Threeway Above The Freeway (Joy, Astrea, Beowulf, And Tamaki Too!))

Astrea and Beowulf have a head start, which Joy probably can narrow down before they notice her and speed up.

  • Joy is pursuing, now that she's blasted her bonds away…a bit charred and bleeding just a bit, but she's following at maximum speed, the occasional window in buildings below shattering in her wake, eyes narrowed…

As soon as she is noticed, her quarries pick up speed, hitting their own maximums. The gap between you stops narrowing, but you've caught up quite a ways.

  • Joy shifts her spear to hold it parallel with her body, tip just a little ahead of herself…as the spear-head splits apart into two tines, and another miniature black sphere of energy begins building between them…spiderweb-thin lines of darkness streaming out from it in her path, behind her. Building… "You can't escape…"

Both parties ahead of her notice this, and come to a complete stop, letting her fly past them.

  • Joy casually does so…and spins vertically 180 degrees, so that she's now hanging upside-down in the air, point of her spear now pointing in the same direction she'd been coming from. Cutting her own acceleration, and beginning to drop in altitude…but still within beam-range. "Torrential…FURY!" And a ten foot wide geyser of raw destructive force pours out from that sphere, ripping through the sky to envelop the three.

Astrea and Beowulf react quickly, throwing their own attacks in the path of the beam, which is swallowed by the explosion of a large, purple-black sphere. They quickly backpedal to avoid being drawn in themselves. "Not bad, kid!" Beowulf shouts over the tumult.

  • Joy suddenly bursts from within the center of the conflagration, hand extended before herself to manifest her shield, as she cleaves through it, and up closer to the three of them. "Not done, either!" The other hand brings the spear sweeping up, and fires off a barrage of black spear-tips, which sweep in from all directions on the three of them, like a Macross Missle Orgy…

The itano circuis is play for all its worth, and dodged as such. Astrea is forced to stop some with her force field, but Beowulf makes it through apparently unscathed, and rushes Joy at high speed, slowing down a bit when he gets in close to slash at her with an energy blade extending from each hand. "What's your story? Can't just let us leave in peace?"
<vega7285> Astrea has decided to fight back, judging by the barrage of dark spheres flying at the younger girl from her position.

  • "Why should I…do that?" She manages to weave out of the way of that dual-slash, bringing herself up and over the charging knight in a twisting arc, then brings her hand around to bring up her shield, which accepts the onrushing spheres lovingly, but just barely, the last of them only being deflected with the very edge of her field. "After all, you have something that belongs to us…"

"You said she wasn't any concern of yours," Astrea says.
Beowulf shrugs. "It's the girl you're after? I'd almost prefer if we could hand her over, but…" he shakes his head. "It's complicated. And I doubt we'd be able to leave her or your friends alone if we did."

  • "No, no…I said I didn't particularly care about her. But that doesn't mean I'm just going to let you have her." That said, the girl spins gungnir around to aim the point back behind herself, half-turning to line it up with Beowulf, then unleashing over a dozen foot-wide shimmering beams of darkness rapidfire in his direction, filling the air with magic.

He tries to avoid it, but is mostly consumed by the torrent. When the mystical haze settles, he doesn't seem all that the worse for wear, although his shoulders are slumped, and between this and his previous wound, he's obviously hurting. "Are you the only one of them actually capable of putting up a fight?" He throws a large spread of bluish energy lances in retaliation.

  • Joy brings up both hands this time, spear held horizontally across her body and woven between her fingers as she brings up another grey and silver translucent kite-shield to block those lances…though the last few of them leave noticible cracks before the construct disappears again, leaving her eyebrow twitching.
  • "Maybe I'm just the only one that's not afraid of the outcomes…"

Astrea's running away again. Beowulf's doing his best to hold Joy's attention. "Maybe so. You're outnumbered, though."

  • "Yeah. Life's unfair. I don't pretend otherwise." That said, she turns to rocket after the older girl once again…and thrusts her spear forward to fire off another barrage of black blades…which arch forward and to her sides, then behind her, spiraling in around themselves toward the knight at her rear. "Will you?"

"Nope." He just flies right into the cloud of blades to give chase, and when he's through, a few remain stuck into him as they slowly dissipate. Astrea, now flying backwards, has her staff pointed at Joy, with a sphere of darkness forming in front of it, and an odd magic circle forming beneath her as she flies.

  • Joy frowns, just a bit…and more or less mirrors Astrea's position, spear-point splitting again, as another sphere begins to build within…and she angles her flight slightly downward, to weave between the skyscrapers littering the air just below.

Astrea does the same, still tracking the other girl. Meanwhile, Beowulf fires his own attack ,sending a swarm of lasers flying at Joy from behind.

  • Joy glances back over her shoulder, just for a moment…then attempts to dodge and weave between that swarm, managing to nimbly avoid nearly all of them…save for a last lucky one that glances her right leg, sending an aerolized spray of blood into the atmosphere, the wound mostly cauterizing quickly, but trailing a thin stream of blood along with the black streamers of energy, now.
  • Joy grits her teeth, biting back a grunt of pain, but keeps her attention focused on Astrea as the energy continues to build…

Well, the beam does sort of explode when it hits. Astrea doesn't wait, and fires her own attack, sending a thin beam at Joy.

