straight up fight in the entire time I’ve known her. And I’ve known her for a [i]very[/i] long time.”\n\n“What do you want,” Vienna spat, immediately re-inking.\n\n“Do you want me to squash him?”\n\n“Hey, hey, easy girls, I ain’t here for a fight,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “If y’all can beat Makoto, I don’t stand a chance. I’m just here to collect my men.” He shrugged. “If y’wanna leave, we won’t stop you. Don’t think that means you’re off’a the hook, of course. Still got Ami to deal with. I don’t think you’ll even be able to [i]find[/i] the exit if she doesn’t want you to.”\n\nThe tension was thick enough that cutting it would have been difficult. The air hung heavy over everyone gathered, only broken when Bob gestured with his head at Erin. “Wouldja mind gettin’ off of her so I can get her out of here?”\n\n“R-right,” Erin muttered, pulling herself upright and shrinking down at the same time.\n\n“Good girl,” Bob said, making his way over to the crater where Makoto’s mostly wrecked body lay. “Gimme a minute and we’ll be outta y’all’s hair.”\n\nViola frowned, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. There was something nagging her at the back of her mind. Something [i]important[/i], though she wasn’t entirely sure what.\n\n“... Wait.”\n\nShe had spoken entirely on instinct. Everyone turned to look at her with expressions of complete bafflement on their faces, as though wondering what the fuck she was thinking – a question she wasn’t sure she could answer herself. Even Bob seemed caught off guard, raising an eyebrow. But somehow this felt right. This felt like the thing to do. Slowly, something was coalescing in the small rabbit’s brain. A plan was formulating.\n\nShe just had to enact it.", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "“Let her go! Now!” Vienna found herself immediately gripped by a profound panic the likes of which she’d never really experienced before. Well, no, that was a lie. She’d absolutely experienced this exact panic several times before over the course of this whole stupid thing, coinciding with all the times Viola had almost gotten herself killed. She inked up on instinct, readying herself for a fight.

“I would think twice, kid. Don’t want anything unfortunate to happen.” Makoto slightly twisted the sword she had pressed against Viola’s neck for emphasis, applying exactly enough pressure not to break through the skin.

Vienna frowned. “I...”

“Don’t worry, I don’t have any intentions of hurting anyone just yet. All you’ve gotta do is agree to play along.”

“Fuck you. Let her go.” Vienna raised her hands and activated shields around Makoto’s arms.

The soldier rolled her eyes in mild exasperation. “Sniper.”

Oh. Right. The sniper. Vienna froze for just a moment, biting her lip in frustration. She could probably block Sunny’s shots with ease, but she couldn’t do that and also protect Viola at the same time. And, honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure she could move faster than the sniper, or even move faster than Makoto. “Fine,” she said, clearly not particularly fine with the situation even as she lowered her arms and de-inked. “You win.”

“There we go. Does anyone else feel like making a stupid decision? No? Good, we can get down to business then.” She unceremoniously released Viola, removing the sword from its place against her neck. “Yuri’s waiting near the entrance to patch you up. Don’t want you bleeding out.”

“We’ve got our own first aid supplies,” Vienna snapped.

“Kid, I’ve seen your attempts at first aid. Please just leave this to the trained medical professional.” She gestured at Ursula with the sword. “You too. I want you at the top of your game.”

“Fuck you, I ain’t lettin’ your friend anywhere near me,” Ursula growled.

“Oh my god,” Makoto said with a frustrated sigh. “Look, you just had a fucking fistfight with an accurate recreation of a guy Cap’n Comet himself could barely beat. Please at least let the medic have a look at you.”

“Yeah sure I’m just gonna let the bad guy just sort of do whatever he wants to me.”

“Have you people never heard of the Hippocratic Oath?”

“Fuck you.”

“Look, if we intended to kill you do you really think Ami wouldn’t have stepped in to stop us by now?”

“Fuck you,” Ursula repeated as she pulled herself upright.

“Oh my god fine we can skip the medical attention, then. Go ahead and fight at a disadvantage! Whatever! I don’t care!”

“Just tell us what you want,” Vienna interjected.

“That’s easy.” Makoto pointed her sword at Ursula. “You. Fight me.”

“You don’t gotta ask me twice.” Ursula raised her fist and shifted back into a boxing stance once more.

“Wait, hold on,” Vienna said, putting a hand in front of Ursula. “Why?”

“Because she looks tough. Like hell am I letting you all leave without fighting her.”

“That’s it?”

“Sounds like good enough reasoning for me,” Ursula said, smirking in spite of herself. “You and me, one on one. No outside help. That means your sniper friend stays out of it.”

“That was the plan, yes. If any of your friends tries to interfere, though...” Makoto’s sentence trailed off, allowing the implication to hang heavily over everyone.

“Ursula,” Vienna interjected, voice tinged with worry. “I don’t think you should fight her on your own. Remember the last time you-”

“I’ve got Delphi and she doesn’t have the drop on me. I’ll be fine. Probably.”

“Ursu-”

“Vienna. Stop. If you interfere you’ll get shot.” It was Ursula’s turn to put a hand in front of Vienna. “‘No more close calls’, remember? That applies to you, too.”

“... Fine. Just... Please don’t die, okay?”

“I’ll try my best, babe. You do the same, okay?”

“Right.” Vienna turned to leave the ring. “C’mon, Viola. Let’s get out of the way.”

“R-right,” Viola muttered. She stood off to the side of Makoto, still shaking slightly from the sensation of the sword placed against her neck. “S-sorry.”

“Wait, hold on,” Makoto said, caught slightly off guard. “Did... did you just apologize to me?”

“F-for the arm thing. You’re mad about it and-”

“No I’m not.”

“What?”

Makoto shrugged nonchalantly. “You bluffed and I fell for it. Happens sometimes. Can’t let that kinda thing get to you.”

“I, um. I thought you were doing this because-”

“I told you why I’m doing this. I haven’t gotten to have a real fight with a real person in five hundred years. This is catharsis, pure and simple.” Makoto smiled, once again settling into an unsettlingly cheery mood. “No stakes, just a fight against a tough opponent for fun.”

“There are stakes, though,” Viola said with a frown. “If we don’t get to Ami soon she’s going to launch the nukes, right?”

“Hm? Oh, right, that.” Makoto shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, kid, it’ll be fine.” She gestured with her head. “Now get outta the ring before you get caught in the crossfire.”

“... Right,” Viola muttered, once more completely at a loss. She turned and limped her way out of the ring.

“And seriously, stop by Yuri and get that leg patched up. I promise he’s not gonna do anything to hurt you.”

“She’ll consider it,” Ursula said tersely.

“Good.”

“Are you okay?” Erin asked as Viola slipped through the ropes and out of the ring.

“I’m fine,” Viola muttered in response. She was not really fine – she was in a lot of pain and was bleeding fairly profusely. The back of her left pantleg was wet with blood enough to shine slightly, and walking was problematic. But, well, her mind was elsewhere.

“You don’t look fine, darling.”

“My leg’s still attached, I’ll be fine.”

“Viola,” Vienna said, simply and sternly.

“Come on,” Erin added, slipping one of Viola’s arms over her shoulder. “We’re going to see that medic of theirs.”

