Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Takamachi Nanoha     It's not every day Nanoha has to fight a god. She vaguely knew of Arthur from other things, but fighting him is something she's not so sure she's up for! Then again, she's not sure what to expect in the tournament, ever. Fighting Fate and Fate in the qualifiers is really not what she expected either, after all!

    But the young mage is ready as she'll ever be. Qualifiers don't get quite the crowd that normal matches do, so when Nanoha alights near the Devil's Castle, her staff held at the ready. A polite bow to the judges and what spectators are there, and then another when Arthur arrives. "Hello!"
Arthur Lowell     Arthur, on the other hand, pretends to know exactly what he's doing. When he arrives, it's with a giant show; he has a tremendous airship, long and pointed in its design, and clearly some kind of refitted war vessel, manned by stout little iguanas, breaks through the cloud layer with blaring music, aggressive lightshows, a fog machine so big that it can rival the weird weather at the base of the mountains. The spotlights and fireworks it's emitting are so hyped up it gives you heart problems just looking at it.

    The boy himself leaps off his craft, with a spray of nuclear-powered fireworks, and lands somewhere near the castle as well, though he takes a point further up the mountains or hills, making sure he has the high ground. Not because he wants it for tactical reasons, but because he can stand there and cross his arms and have the wind dramatically whip his hood around while he grints and shouts down to Nanoha. "Well HEY, if it ain't the SECOND PLACE BLAST FROM THE PAST. Heard you KICKED some ASS the LAST TIME you came through here. HEY! I don't wanna get off this BATTLEFIELD without some SERIOUS LUMPS from the '21 FINALIST, kid, so if you got the PAIN, you best BRING IT."

    He dramatically slams one fist into the opposite palm, and then lifts off just a bit from his perch further up, going dramatically weightless as the clock counts down to the match start.
Takamachi Nanoha     Wow. That's... quite an entrance, Nanoha has to admit. The fanfare and the explosions and the YELLING really get her fidgeting, and as the introduction comes, the girl actually blushes a little. "Ehehe... yeah, number two, but I think the competition is stiffer this year!" She rubs the back of her head, all smiles. "I um... I think I'll just do what I usually do and test out some new spells, if that's okay? I don't really want to go all out unless we get too into it."

    She does, at least, realize she sometimes gets too into it.

    "So, it's nice to meet you!" the girl chirps, ankle-wings fluttering and carrying her upward. At the same time, her Device clatters as the countdown approaches.

    <LOAD CARTRIDGE. ACCEL SHOOTER, ORBITER MODE.>

    The chime of the Device is followed by to pinpoints of pink light spitting out from the ruby head, which start to orbit her body. Then four more of the marble-sized globes start orbitting, a little further out. This is followed by another layer at eight, and a final one at sixteen, for a total of 30 orbiting spheres surrounding the small girl.

    She smiles pleasantly, "Do your best!" Said with earnest sincerity as the first of the 'marbles' shoots at high speed like a bullet toward Arthur.
Arthur Lowell     "HA HA HA!" Arthur laughs uproarously, taking a ready stance. "I don't care what you THROW at me, long as it can HIT HARD!" With a sudden "beep", his hands are occupied by a large steel BATTLE BROOM, with gleaming razor bristles. He flips it around his hands while Nanoha readies her assault. "HELL YEAH it's nice to MEET ME, I'm HELLA CHARMING. You bring out the MAD FUCKIN' SCIENCE, I'll drop the LEGIT FLOW and you'll get to see how that shit WORKS OUT in the REAL FIGHTS!"

     And then he blasts forward as soon as Nanoha fires! As per the norm, he does his best to be as dramatic as possible. When the shot heads for him, he takes it head on, square on the jaw! Nanoha's heavy offensive power produces a tremendous crack and a heavy bruise on the arm that he brings up to intercept the strike, jarring it badly and reducing some melee offensive ability for later.

    Doesn't stop him. He's going to close the distance. That was a heavy strike, so he'd rather not deal with too many more. As soon as he gets about as close as it looks like he'll be able to get, he'll immediately begin a heavy combat shout, gushing a shotgun spray of bright white bolts of light, not only at Nanoha, but at the array of orbiting lights around her, intending to disrupt the attack she's built up, and prevent it from striking him so hard again! He's not using any of his speed-enhancing equipment yet. He's gotta feel out this fight first...
Takamachi Nanoha     <PROTECTION POWERED> the staff chimes. Raising Heart immediately raises a barrier, which absorbs that scattershot of bolts that slams in toward Nanoha. The outer two layers of the orbiting marbles of light are outside the sphere, though, and when Nanoha streaks upward and away at high speed, many of the little dots vanish and don't follow with her. "Ah... I don't really like REAL fighting," she admits with a smile. "It's kind of dangerous!" Arthur probably knows that such a statement doesn't mean she can't fight.