  • Joy closes one eye to block out the glare of the incoming attack…and proceeds to fire off her own attack then, another torrent of raging energy flooding toward Astrea in a cross-counter of sorts.
  • …and gets hit by the beam in the midsection, unable to fully defend herself in return for a more advantageous attack, being thrown backward by the force of the Axion Buster blossoming, and smashing into the side of a 40 story building, five floors of windows shattering from the impact, as she plowed through two before finally coming to a stop within the rubble, smoke rising into the night.

The two attacks pass each other, Astrea's detonating into a dark sphere of crushing gravity around Joy, the torrent of energy flying on to slam into Astrea, a blue-white blur meeting her just ahead of the beam of energy.

  • Joy moves to rise, slowly and extremely painfully, now an outright wreck, with cuts and darkening bruises all over her body, blood streaming down her eyes…and dripping from her right forearm, or what's left of it, the rest on the floor amidst the rubble. She leans down to lift Gungnir in her left hand, a bit dully…her right still clutching it, lower down the shaft.
  • Joy just raises her eyebrows at the sight…then shakes her head, turning to look out through the shell of the building in the direction she last saw the three others…

Astrea and Tamaki are both plummeting through the air, the younger girl apparently only lightly harmed, although the older hasn't fared as well at all, her own clothing torn and her body battered. Beowulf is diving to rescue Astrea, a good half of his body blackened, with the armor cracked and bleeding in several places.

  • Joy just squeezes her eyes shut for a split-second, then reopens them again, expression firming…as she staggers forward and leaps out of the building, taking on a plummeting angle of her own…for a couple of seconds, before a pair of ghostly black wings appear above her back, and she soars forward, leaing a falling rain of blood behind herself instead, aiming for Tamaki.

Beowulf manages to catch Astrea, and cradles her in his arms as he slows down, watching Joy.

  • Joy brings her arms down to her sides, and her legs together, taking on the shape of a human spear…her own pressed against her side as well, as she attempts to increase the speed with which she cuts through the air, as Tamaki falls closer…closer…30 stories…20…10…and Joy intercepts her, bringing both arms up to catch the girl, rolling onto her back…
  • …and, while attempting to correct the angle of her flight, manages to merely hit the ground with a quarter of the force she would've otherwise by simply falling. Leaving a trail of ripped fabric and blood as she bounces, or rather 'skips' several times before coming to a stop, Tamaki atop herself, and twitching a little, in the middle of the street.

Tamaki clings to Joy, crying.

  • "…th-there…'s okay…'s okay…" She murmers it while staring up at the sky above herself, lips bloodied, and sounding wetter than usual…gaze sharpening just a little, and roaming around slowly, to try and look for…anything, in the sky.

Beowulf lands a distance away. "Not bad, nod bad." He says. "And, I suppose this is the part where I either leave, or say 'but not good enough,' and gut you." Astrea is unconcious. "That girl isn't safe wherever she is. But, I think I'd trust you more than Shirakawa. He's…not the sort to treat her nicely."

  • Joy moves to try and sit up…but settles for just lifting her upper body upward slightly, propped up on her elbows, to look over Tamaki at Beowulf. "…life's hard. …don't need to make it harder on people than it is." And glances down at Tamaki at that, for a moment, before looking back up at him again. "…'s what I try to practice, anyway."

"A good way to look at things. I have my hands full protecting this one… But, I'm sorry to say we'll be back. Tell your friends they could use a little training" He flies away slowly, before teleporting away somehow. It isn't a magical process, at least.
Tamaki, still crying, looks at Joy. "You're…really hurt…" She hiccups and sobs as she tries to speak. "I-i can help."

  • Joy notes that, absently, as she looks back to Tamaki again, then gestures with her good hand for her to move back slightly. "…thanks…I'll be okay, when I change back…after all, it's already missing, further up. …want to go home…?"

"Yes…But, what about the rest of you?" She sniffles, still very worried.
The severed hand on Joy's staff has taken on the look of a doll's hand: a fake plastic thing. If he were to look, her injured arm looks much the same, and seems to have gone numb.

  • "Well…how about you give me a little help during the trip? …help me up?" She places her good hand flat on the ground, trying to get to her feet, and with the muffled sounds she's making, finding it an unpleasent process. She notes these small details out of the corner of her eye…and then simply refuses to look at them again. Conspicuously so.

Tamaki gets shakily to her feet and helps Joy up. "Are…are you sure you'll be fine?"

  • "…been worse. …well, mostly. Besides…I have you and Akime when we get home…right?" She stands up, even more shakily than the other girl…then moves to reach over, and gingerly bring her right forearm around Tamaki's upper back, then moves to tuck gungnir up vertically along Tamaki's back, her left hand at the girl's knees…then lifts off the ground, and clumsily scoops the young girl up with her, hovering wobbily. "Hang on…"

"Ok…" Tamaki does, wrapping her arms around Joy's neck, much as she had with the older girl ,earlier, She shudders for a moment, afterwards.

  • "…first star to the right…" And with that, she falls silent, concentrating on not plummeting out of the sky, as the two rise up and head back in the direction of Akime's house…somewhat more slowly than they'd gone from the park to here, leaving any spectators on the ground behind them.
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License