“... Are you sure about that?” Vienna said. “What if he-”

“You and I are still fresh and ready to fight, darling,” Erin said. “I very much doubt that he’ll be able to stand up to the both of us. And putting that aside, Viola gave the impression he’s more straightforward than his fellows. If we’re going to get a straight answer out of anyone, my bet is on him.”

“That makes sense, I guess. You okay with this, Viola?”

“I’d like some straight answers.”

“I meant, like, having one of the soldiers get close to you with your guard down.”

“Oh.” Viola frowned. As much as she was hurting, right now her mind was more focused on the aforementioned answers. And, more than that, she was focused on what Makoto had said. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she couldn’t take her mind off of it. Why was she so nonchalant about everything? Viola didn’t entirely know and that frustrated her for... some reason. “... Maybe one of you should stay behind and keep an eye on the fight.”

“Considering the sniper, we can’t interfere, even if it goes south,” Erin said. “Unfortunately, we have to leave this to Ursula. I trust her abilities.” She didn’t sound particularly confident in that statement, but she was right. They couldn’t help Ursula if she needed help.

“There’s not much point in one of us staying behind if we can’t do anything, yeah,” Vienna said, taking up a position on Viola’s other side. “What we can do is pressure the medic guy to explain what’s actually going on.”

“Right...” Viola muttered as they walked back over to the elevator, where Yuri was waiting for them.

“Pants off.”

“Excuse you?”

“You got shot in the leg. Your pants are in the way. I need you to take them off.” Yuri spoke tersely and matter-of-factly, which didn’t really sit well with Erin or Vienna.

“We haven’t actually agreed to let you touch my sister, you know.”

“That’s nice but you don’t get a choice.” He stepped forward and lifted Viola off of her friends’ shoulders. “I would rather not do this by force. Runs the risk of hurting the patient. Which is the exact opposite of what we want to happen.”

“H-hey! Let her go!”

“I’m not holding her anywhere,” Yuri responded simply, carrying Viola over to a nearby pillar. “Here. Not the most comfortable, but it’s the best you’re going to get. Sit here.”

“You can’t just-”

“Shut up.” Vienna winced slightly. For someone who was supposed to be more straightforward than the others, Yuri sure was coming across as pretty hard to deal with. She hadn’t gotten to interact with Makoto very much, or with Bob and Sunny at all, so she didn’t really have much frame of reference. But if this was better than they were, she found herself kind of glad she’d not had to talk to any of them yet. “Your sister’s bleeding out and you guys clearly lack the medical supplies to take care of it. I don’t. She’ll probably not bleed to death by the looks of it, but she’ll still recover much quicker if a real doctor deals with it.”

“With all due respect,” Erin said. “You’re a pre-splice doctor. Likely you know about as much about treating Viola as I do.”

“You’d be right if this required any kind of surgery or internal work. It doesn’t. She’s still technically human enough that basic patchwork that would work on me will work on her, too. Unless some stitches and a bandage makes post-splicers explode?” Erin didn’t respond. “I thought so. Now shut up and either help me get these pants off or get out of my way.”

“Right...” Erin muttered to herself. She knelt down on one side of Viola, removing the backpack and putting it to the side – considering the bleeding, it was probably for the best for Viola to change into a fresh pair of pants. That was true regardless of whether or not she elected to allow this clearly hostile person to lay a finger on Viola. “Why are you helping us?” she asked.

“Orders. We’re not supposed to let any of you die.”

“You just said Viola was probably not going to die, though,” Erin retorted. “I’d appreciate a real answer, please.”

“I’m a doctor,” Yuri said simply. “Helping people who are injured is literally my job description.”

“I find it extremely difficult to believe that it’s as simple as that.”

“It really is,” Yuri said with a shrug. “Five hundred years is a long time to hold onto complex motivations. I became a soldier because it was the easiest way to become a doctor and that was always my dream. Anything beyond that doesn’t matter any more because all the people involved except me have been dead for centuries.”

“I... suppose that makes sense,” Erin said, not entirely convinced it made any sense at all.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Being a combat medic, I saw a lot of people get hurt. A lot of people die. Usually under my watch. And surprisingly it turns out that people dying when it’s specifically your job to make sure they don’t die is a really shitty feeling. Lie down,” he ordered, and Viola did so. “You, lift her leg up for me. Get the wound above her heart.”

“Right.”

The patch of white fur on Viola’s leg was stained a dark red with blood, shiny and sticky. “It looks worse than it is, I think. Will have to wash it off, but this is barely a glancing blow. Might have some difficulties walking for a bit but that’s it.”

“Just tell me what to do,” Erin said. “I’m sure Vienna is willing to help, too.”

“The other rabbit? She already left.”

“what”

“I figured you’d noticed. She didn’t seem to be trying to be sneaky about it or anything.”

“I absolutely did not notice her leaving. When did that even happen?”

“Around when you spoke up. She went inside. My guess is she’s headed for the bleachers.”

“What?!” Viola interjected before wincing in pain.

“No sudden outbursts, you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Why on earth would she be doing that?” Erin said incredulously.

“The whole reason any of this is happening is because we’ve got you pinned down with a sniper, right? I figure she’s planning on taking that out of the equation.”

“Oh.” Erin frowned slightly. “And... you’re just going to let her do that?”

“Fight’s already started. Sunny’s done her job.”

“Why are you being so casual about this?!” Viola snapped, too deep in the grip of panic to care that said panic was making the pain worse. “She’s going to get herself killed!”

“We’ve got orders not to kill any of you. Don’t panic.”

“She has a gun!”

Viola continued to panic, struggling in Erin’s grip. “D-darling, he’s got a point. You’re making your wound worse.”

“Don’t worry. I know Sunny better than any of you do, so I can safely say this absolutely isn’t going to go the way either of you think it’s going to go.”

Viola frowned, violently unconvinced that Vienna was going to be alright. But, unfortunately, she wasn’t in the position to go help her – or drag her back kicking and screaming, either or.

“I’m going to go talk sense into her,” Erin said, slowly lowering Viola’s leg.

“I’d rather you stay here. I don’t need the extra pair of hands, but it’ll make things go much quicker.”

“But-”

“Don’t worry,” Yuri repeated himself flippantly. “Sunny’s got godlike aim but she can’t throw a punch to save her life. Close the distance quick enough and she won’t even have time to fire.”

“Okay, but what about the other way around? Don’t you want to make sure your friend doesn’t get hurt?”

“Just because Sunny can’t throw a punch doesn’t mean your friend stands any chance of hurting her. Trust me on this, she’s got her own ways of surviving.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

“Yeah, I figured. That’s enough talking, help me clean this blood up, then I’m going to need you to hold her still while I apply the stitches.”

“Right...” Erin wasn’t particularly pleased with the abrupt change in topic. Patching up Viola was important, but Vienna’s situation was clearly more urgent. He claimed things were going to be alright, but as she’d said; she wasn’t convinced. There was really only one thing she was certain about.