    Indeed, she does a quick veer around the tower of the Devil's Hand castle, and at the same time several of those remaining marbles shoot off at high speed in various directions. Maybe Arthur had best pour on the speed after all, because the scattershot of spheres of pink is pretty wild... except one of them, that suddenly does a hard right-angle turn and bolts in low, toward his legs from one side.
Arthur Lowell     "HELL FUCKIN' YES, it's DANGEROUS!" Arthur shouts out, starting to pursue. As more of those marbles whoosh in, he whips his broom around and BLASTS forward at a higher speed. The bristles have blossomed to reveal a three-thruster set of rocket boosters! This allows him to outpace several of those marbles. The one that darts in towards his leg is tracked, mentally; Arthur has incredible abilities of spatial comprehension! He flips around in a barrel roll, going briefly upside down to grab the marble in one hand with a heavy THUNK that indicates some palm bruising. Then he crushes the construct against his head like a rambunctious frat-boy crushing a beercan. "YEAH!" He calls out, aggressively. "But DON'T WORRY! I got a WHOLE LOT OF BLOOD and I'm not even USING most of it! You BLEED WHAT I MEAN, kid?!"

    Nanoha veers AROUND one of the mountains. Arthur just veers through it, encasing himself in a gravitational barrier and attempting to crush through the silence of the rocks and the blindside Nanoha with a heavy, intense GRAVITY RAM from the side! "Ain't NOTHING ELSE besides REAL FIGHTS that gets the HEART PUMPING and the SOUL BURNING and the BLOOD BOILING! The DANGER is practically the BEDT PART!"
Takamachi Nanoha     Nanoha usually doesn't expect people to smash through the barriers to get at her. CUT through them, sure, but blast right through like that? Almost unheard of! Unless she's fighting herself. Or Seikou. Certainly not a frat boy showing off! In hindsight maybe she should have expected that.

    Arthur SLAMS into the globe protecting Nanoha and shatters it outright, the tiny girl hurtling down, across the roof, and smashing through another tower. The tower then, naturally, collapses on top of her with a rumble and a billowing dust cloud... which settles without any sign of Nanoha at all. Did he hit her too hard?

    While not the God of Space, Nanoha does have a freakishly good grasp of spatial relationships as well, as it turns out. It might actually be something of a surprise, after the silence, when the roof /several/ meters away from the tower explodes outward, blasting a massive pink beam of power up into the sky toward Arthur. The numerous layers of the floors below have blunted the beam somewhat, fortunately, but the wholes remaining allow Nanoha, her Barrier Jacket tattered and torn in places and one bracer cracked, to rise up from the hole. "Ehehe. I guess I should have been more careful."
Arthur Lowell     Arthur looks pretty satisfied with how he just smashed a small child through several features of the landscape. Yeah, that was a good thing. He does a fancy little flourishing twirls of the broom once he does come to a stop, looking properly dramatic. Externally, he knows he ought to look stupid, like he thinks he already won, but internally, he thinks that's a little too unlikely. There's gotta be some sign of her somewhere... Oh!

    In comes a beam of energy. Arthur's godly nature means he can manipulate the impact a little, but not much. It slams into his torso with a heavy, wet cracking sound, before Arthur seems to physically wrestle the beam and throw it into a deflection. Panting with exertion, he holds an arm to the impact point, putting pressure on it. "HAH!" He calls out, to Nanoha. "CAREFUL? Being CAREFUL'S for people who aren't TOO AWESOME to pull off the 'COVERED IN BLOOD' FASHION. NERDS AND DORKS." Though he's not quite bleeding yet, of course.

    "You aren't a NERD, ARE YOU?" He calls out, laughing and shouting in energetic battle cries as he attempts to replicate his past success. Encasing himself a bit in a gravity barrier, he maximizes his own personal gravity and tries to DROP through the roof where Nanoha is making her base. More forewarning this time, though! He's not hiding by passing THOUGH something.
Takamachi Nanoha     Nanoha isn't bleeding yet either... but she can't take much actual punishment, so that's not surprising. She's probably /pretty bruised/ from that initial impact, and her Barrier Jacket was pretty badly torn up. That's her last line of protection, so her barriers had better hold!

    "Eheh, not really?" Nanoha replies. Where'd she go? That pink streak was tremendously fast, and when Arthur bursts downward to ram her this time, she's ready. She's already blast ANOTHER hole out the side, spinning out of it by tumbling end over end and righting herself with a little puff of steam from the Device. "Ah, maybe I should try laying traps more often!"