After this was over she was going to have Words with Vienna.

~~~~~~


The way Vienna saw things, there was really only one thing she could do. After she was reasonably certain Yuri wasn’t going to attempt to poison Viola, she set out to take out the sniper. It made perfectly logical sense, to her at least. The biggest threat on the table was absolutely Makoto, but the sniper was a close second. And, more pressingly, the sniper was forcing them to play along. She wanted to trust Ursula’s abilities as a fighter, she really did. But... she just couldn’t believe that the doberman was capable of beating an actual trained soldier with five hundred plus years of experience, superpowers or no. Not on her own, at least. And she certainly didn’t trust the soldiers to play fair. Certainly, they hadn’t played fair in any of their encounters thus far. Ambushes, knockout darts, and using the threat of sniper fire to keep the girls in line.

So fuck it, if they weren’t going to play fair, neither was Vienna.

It was surprisingly easy to make her way into the bleachers. Considering that this was a recreation of a building that was ancient even by pre-splice standards, the layout wasn’t really all that different from a modern sports arena. Which made sense, she supposed. Why fix what wasn’t broken?

The hard part was going to be finding the sniper. Vienna had a vague idea of what direction the shot had come from. Maybe. She was pretty sure, at least. Probably. But even with that narrowing things down a little bit, the Colosseum was huge and most of it was the stands. There was, at least, not an audience to contend with. That made things a bit easier – if Vienna saw a person, that was the sniper for certain. The problem was that she didn’t see a person. The stands were completely and utterly empty aside from herself.

“I don’t like this,” Edifice said tersely. “We should go back to the others.”

“We’ve got superpowers on our side,” Vienna responded, inking up. “I can block her shots and then kick her butt.”

“It’s easy enough to say that, but you still have to actually block her shots, Vienna.”

“Yeah, that’s obvious.”

“What I mean is that if her reflexes are faster than yours you will die.”

Vienna winced. “I mean... It can’t be that bad, right?”

“You saw what she did to Erin.”

“Well, uh, maybe if I close the distance quickly enough-”

“Vienna. A gun is still a gun even up close.”

“But it’s a really big gun, right? Probably pretty unwieldy and-”

“She’s a cyborg. And anyway even if that would be a problem, she’s also a soldier so she probably has another smaller gun on her.”

“Mnf.”

“This was a bad idea, Vienna.”

“... Maybe you’re right,” Vienna muttered. “But we’re here now.”

“Yes but there’s nothing stopping us from leaving.”

Vienna bit her lip. “She shot Viola. Doesn’t matter if she’s probably going to be fine, I can’t just let that stand.”

“Vienna-”

“I don’t care what happens to me. Viola is more important.”

“Vienna listen to yourself.”

“I’m not letting them get away with hurting Viola!”

“What will Viola do if you die?”

Vienna winced. “Fine. What do you propose I do, then?”

“You’re much more useful down with Viola and Erin than you are up here alone.”

“Fine. Fine! You’re right.” Vienna sighed as the heated emotions that had led her to this point dissipated. “I probably should have put more thought into this.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Two heads are better than one?”

“We can cover for each others’ emotional biases. That’s an advantage most people don’t have.”

“I guess? Mostly so far it’s you covering for my emotional biases.”

“Yes, well, once we finish here and move on to Locksmouth, I’m probably going to have to ask you to return the favour,” Edifice replied. “For now, just take a moment to cool down and then let’s go back to the others.”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s just do that.” Vienna sighed, letting some of the tension evaporate. It wasn’t going to go away entirely – there was an unfortunate baseline amount of stress from the situation. But at least she felt... better? Better. If only slightly. Enough that she felt comfortable de-inking.

Which turned out to be a mistake. Something like a hollow cylinder made of plastic or metal or something similar pressed up against the back of her head. She didn’t need to have experience being held at gunpoint to know that was what was happening here. Slowly, operating on instinct, she raised her hands in the air, and in return the gun was removed from her skull. Not that much had changed – it was still almost certainly trained on her head, and would probably kill her if fired. The soldiers at least seemed to specifically want to not kill them, so all Vienna had to do was not force the sniper’s hand.

The sniper – Sunny, if she recalled the name correctly – circled around, keeping her gun trained on Vienna. It was smaller than she would have expected, compact enough that even Viola could probably hold it one-handed. It was shaped like a gun, which was the most that Vienna could say. “I guess you were right,” she muttered sullenly. “She does have a smaller gun.” The actual rifle was strapped to her back at a slight angle – it had to be, because it was longer than she was tall. Hell, it was longer than Vienna was tall. A big ugly hunk of dull black... whatever the fuck it was that guns were made of, with a long cylindrical tube thing that was probably where the bullets (or whatever it fired) came out of and a small telescope-looking thing attached. Vienna had, at least, been right that it was too unwieldy to use effectively in close quarters.

But, again, that was what the smaller gun was for. Sunny gestured downwards with it, and Vienna got the picture. Slowly, she lowered herself onto her knees, and then further, sitting down on her feet, hands still in the air. The sniper nodded slightly before, with one hand still keeping her gun pointed at Vienna, the other reached down and pulled out what appeared to be a pair of handcuffs. “You’re kidding me.”

Sunny was not, in fact, kidding her. She circled back around behind the rabbit and shoved her so she was face down on the ground, quickly securing her arms behind her back with the cuffs and then sitting on her to make sure she didn’t get back up. The smaller woman wasn’t exactly very heavy, and were Vienna not handcuffed she’d probably be able to get up even with Sunny sitting on her. But, well, she was handcuffed. And Sunny still had two guns. Fighting back was absolutely not in the cards, not for now.

Not until she came up with a plan of action.

~~~~~~


Ursula was, understandably, on edge. She wasn’t at the top of her game, not after the beating she’d just taken. She’d won the fight against the Marquess, but barely, and not without taking some serious blows first. And that had been a part of the game. As far as she could tell, Ami wanted them to win in the end. Even if she hadn’t abruptly discovered she had futuresight, she’d probably have been able to pull ahead and secure a victory eventually – just a more narrow one.

But this wasn’t part of the game. And Makoto had a fucking sword. It was about two feet long, narrow and slightly curved with a single sharp edge. “So you’re not even gonna pretend to fight fair, then?” Ursula said, gesturing at the thing with her head.

“I’ve seen your fights, kid. Don’t pretend you can’t handle an armed opponent.”

“Still seems a bit unbalanced in your favour.”

“If I wanted things to be unbalanced in my favour, I’d have a gun, not a katana.”

Ursula frowned slightly. “I thought it was a sword.”

“A katana is a type of sword.”

“There’s types?”

“Don’t worry too much, it’s mostly arbitrary. Katana is just the Japanese word for sword.”

“I speak Japanese and I’ve never heard that word before in my lifetime.”

“How many times have you ever felt the need to talk about swords in Japanese?”

“... Okay, fair.”

“Anyway, that’s enough banter. Get ready to fight.”

“I’m plenty ready,” Ursula retorted, quickly shifting back into the same boxing stance she’d used against the Marquess.

“I want you at the top of your game, kid. No holding back. That means bring out the goo thing.”

“You said no outside help.”

“Look, I don’t know how your weird goo thing works. All I know is that you’re pretty clearly way stronger with it than without it. And that means this fight will be way more fun with it than without it.”

“So?”

“The whole reason I’m fighting you is because it looks like it’d be fun.”

Ursula’s frown deepened. That reasoning felt just as off now as it did when it had first been put forward. But, on the other hand, somehow she couldn’t deny that she agreed with it. “Fine,” she said, dark blue ink quickly flowing out from nowhere and enveloping her body. “I’m gonna go all out, but you’d better return the favour.”

“I intend to.”

“Good.”

Makoto made the first move, which was good. Ursula’s futuresight meant she had the advantage when reacting to attacks. It took her a few seconds to realize that Makoto hadn’t actually taken the first move yet. That was going to take some getting used to – she could already foresee it resulting in her taking a hit she didn’t need to if she wasn’t careful. But this time it didn’t, which was the important thing for now. It gave her enough warning that by the time Makoto grasped her sword with both hands and swung it vertically at the doberman, she had already leapt to the side out of range. “Gonna hafta try harder than that.”

Makoto didn’t respond beyond frowning and swinging her sword again, this time horizontally. And, again, Ursula had already jumped out of range of the swing. “Fine. Traditional kenjutsu bullshit was never my strong point anyway.” Makoto darted forward, much faster than she had been, swinging her sword with one hand, and then again and again. A veritable barrage of swings from every direction – and Ursula dodged them all easily. It helped that Makoto’s attacks were wild and big and telegraphed to hell and back. Ursula probably could have dodged them even without knowing they were coming.

“I could do this all day!”

“I don’t like this.”

“Not the time.”

Delphi, unsurprisingly, continued to talk directly into Ursula’s mind. “She’s making this too easy.”

“It’s almost as if she just said she’s bad with swords.”

“Ursula, you’ve seen her move before. She’s absolutely capable of being faster than this.”

That gave Ursula pause – though not too much, Makoto was still pressing her attack. Yes, her movements were wild and clumsy. And conspicuously slow. She’d not even considered how badly that lined up with their previous encounter. And that wasn’t the only thing that didn’t feel right about how the soldier was fighting. Yes, her attacks looked slow and clumsy, but... there were also no openings whatsoever. She could see the immediate future, so she knew for a fact that there was no safe way to approach her, or at least not from the front. So the obvious next step was to try and get to her side. Ideally the left, as she was holding the sword with her right hand. Except she couldn’t. Every time she tried to circle around, Makoto had already moved to face her and was throwing out another swing.

And that brought up another thing that felt wrong. If Makoto was so in control of the flow of the fight that Ursula couldn’t actually get close enough to hit her, why hadn’t she been backed into a corner yet? It couldn’t possibly be hard to do – they were in a boxing ring, there was only so much space to move in. And yet Makoto seemed to be almost intentionally throwing out attacks that encouraged Ursula to move away from the ropes every time she got close. It was almost as if the soldier wanted her to keep dodging.

That was when Ursula realized what was going on. “Shit. She’s trying to wear us out.”

“I thought you’d figure that out way sooner. Honestly, I’m almost disappointed in you.” Makoto lifted the sword up, up, up, and then sent it crashing down directly into the floor of the ring hard enough that the sword embedded itself into the ground. Ursula dodged the large attack easily, of course – it, like every other attack Makoto had thrown out, was big and slow and telegraphed. But that wasn’t the point. Ursula had been so focused on figuring out what Makoto was up to to notice until now, but her breathing was heavier, her chest felt like it was on fire, and her muscles felt sore. The sensations were muted, probably because she was inked, but the fact that she was feeling them at all was worrying. Clearly, she’d been exerting herself more than she’d thought.

And, while she was busy having this realization, Makoto kept right on pressing her offence. She continued forward, making a grab at Ursula’s neck that the doberman dodged – barely. She tried to put as little effort into her evasion as she could, but she couldn’t just let herself get grabbed by the throat. So instead she moved out of the way of the strike before it happened. Circled around behind Makoto and attempted to throw a quick right hook.

A right hook that was immediately aborted as Makoto pulled the sword out of the ground and slashed upwards, once again forcing Ursula backwards. She barely managed to successfully dodge that attack. Her movements were getting slow and sluggish. Her breath came slower and heavier. “What happened to being able to keep this up all day, kid?” Makoto said with a smirk.

Ursula did her best to not let the taunting get to her. She’d already seen how badly letting her temper get away from her could potentially go in the fight against the Marquess. If she wanted any chance of winning this, keeping levelheaded was going to be crucial. Or else she’d end up doing something stupid and impulsive that would get her killed like charge headfirst into the blender with blind aggression.

“... Wait,” Ursula muttered to herself.

“Wait?” Delphi replied.

“I’ve got a plan.”

“Oh no.”

“I’m gonna charge headfirst into the blender.”

“What?! That’s a terrible plan!”

But it was too late for Delphi to be the voice of reason because Ursula had already made her move. She stopped her retreat and instead, with a loud and enthusiastic battlecry, decisively stepped forward and grabbed the sword by the blade with both hands.

It hurt. A lot. But not nearly as much as it probably should have. The pain was undeniably there, but it felt distant and dulled even as the blade sank into Delphi’s gooey flesh (flesh? Whatever Inklings had in place of flesh.) Ursula didn’t intend to give it enough time to really cause any serious damage, though. She tightened her grip (which hurt a lot but she powered through it) and twisted with all her strength, accompanied with a knee to Makoto’s gut. The combination was enough to wrench the sword out of the soldier’s grip.

Ursula had to move quickly from there. Any hesitation, and she had no doubts that Makoto could retrieve her sword with ease if given the chance. So she didn’t give her one. The only minute hesitation came from flipping the sword around – she didn’t even bother trying to properly hold the thing. That would have taken too long. And anyway, she had no earthly idea how to effectively use a sword in combat. So instead she did something that just about anybody could do, regardless of skill level, and shoved the thing into Makoto’s torso as hard and deep as she fucking could.

Makoto stumbled backwards slightly, and Ursula took that opportunity to back off. Put some distance between herself and her opponent and prepare for whatever Makoto did next. If she did anything next. Typically getting two feet of metal shoved through your chest was enough to end most fights. This wasn’t most fights, though, she realized as Makoto slowly reached up and grabbed the sword’s hilt. “Not bad,” she said with a smirk. “I honestly didn’t see that coming! You probably could have won there if you’d pressed the offensive.”

“I stabbed you.”

“Cyborg.”

“... Oh. Right.”

“It’s gonna take a lot more than this to put a stop to me,” Makoto said as she pulled the sword out. There was, Ursula noted, no blood on it. “Gotta admit, though, you’ve kinda made me rethink how I’m approaching this fight.”

“How so?” Ursula asked, hoping to keep Makoto talking. The longer she monologued, the more time Ursula had to rest and recover.

“See, it’s been a long time since I’ve fought like this. Ami’s games were always about plans and strategies and coming up with clever bullshit to win or else she’d get bored. And then before that it was my time in the JSDF which was all about plans and strategies and following orders from rich old assholes who had never so much as thrown a fucking punch in their lives.” She held up the sword and looked at it wistfully. “But that shit? That ain’t me. I’m not a planner. I’m not a strategiser. That’s not what I’m good at.”

“And what are you good at, then.”