    Where Nanoha had dodged out of the way, she'd left many more of those tiny pink shots floating about. All of them converge on Arthur at once, an implosion of mana aiming for the Space God's body.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur lands right in an ambush, cratering the floor and shouting. And then! "FUCK." He declares, articulately, and of course, with that perpetual sense that he's as amused by this deveolopment as anyone else. He knows for a fact that he can't dodge all of this, so he does the only thing that's sensible. He slams his broom into the ground INTENSELY, kicking up whatever chunks of cratered floor there are. His area-of-effect strike is intended to get some hefty hunks of floor between him and that implosion, but he can't get them all! Or even most of them, in fact. It blunts some of the impact, but the shots do wind up slamming into his body heavily!

    Though bruised and just slightly bloodied now, he has enough energy to dispell the clouds of dust kicked up by the impact of Nanoha's shots with a DRAMATIC POSE. "THAT'S what I'm TALKIN' ABOUT, see? Don't gotta bring out the BIG GUNS to get me some PAIN up in this." With another dramatic flourish, he instantly loads an AMMO MAGAZINE into the RIFLE of his battle-broom! The handle bares its firearm mechanisms suddenly, and then once again Atrthur's blasting off, trying to catch up with Nanoha. This time, he's unlikely to ram her. He is likely to fire off the GRAVITY BOLTS. Unlike the name implies, these aren't bolts of gravity, but bolts that APPLY gravity! He's going to try to land a hit on Nanoha; if he can lodge a bolt in those barrier systems, and another bolt elsewhere in the battlefield, he can either have Nanoha yanked out of the sky, or have a tremendous chunk of the terrain launched right at her at high speed and with brutal impacting force to go with the homing nature!
Takamachi Nanoha     The problem with Nanoha's response is that she still hasn't quite gotten the hang of gravity attacks. She's rising up into the air, and when the rifle form comes online she doesn't look too shocked. Maybe this is because her own staff now has a spearlike head and a different shape, she's just used to this.

    So the gravity bolts get blocked! Yep, totally blocked! They smack against the glowing pink barrier that Nanoha holds out before her... except that one, the one that clips her bracer. The sudden yank at her body gets a squeal of surprise, and she hurtles downward to smack into the wall, bounce off, and thud against the ground with a heavy impact, one that is really doing a number on her Barrier Jacket and sends the young girl sprawling, half-dazed.

    Only half, though. <MASTER,> Raising Heart chimes, and Nanoha shakes her head to clear it out. "Ah! Right..." She has to keep moving! She leaps away, skidding across the ground with her flight giving her a boost, but she winces as that puts pressure on a twisted ankle from the impact. This guy hits hard! She'll just have to... hit hard back.

    <DIVINE BUSTER> Sometimes it's the simple, reliable attacks that Nanoha should use. Her little orbitting shield is gone, so the girl's staff whips up and launches a brilliant pink pillar of light toward Arthur, slower thant he earlier bullets but much more powerful and wider. Hopefully it will give her a chance to get some breathing room, at least!

    "Hwah! You hit pretty hard!"
Arthur Lowell     Arthur is pretty magic, which means that when a tremendous pillar of magic comes slamming into him, this time he has enough momentum that he can discard his broom into his Strife Deck, letting it disppear as he catches the beam in both palms! This is causing some severe damage on his hands, but he can handle it. "SHIT YES! I do GODDAMN EVERYTHING HARD! Ain't a fuckin' PIECE of me that's SOFT!" He calls out, before finally managing to recalculate...

    Time to pull out something he's not demonstrated yet. His specialty! GATES! It takes only a moment more to create a Gate behind himself, and a gate off to the side of where he can estimate Nanoha is. If she wanted breathing room, she's not gonna get it! He leaps back, planting his feet into the stream of magic itself... And then he surfs Divine Buster through the Gate and out the other Gate, emerging from a brilliant green spirographic portal off to the side. His broom is back in his hands abruptly when he comes riding the Divine Buster in, trying to slam the sharp bristles into Nanoha directly, and catch her in the blast of her own redirected attack!

    "Hit GODDAMN HARD YOURSELF, kid! I'm seein' why you got to the FINALS! HERE! Why don't YOU have a lil' TASTE, huh? SAMPLE the PRODUCT? YEAH! LET'S DO THIS! EVERYONE OUT OF THE GODDAMN WAY, I've got a BROOM FULL OF BEATINGS, a MOUTH FULL OF SHOUTING, and a SURF full of GRATUITOUS MANA AND WAY TOO MUCH PHYSICAL FORCE!"
Takamachi Nanoha     Redirecting her attack is a good idea, but in this /particular/ case it doesn't work as well. Nanoha's barrier comes up to block it... but it does absolutely nothing to stop Arthur himself, so in the end it's a pretty solid hit right on the damaged Barrier Jacket. Nanoha lets out a short cry, slammed forward hard enough to send her... well, she's far enough away from the wall now that she plows into the ground instead of hard brick, but it still smarts a lot.