Makoto violently tossed the sword aside, out of the ring entirely, with enough force that it embedded itself in the ground. “I’m a thug. Plain and fucking simple. I beat the shit outta punks like you with my bare hands. Teach ‘em their fuckin’ places.” She reached up and grasped the collar of her bodysuit and tore, pulling it open at the seams and then removing the top half entirely, along with the harnesses, in one quick motion.

She discarded the tattered remains, leaving her clad only in pants, boots, and some bandages that concealed most of her breasts. They didn’t exactly leave much to the imagination, though they were significantly more modest than the typical understickers. Most of her toned, muscular flesh was visible, giving Ursula a good look at the tattoos that covered just about every inch of flesh. Swirls of red and blue and green and black forming patterns of clouds and wind, stopping at her wrists and neck and a large stripe of clean flesh down the middle of her torso. She turned, giving Ursula a good look at her back, and the centrepiece; a stylized image of a wolf from which all the rest of the ink seemed to flow. “Take a good look. Getting to see my ink is a rare privilege. Sign of respect.”

“It’s... impressive.” Intimidating was probably a better word for it. Something about the design made Ursula’s hair practically stand on end.

“Took me years to get it finished,” she said as she turned back around. She rolled her neck slowly over her shoulders and cracked her knuckles. “Now, let’s fight for real.”

“Shit,” Ursula muttered under her breath.

“This is a good thing, right?” Delphi said as Ursula raised her fists and shifted her feet. “She’s probably more vulnerable like this, and she doesn’t have the sword anymore. That evens the playing field.”

“Hell no, I’ve seen this exact thing in like a billion martial arts movies. She took her shirt off, we’re fucked.”

~~~~~~


Vienna had not yet managed to come up with a plan of action. Escaping wasn’t the issue. Sunny wasn’t particularly heavy, though she got the impression that she wasn’t being sat on with the intent of keeping her in place. The sniper’s attention was on the field, monitoring the other two girls and making sure they didn’t do anything they weren’t supposed to. Which really put how bad her so-called plan had been into perspective. Of course Sunny had known she was coming. It turns out trying to get the drop on someone who was specifically watching you to make sure you didn’t do exactly that wasn’t going to work out. Stupid.

And now she was literally directly on top of her. Vienna couldn’t do anything without Sunny knowing it. There was nothing stopping Vienna from getting up, but Sunny would know and Sunny had a gun. Getting out of the handcuffs would be easy, all she’d have to do is ink up and just sort of goo her way out of them. But Sunny would know and Sunny had a gun. Vienna could fairly easily get the gun away from Sunny using her force fields, but she needed her hands free to do that. And she could get her hands free, but Sunny would know and Sunny had a gun.

That was the extent of what Vienna had come up with so far. Anything she could think of to proactively get out of this mess would only serve to get her shot. If she inked up first she could at least probably survive a shot or two. Maybe. But she didn’t really want to find out for sure. And, obviously, staying uninked and starting a fight was a death sentence. She didn’t know enough about guns to be able to say for certain – maybe she could power through getting shot and pull out a win? But that would still leave her with a gunshot wound. And they still had Ami’s game to deal with. They’d already had to wait to recover from debilitating wounds once. And it was pretty clear at this point that Ursula was going to be left completely out of commission after this was dealt with. She was their best fighter, and if Vienna also ended up needing to recuperate that just left one person to protect Viola. And...

Well, Vienna felt bad to even think it, but Erin had very thoroughly demonstrated herself prone to panic attacks at inopportune moments, making her a less than ideal bodyguard. And, regardless of her protestations to the contrary, Viola wasn’t a fighter period. Someone had to make sure she was safe.

She had to think this out. Just jumping into things without any kind of forethought or planning would get her hurt, and as established getting hurt was unacceptable. The problem was that it wasn’t possible to get out from under Sunny without the sniper being aware of it. So, obviously, step one was to figure out a way to get Sunny off of her. Some sort of distraction. But then once again, that brought up the problem that there was just about nothing she could do without Sunny knowing. The best case scenario would be for the distraction to not come from her at all. Which would actually not be too hard to manage. Sunny wasn’t paying any attention to her – she didn’t need to, that’s why she was being sat on – all her attention was instead on Viola and Erin. So therefore all Vienna needed to do was get Viola and Erin to do something that would get all of Sunny’s attention.

... Which raised the issue of how the fuck did she manage that without being able to move her hands.

Or at least not being able to move them much. Not enough to meaningfully use her powers, at least. But she didn’t need to use her powers. She just needed to signal Erin. And maybe, just maybe, she had enough wiggle room to manage that.

~~~~~~


“Okay. That should do it. You can put her leg down now – carefully. Slower than that.”

“Okay,” Erin replied tersely as she lowered Viola’s leg as slowly as she could without just continuing to hold it in place. Yuri had been very particular about what she needed to do, and had very clearly not been impressed with her aptitude as an assistant.

“Avoid putting too much strain or weight onto it for a while. Don’t want to risk tearing the stitches and making this whole thing pointless.”

“Whatever,” Viola said. She and Erin both seemed to be running extremely low on patience, but the rabbit in particular very much had her mind elsewhere. “Can I put pants on now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Erin, give me some spare pants.”

“Right,” Erin replied as she dug through the backpack. “We’re starting to run low on spares so we’re going to need to maybe try to avoid getting blood all over our clothing from now on instead of actively seeking it out.”

“Wait, how are we running low? You changed, I need new pants...”

“We weren’t exactly planning to be gone for more than a few hours,” Erin said. “There’s enough here for all of us to change outfits completely once.”

“I guess that’s also why we’ve got no water.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have water?” Yuri interjected.

“You stay out of this,” Viola snapped.

“You’ve been down here for three days with no water. That’s a very long time to go without water. I don’t know enough about post-splice biology to say for sure, but pre-splicers could last maybe a hundred hours or so in ideal conditions.”

“I said shut up.”

“Viola, darling, I think maybe you need to calm down.”

“I’m as calm as I’m getting any time soon.”

“Give me five minutes and I can get you some canteens.”

“What?”

“I’m honestly surprised you’re capable of functioning at all having gone almost three days without water. Like I said several times so far, we very specifically want you to not die.”

Viola frowned. “Fine. Whatever. Don’t expect any thanks.”

“I didn’t,” Yuri responded before leaving.

“Um. Pants, please,” Viola said after a moment of awkward silence.

“Oh, yes, right.” Erin tossed a pair of sweatpants that were ironically almost indistinguishable from Viola’s usual clothing to the rabbit. “Please be careful putting them on.”

“They’re just pants, I- ow!” Viola winced. “Okay. Bending my knees is problematic. U-um, could you maybe...”

“Of course, Darling. Hold still.”

“Mnf.” Viola closed her eyes and tried really hard not to think about how close Erin’s boobs were to her thighs. “Thanks I can handle the rest without bending I think.”

“Do you want a hand getting up?”

“Yes, please.”

With some help from Erin, and a significant amount of futile effort trying not to think about Erin’s boobs, Viola managed to stand up. Staying standing was a bit more difficult, and she ended up leaning on a nearby pillar for support. “Can you walk on your own?”

“If I have to, yeah, I think so.”

“Well, I don’t think you have to for now at least. I can act as a human crutch outside of emergencies.”

“U-um,” Viola said with a slight blush. “If, um. If you’re going to do that, c-could you maybe, um...”

“Is something wrong, darling?”

“N-no. It’s fine.” God why did she have to be so hot? “H-how are you holding up?”

“Certainly better than I have any rights to, considering.” She flexed her right arm in emphasis. “I suppose I should ask you the same, but I think I can guess.”

“Mnf,” Viola grunted. “... I’m worried about Vienna.”

“I’m sure she’s fine, darling,” Erin said in her best attempt at being reassuring.

“I wish I could be that confident.”

“If she’d been shot, we would have heard it.”

“I guess so...” Viola said, clearly not convinced.

“I-” Any further conversation was interrupted by Erin’s PET ringing. “Oh!”

Viola perked up immediately. That wasn’t an emergency alert signal, that was a call. It was possible it was Ami, she supposed. But Ami didn’t really have a reason to call them right now. And she couldn’t think of a single other person who might be on the other end that she wouldn’t be happy to hear from. It could be fucking Lars for all she cared and she’d be overjoyed. “Answer it!” she said urgently, as though Erin wasn’t almost certainly feeling the exact same way.

“R-right,” Erin stammered, pulling her PET out and picking up the call. “He-”

“Get off of me!”

Viola could feel the colour draining from her face. That was Vienna.

“Wh-” Erin attempted to ask what was going on, but was immediately interrupted by Vienna on the other end.

“Don’t!” she shouted, leaving a conspicuous pause before continuing, “sit on me you asshole.” Erin opened her mouth to say something, but Viola immediately slammed a hand over her snout, placing the other index finger over her mouth in the universal symbol for silence. “What, you think you can just handcuff me and then sit on me and I’m out of the fight?” Vienna continued. “My friends are going to notice that something’s up any minute now. Erin could easily figure out exactly where we are with her growth powers and Viola wouldn’t have a hard time sneaking up on you with her invisibility powers. There’s no way you could deal with all three of us at once. And then we’re going to be able to help Ursula without any interference!”

Viola and Erin looked each other in the eye as Vienna started to repeat herself – presumably in case they didn’t immediately pick up on what was going on and what the plan was. Neither Erin nor Viola needed it. The mouse quickly hung up and nodded. “Are you ready?”

“Why are we wasting time talking, she needs help.”

“I-”

“And where do you two think you’re going?”

“Oh god dammit.”

Yuri was carrying what seemed to be a sort of belt or harness with several canteens strapped to it, which he dumped on the ground. “It’s like your friend said. Sunny probably couldn’t handle all three of you at once. So I’m going to make sure she won’t have to handle all three of you at once.” With that, he calmly pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Erin. “Sit down,” he ordered.

“Right,” Erin muttered. “Plan B then.” She took a confident step forward. “I don’t think you’ve quite thought this through very thoroughly.”

Yuri’s facial expression remained static, completely unintimidated. He moved his thumb to a lever looking thing on the top of the gun that he slowly moved. There was a soft click. “I said sit down.”

“You should have aimed at Viola.”

“She’s not a threat. You are.”

“Exactly why you should have aimed at her.”

Erin moved as quickly as she was capable of. She wasn’t faster than Yuri was on the trigger, but she didn’t need to be. The first shot collided with her thigh after it had been enveloped in ink, the projectile passing harmlessly through to the other side. Mostly harmlessly – it left a big hole that took a moment to heal, and it hurt like a motherfucker. But it didn’t stop her, and by the time he’d fired his second shot she’d grown to her maximum height and it was far too small to pose any kind of real threat.

He didn’t manage to get a third shot fired before Erin’s foot collided with his chest and sent him flying into a nearby pillar. “Viola, I can handle this. Deal with Vienna’s situation.” No response. “... Viola?”

Viola was already gone. Erin sighed wearily. “Well, they are sisters, I suppose.”

~~~~~~


Unfortunately, Viola wasn’t entirely sure she’d be very useful against Sunny. She had a plan, sort of. She just wasn’t sure it was a good plan. And, honestly, most of it was for after she rescued Vienna and they dealt with Sunny. She could sneak up on her pretty easily with her powers, but after that it was all improvisation. She’d briefly stopped to take the inertial dampener out of the backpack. It was fairly hefty, so maybe she could use it as a sort of improvised bludgeon. But she’d grabbed it for a reason and that reason wasn’t to hit Sunny with. She didn’t want to run the risk of breaking it and not being able to enact the actual main part of her plan.

Which unfortunately didn’t leave her with much in the way of options. Maybe find a big rock? But the arena’s floor was mostly dirt, and considering that this stupid place was apparently more than two thousand years old in the real world, the recreation was entirely intact so she couldn’t rely on finding some convenient rubble. For similar reasons, there didn’t seem to be any other potential improvised weapons lying about.

There was, she supposed, Sunny’s gun. The big one was obviously out of the question – Sunny was probably using it. But it was also big, probably too big to use in close quarters or in a situation where you needed to shoot fast. So she probably had a smaller gun on her somewhere, like the one Yuri had used to threaten Erin or the one Bob had used to threaten her back when all this had started. The problem there was that it was on her. Actually getting it away from her was probably beyond Viola’s abilities. And even if it wasn’t, she had no idea how to fire a gun so she’d probably be reduced to using it as an ineffective bludgeon.

So she had to go with plan D, then. The inertial dampener, a rock or rubble, and stealing Sunny’s weapon were all out of the question, and Viola was probably not capable of winning in a fistfight even factoring in Aubrey.

But Vienna, on the other hand, was probably more than a match for the sniper. All Viola had to do was create an opening.

Thankfully, they weren’t particularly hard to find considering that the stands were empty aside from them and Vienna was still loudly objecting to being sat on. They weren’t even too far away from the entrance. Viola moved extremely slowly and carefully, making her way to where they were and circling around behind them.

As a result, she didn’t make it before Sunny pulled the trigger and fired at Erin. Viola’s heart caught in her throat, if only for a moment, but the giant mouse barely reacted. She was just too big for bullets to be particularly effective. Sunny clicked her tongue sharply in frustration, before preparing to fire a second shot. Viola didn’t intend to give her that chance.

“If it didn’t work the first time, It’s not gonna work the second time! Now get offa me!” Sunny didn’t react, of course. Vienna didn’t expect her to. Erin was acting as a distraction, which meant that hopefully Sunny’s attentions were off of Viola. But unfortunately that was hard to verify because, again, she was being sat on. Vienna wriggled slightly, though with no real intent of actually throwing Sunny off – anything more than a token effort would probably get her shot. The actual goal was to keep the sniper distracted and not able to properly shoot. If she was really lucky, it would be enough to make her move to steadier ground, at which point she could finish this. All she needed was for Sunny to not be on top of her anymore.

Sunny did not decide to move to steadier ground. She didn’t get the chance, because an invisible rabbit tackled her from behind, knocking her to the ground and causing her to drop her big gun. “Leave my sister alone!” Viola screamed, wrestling with the smaller woman. The two of them rolled over each other several times – which moved them both a decent distance away from the big gun.

Vienna saw her opportunity and inked up, using Edifice’s gooey texture to easily escape the handcuffs. From there it was just a matter of putting one shield around the big gun and another around one of Sunny’s arms. “Viola! Let go!”

Viola did so, jumping back slightly to put some space between herself and Sunny. That was everything that Vienna needed – she flung her arms upwards and then dropped the shield, sending both Sunny and her gun into the air and over the side of the Colosseum. “There. Problem solved.”

Vienna de-inked and then immediately charged forward to hug Viola. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Viola responded, de-inking and hugging Vienna back. “You’re okay now, that’s all that matters.”

“No, no, I don’t mean I’m sorry for getting captured. I mean... About earlier.”

“Oh.”

“You just proved me wrong. You can handle yourself and I was just being a neurotic jerk.”

“Don’t say that,” Viola responded, hugging her sister tighter. “You were right.”

“I was?”

“Sort of. I can’t handle myself, not alone. None of us can. You went off alone and got captured. Ursula tried to fight that Marquess guy alone and barely won. And there’s no way I would have survived tackling Sunny if you hadn’t been here to get rid of her.”

“I... guess,” Vienna said, not sounding entirely convinced. “Erin seems to be handling herself just fine.”

“Yeah but Erin’s twenty feet tall and is fighting the team medic. It’s not a very fair fight.”

“I guess. I just kinda don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“What I mean is that I don’t think we’re going to be able to win this if we can’t work together.”

“That I can get behind,” Vienna responded. “We’re... kind of not good at that, are we?”

“We dealt with Sunny together, didn’t we?”

“That doesn’t really count as teamwork.”

“I held her in place and you punched her. Sort of. If that’s not teamwork, what is?”

“I guess, but...” Vienna sighed. “I mean, when was the last time you and I actually talked to each other? Like, just you and me, one on one?” Viola opened her mouth to respond, but Vienna interrupted. “Before coming down here, I mean.”

Viola didn’t have an answer to that.

“You’re right, though. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with this if it weren’t for you and Erin.”

“Yeah...” Viola broke the hug, turning and walking over to where she’d stashed the inertial dampener. “Speaking of teamwork, I... Think I have a plan to deal with Makoto. But we’re all going to have to contribute.”

“A plan?”

“Yeah.” Viola picked up the inertial dampener. “You’re... Probably not going to like it, though.”

“I-” Vienna stopped herself. “I’m going to trust you. Just tell me what the plan is.”

“Okay,” Viola said, before taking a deep breath and then doing just that.

Vienna pursed her lips tightly. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