    Crackle, <IT HURTS AND STINGS.>

    Nanoha gives her Device an odd look as she wobbles upright again, immediately taking to the air. She's still a little dazed, though... that really hurt, and she's probably seeing stars. This might actually help, though, because it means that pink streak of light is all wobbly, making her flight erratic. So she's harder to hit! Just she might end up hitting a mountain without getting hit, at this rate.

    Which means she needs to rely on her Device to aim! <DIVINE BULLET> the staff pings, sending a much smaller and high speed bullet toward Arthur, this one packed with almost as much power as the earlier one... but much more compact.

    She's not actually bantering, but that might be because her ears are ringing rather than any lack of desire to chat.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur attempts another dramatic magic-catch. This one doesn't work out so well. Tossing his broom to the side, and once more into his Strife Deck, he frees up his hands to try to clap his palms around the bullet as it's about to slam into him. This doesn't work too well. It slams him back through the air, down into the rolling hills all around the Devil's Hand, kicking up dust and cutting a tremendous trench into the landscape. He still has ahold of the bullet, but it's searing both palms, and before long the blinted impact breaks free of his grip, lashing a brutal strike against one of his shoulders before Arthur manages to deflect it.

    If Nanoha's not bantering more, Arthur's not for now. Or, at least, his banter isn't really worth writing. He's pretty much constantly jabbering some inane, obnoxious trash-talk or another, all through the fight too. But Nanoha's probably at too long a range for that to quite be heard.

    Instead, he focuses on matching her at her long-range game. She has magic, a LOT of magical brute-force power, probably more than Arthur can get on-hand at any given moment, but Arthur has much more experience when it comes to making persistent magical effects that can remain in the environment for a long time. And so, of course, he does. Clambering onto his feet, his obnoxious trash-talk turns into a rising battlecry as he emits a gush of anti-air strikes; bolts that airburst into small sun-like fusion constructs! More, and more, and more... He's attempting to make it so that there's just not a lot of 'far away' to safely BE at! The idea is to create such an incredible density of area denial that Nanoha has no option BUT to get in close!

    With all the gushing fire and shouting going on over there, Arthur's looking a little shounen. So getting in close may be the standard operation protocol in the first place, honestly.
Takamachi Nanoha     The pink streak that is Nanoha is still a little wobbly. Bad for her, because it probably takes her a bit too close to those sun-bursts. It certainly bobs and weaves through them a lot! Quite a lot, really, enough that she's singed and her Barrier Jacket is actually on fire in places, or just burnt, all across her left side by the time she becomes visible. At least one of those actually ended up hitting her, which has her shutting one eye to keep it from watering up and blurring her vision.

    So, good news, Arthur hit her pretty solidly! Bad news, he can see this because she's a blurred streak heading right toward him. "Ah... I guess I gotta get in close!" She doesn't seem all that worried, for some reason, despite her very severe disadvantage in how injured she is. Her Barrier Jacket is practically tatters by now, and she's favoring her right side a lot more.

    <SACRED BURST> Raising Heart chimes. It seems Nanoha's had some practice, because she jinks to the side, accelerates at an insane rate, then comes in with a surprisingly skilled flick of the wrist aiming her staff at Arthur. A staff that suddenly explodes with mana, adding a ridiculously strong punch to it... if she can hit.
Arthur Lowell     "Yeah. Yeah. Come on! COME ON, DO IT, YEAH!" Arthur goes from muttering to aggressive shouts as he sees Nanoha coming in hard at him. His broom's back in his hands and he takes a ready position. "YEAH! HIT IT!" He calls out. His broom revs aggressively, as the bristles at the end begin to spin like a blender. When Nanoha comes in for the strike, she'll find Arthur not moving. As almost always, he tries to take this stuff head-on. With a heavy swing, he moves to intercept the melee-range strike. "YEEEEEAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!!" He calls out, as the tremendous discharge of mana slams into his body!

    The gush of light tears through him when the weapons connect. Arthur himself tries to slam through some of that sheer, overwhelming magical force and strike back, but the rush of light sends him off his feet.