~~~~~~


It didn’t take long for Ursula to realize that she’d made a mistake. Let herself get complacent. Maybe even a bit cocky. Gotten too confident in her futuresight, and thus had forgotten that it didn’t matter if she knew what was coming if she wasn’t fast enough to react to it. And, unfortunately, though she might have been able to manage that with the boost from being inked if she were at the top of her game, right now she wasn’t at the top of her game. The fight with the Marquess had already taken a lot out of her, and then Makoto had actively attempted to wear her out and Ursula had completely failed to notice until it was too late.

Now the fight was kicking into high gear and she absolutely needed to be at the top of her game, and here she was exhausted and sore and running purely on adrenaline. Being inked helped a bit, reducing what she was fairly certain would be agony to just a dull burning ache that lurked in the background. But it didn’t change the fact that her reflexes were slowed to a crawl. Which wouldn’t have been quite as much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact even a glancing blow from Makoto felt like getting slammed by a runaway freight train.

And that one glancing blow snowballed. Left her dazed and stunned long enough to take a much more solid blow to the chest, and then another. Punches and kicks came flying faster than Ursula was capable of keeping track of. Scattered enough, thankfully, that Delphi seemed to be staying intact for now. But who knew how long that’d keep up? She tried to throw in some kind of counterattack, attempt to reclaim some momentum, but her punches were just as sluggish as her reflexes. She was just too slow to get any hits in.

Ursula could feel her heart sinking as she realized she wasn’t going to win this.

“Y’know, I did warn you,” Makoto said in between blows. “I gave you the chance to back off, take some time to recover and get patched up and shit. You can’t say this isn’t your own damn fault.” She paused her beatdown and backed off. “This isn’t any fun. Too one sided. Tell you what, I’ll let you throw the next punch. No strings attached! You can even take all the time you need to recover.”

“Host,” Delphi interjected warily. “This is clearly a trap.”

“No shit.” Ursula glared. “Lemme guess. You said you’d let me throw the next punch but you didn’t say you’d let me land it?”

“You got me, you got me,” Makoto said, raising her hands defensively.

“I’m not an idiot, you know,” Ursula growled in response. Though honestly she was kind of feeling like a bit of an idiot right now.

“Hey, don’t feel too bad, kid. As far as I’m concerned, being a bit stupid’s a good thing. I can respect that more than I can respect scheming assholes. You’ve just gotta figure out how to be a bit smarter about fighting people, that’s all.”

“Izzat what you’re calling it? ‘cause I’d sooner call it not fighting fair.”

“This isn’t boxing, kiddo. No rules in a street fight. I’m just trying to make this a bit more interesting, but it seems like you don’t really appreciate my efforts. So I guess that means it’s time to end it.” This was it, Ursula supposed. She closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable finishing blow.

A finishing blow that didn’t come. Slowly, she opened one eye, and then the other. At first, she didn’t really see much of anything – the fight had left her vision slightly blurred, and it took a moment of concentration for things to come into focus and for her to register Makoto just standing there. Her arms were spread outwards, clearly not of her own will given how she was struggling. It took another few moments for the thing she was struggling against to come into proper focus, though Ursula already had an idea. Thin white lines forming a vague spherical wireframe around both of Makoto’s wrists.

“Yeah, I’d say it’s time to finish this alright,” Vienna said.

“Wh- get off of me you little shit!” Makoto said, yanking an arm forward with enough force to shift one of the force fields, just a bit. Vienna stumbled forward slightly but very quickly steadied herself and pulled it back.

“Gimme a minute, I’m just a distraction.”

“Wh- oof!”

“Ursula!” Viola shouted from... somewhere. Ursula couldn’t actually see her. But, again, she had an idea. “Turn your inertial dampener on! Max power! Quickly!”

Ursula didn’t stop to think. Didn’t stop to consider that this wasn’t particularly sportsmanlike, whatever it was. Didn’t even take a second to try and figure out what the plan was. She spoke, on reflex more than consciously. “Oral code: Pillowfight.”

Viola made herself visible as she retreated to the edge of the ring, at which point Vienna dropped the shields. Both, Ursula idly noted, were inked. But she only noted that fact idly, because most of her attention was on Makoto, and on the straps over her shoulders and the bulky hunk of metal they held on her back. Ursula took a moment to feel vindicated in her preference for straps over threadlink when it came to that particular bit of kit. The soldier’s arms dropped to her sides in slow motion, moving like she was submerged in molasses. “What the fuck is this?!”

“This,” Ursula said tersely. “Is an inertial dampening field turned up to full force. It took me years of practice to be able to move at all when it’s turned up this high. It’s not just a matter of overpowering the field. You’ve gotta know how to compensate for it and how to deal with its presence. Which you don’t.” Ursula took her time walking towards Makoto – she needed a moment to recover her strength, after all.