    He knows that Nanoha is likely to go for a hit-and-run attack here, since it's a flash-discharge attack and she's got limited capability on one side, so with a swift melee swing, he hopes to tear into her systems and disrupt the flight in time to knock her down, even if he can't exactly have his dramatic weapons crash here.
Takamachi Nanoha     Yeah, it would make sense to do a hit and run. That's what Nanoha should do, considering her training. But that isn't working, so she's going to go with the strategy that DOES work: do the unexpected. That melee swing impacts Raising Heart's haft, cracking it midway down. She IS crippled though, so it's hard enough to smack her aside, sending her tumbling away... just not as far as expected, even if the impact has knocked the wind out of her.

    <ACCEL SMASHER> the Device chimes, and Nanoha is still plummeting. She still manages to wheeze, "Shoot..." Even as she almost drops the staff, barely managing to avoid a hard slam into the parapet nearby. She still bangs onto the edge, falling over to thud roughly to the stone... but at the same time a rapid series of quick pulses blast out, rattling off at high speed in a spread to try to smash into Arthur while she's still so close. It's hard, though... he's kept her off-balance almost the entire fight, and right now is no exception.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur pursues Nanoha right down, which means on one hand she won't have any problems with firing off those shots and hitting Arthur. It also means she won't have that chance to get a breather! He tanks the accel smasher strikes square on the jaw. He's already pretty bloodied by several of those energy attacks before, and while it's not particularly serious bleeding -- this is a friendly competition after all! -- Arthur is still pretty bloodied.

    He's looking a little ragged around the edges right now, looking a bit desperate the way Nanoha is and just sort of keeping his edge because of force of will and sheer dumb luck. He pursues that edge, though, rocket-blasting his way down to Nanoha. With a hoarse battlecry, he attempts to shoulder-check her and slam her into the ground with additional force, overcharging his gravitational effect severely. Wait, didn't Nanoha already deal with this attack? "HAH! HERE we go! Now THIS is the shit! NOW I know there's NO TRAPS." He calls out, shouting and laughing. Still friendly competition, despite some of the blood starting getting his face.

    He's gonna try to check Nanoha square into the ground; the force is likely to crater the earth where they land! And if he doesn't do this... Well, Nanoha will have the opportunity to discharge another of those brutally effedctive point-blank shots square into Arthur's body.
Takamachi Nanoha     Dazed as she is, there's one thing Arthur should know about Nanoha: The same move rarely works twice, in the same circumstances. As she wobbles upward she is met with a hurtling Arthur, and he'll have a brief chance to avoid what comes next by partly-aborting his attack. Right before impact, he'll hear her words. "No traps, huh?" The implication being... he's wrong.

    She's braced for it, but the shoulder slamming into her sudden barrier still breaks through. Toppling backward, she starts to roll with it, and then Raising Heart chimes, <REACTOR PURGE>

    Nanoha tumbles back, but at the same time, her Barrier Jacket's outer layer simply /explodes/ with tremendous force, leaving her in nothing but the black jumpsuit beneath. Armor, outer dress, everything else is gone as the mana used to construct it is instantly and violently turned into explosive force.
Arthur Lowell     That's a hell of a kick to some ablative armor.

    Arthur is slammed up and back by the detonation; his broom flies through the air next to him, and eventually comes to a rest somewhere near where he does, handle down in the ground. Arthur himself is clearly still trying to fight, despite several important body bits having possibly been rendered inoperable by that explosion.

    "Ha ha ha ha, did you just BEAT ME with EXPLODING CLOTHES? That's fuckin' BADASS, I need to get an EXPLODING SHIRT." He rambles, dazed, while trying to pick himself up on one working arm. The pain from that Divine Bullet caught up with him, and now he's only really got one working. "Ahhhh, FUCK, yeah, I can't get my LEGS to do the STANDING THING, gimmie a... Nah, nah, HOLD ON, I just about GOT THIS!"

    He does not got this. Eventually the countdown starts and the rules say Arthur's out, and at that point he just sort of collapses facedown. "HAHAHA, okay, YEP, that was GREAT. Alright kid, you HEAD ON IN, lookin' forward to another SHOW for THIS YEAR'S brackets. I'm gonna go ahead and BE UNCONSCIOUS for a bit, if that's ALL COOL." And then he just sort of lays there.
Takamachi Nanoha     "Eheh..." Nanoha stumbles over and flops down, seated but conscious. Her ears are still ringing, after all. "That was pretty fun. We'll... have to do it again sometime." A jovial opponent is apparently a good way to get on her good side, but that shouldn't be surprising.

    "Yeah... good night." Nanoha falls back, but at least doesn't fall asleep. Everything just kinda... hurts right now, so she's going to lay down for a bit before the medics - and Vesta - arrive to help.