“This doesn’t seem very sportsmanlike.”

“Yeah, well, it’s like you said. Ain’t no rules in a streetfight, bitch.”

Ursula grabbed Makoto by the throat with her right hand – not particularly tightly. She didn’t intend to strangle her opponent, just hold her in place. She would have grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, but that wasn’t an option for obvious reasons. She pulled her left fist back, and then flung it forward with all her strength. “Oral code: Full Impact!” she shouted just before her punch would have hit the field and come to a stop, resulting in exactly what the oral code implied. The force of the punch would have been enough to send Makoto flying, and it did, just a bit. “Oral code: Pillowfight.”

Makoto continued to fly, but in slow motion. Ursula calmly circled around to her side, clenching her fists together and lifting them above her head before sending them crashing down like a hammer. “Oral code: Full Impact,” she cried just before they connected, slamming into Makoto and sending the soldier crashing down onto the ring hard enough to bounce. This time, Ursula didn’t bother to turn the inertial dampener field back on – she just stomped the woman’s chest as hard as she could before she got the chance to recover. And then again and again and again, boot colliding with chest over and over in a way that would have seriously injured a normal human. Ursula didn’t give a shit. Makoto had been shish kebabed by a fucking sword and had barely even flinched. This hadn’t been nearly enough to finish things.

“Ursula, get outta the ring.”

“She’s not done yet.”

“I know, but you’ve been fucked up pretty badly. We need you back in fighting order as soon as possible.”

“Ugh,” Ursula grunted. Vienna was right, but there was no way this was enough to finish her off. “Gimme five minutes.”

“Don’t worry, darling,” Erin interjected. “I believe I’ve got a much more efficient way to deal with this problem.”

“Waddaya mea-” Ursula started, but didn’t finish before Erin abruptly grew twenty feet tall. “Ah. Yeah, that’d do it. Gimme a sec to get outta the blast radius.”

“Take your time, darling.”

“Oral code: Pillowfight,” Ursula said, ensuring that Makoto wouldn’t be going anywhere while she cleared her way out of the ring. Once Erin was satisfied that there was no risk of crushing her packmates, she turned around, facing away from the ring. And then she jumped. Not particularly high – she didn’t need to jump particularly high. The important thing was the slight backwards angle of the jump and the fact that she lifted her legs in the air as she did it.

“Oral code: Full Impact.”

Makoto stared upwards. “Son of a bitch,” was the last thing she managed to say before Erin’s ass collided with the boxing ring with enough force to completely demolish it and to leave a mousebutt shaped crater in the arena’s dirt floor.

“And that’s that dealt with. I’m going to stay here for a moment to make absolutely certain she’s out of the fight.”

“Good idea. What about the sniper?”

“Me and Viola dealt with her,” Vienna said. “I threw her out of the arena and I threw her gun in a different direction to make absolutely sure she was out of the fight.”

“What about medic dude?”

“He gave up,” Erin said with a shrug. “He said that I was, and I quote, significantly above his paygrade. Oh, yes, speaking of which, we’re no longer running low on water.”

“Nice.” Satisfied that they were no longer in any danger, Ursula collapsed backwards, de-inking and splaying on the ground. “I’m gonna pass out for a hundred years if that’s okay with y’all.”

“Don’t rest just yet,” Erin said. “Have something to eat and some water first.”

“Fair enough. I, uh, don’t think I’m gonna be able to get up anytime soon, though.”

“Here, let me help you.” Viola quickly rushed over to Ursula’s side and did just that, pulling the larger girl into a sitting position. “Are you okay?”

“Better’n I would be if you guys hadn’t interfered. Thanks.”

“It was Viola’s idea,” Vienna said, taking up a spot on Ursula’s other side.

“No foolin’? Well, hey, it fuckin’ worked out great. Good job, Viola.”

“I just, um. I just figured we’d do better if we teamed up. You know?”

“Clearly you figured right. Maybe there’s something to this whole havin’ a functional relationship thing.”

“Well, ideally after we get out of here we’re not going to have much further need to fight,” Erin said. After a moment’s thought, she continued, “But I suppose it is nice to get along again. It’s... been a while.”

“There is still Echelon,” Vienna said. “I’d rather not have to fight her, but I don’t think we should ignore the reality that we might not get a choice in the matter.”

“Yeah...” Viola didn’t really like thinking about it, but unfortunately Vienna was right. No matter how this ended up turning out, the only way she could foresee this ending without fighting Echelon was if Ami beat them and launched the nuclear bombs, or if Osoth beat Echelon before they managed to get out of Ami’s game. “I guess we’ll just have to take things as they come.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not fighting anyone any time soon,” Ursula said. “I can’t move.”

“We’ve still got time left,” Vienna said. “Hell, we’ve probably got more time than we did before we got a supply of water.”

“Speaking of which, could I have some water? I literally can’t remember the last time I drank anything.”

“Oh, shoot,” Erin muttered. “I didn’t think to bring them.”

“I’ll go get them,” Viola volunteered, pulling away from Ursula’s side. “It’s not that far.”

“Don’t forget about your leg,” Vienna said. “I’ll go.”

“We can both go.”

“You can barely stand straight. It’s fine, I’m in the best shape of all of us.”

“Strictly speaking, I would probably be in the best shape of any of us right now, darling,” Erin said.

“Yeah, but we need you to keep Makoto in place.” Vienna stood up. “It’s fine, I can carry some water bottles on my own. You all just stay here.” With that, she turned to head towards where the canteens had been left.

And immediately froze up.

“Bravo!” Bob said with an insufferable smirk, slowly clapping his hands. “Impressive work. Damn impressive work! I don’t think I’ve seen anyone beat Makoto in a straight up fight in the entire time I’ve known her. And I’ve known her for a very long time.”

“What do you want,” Vienna spat, immediately re-inking.

“Do you want me to squash him?”

“Hey, hey, easy girls, I ain’t here for a fight,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “If y’all can beat Makoto, I don’t stand a chance. I’m just here to collect my men.” He shrugged. “If y’wanna leave, we won’t stop you. Don’t think that means you’re off’a the hook, of course. Still got Ami to deal with. I don’t think you’ll even be able to find the exit if she doesn’t want you to.”

The tension was thick enough that cutting it would have been difficult. The air hung heavy over everyone gathered, only broken when Bob gestured with his head at Erin. “Wouldja mind gettin’ off of her so I can get her out of here?”

“R-right,” Erin muttered, pulling herself upright and shrinking down at the same time.

“Good girl,” Bob said, making his way over to the crater where Makoto’s mostly wrecked body lay. “Gimme a minute and we’ll be outta y’all’s hair.”

Viola frowned, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. There was something nagging her at the back of her mind. Something important, though she wasn’t entirely sure what.

“... Wait.”

She had spoken entirely on instinct. Everyone turned to look at her with expressions of complete bafflement on their faces, as though wondering what the fuck she was thinking – a question she wasn’t sure she could answer herself. Even Bob seemed caught off guard, raising an eyebrow. But somehow this felt right. This felt like the thing to do. Slowly, something was coalescing in the small rabbit’s brain. A plan was formulating.

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