Playtime Ryoko had been captured by the Natsume slaves after a hard and brutal battle. Legendary Ryoko had picked out the most tactically acute member of the crew, isolated her from the rest, and taken her head in a little under five seconds. Technically she had ripped the head off the golem-armor and not the person inside it, but Ryoko had not known for sure where the occupant’s head was and would have been quite happy with a two-for-one decapitation.
When the head came free in Ryoko’s grasp, her legs had been braced against the armor’s back. With an added kick, they now propelled the body forward, where it slammed into the ground. Either Arisa or the animating spirit of the armor still had enough life and awareness to cushion the fall with their hands, but thereafter the headless titan lay and twitched fitfully.
Even as the body was falling, Nuku Nuku was leaping over it with bared claws and fangs. Any hint of the playful sex kitten that had used moves like “Tasty Titty Tongue Tingler” in combat was gone; this was a beast out for blood. The hovering “oni” took the head in her grasp by its horsehair plume, whipped it around, and batted the feline from the air. She then swung her severed trophy in a full circle and let it fly, catching Kyoko’s armor in the leg. This did not do any noticeable damage, but it did drop Kyoko to one knee and threw off the shot she was lining up. The bluebird of bondage fluttering around was disregarded as irrelevant while Ryoko streaked in towards Kyoko.
Ryoko could see what looked like a set of erect nipples on the armor’s metal mammaries, indicating the power-draining system they had used on her before was active again. Tenchi had tried to contain her with a set of draining shackles earlier. She had beaten that setup and she was going to beat this system. Ryoko dove forward with her sword leading the way, and plunged the tip into the left breast of the armor.
For a few seconds, the magic of the armor and the sufficiently advanced technology of Ryoko battled for supremacy. Ryoko pumped as much power into her sword as she could while the armor greedily drank that power in and tried to pull more directly from Ryoko herself. Nuku Nuku, having recovered quickly, sprang forward again, using one of Kyoko’s metal arms to swing around towards Ryoko’s sword arm and the jewel Tenchi had told her about. She did manage to lay a hand on Ryoko’s elbow, but her claws did not penetrate the material of the suit. Or perhaps it was Ryoko herself that was too resilient to be cut by such weapons.
Nuku Nuku pulled herself closer, reaching with claws and teeth for the jewel Tenchi had told them about. Ryoko jerked her head to the side, launching a spray of needles. The pink bakeneko fell to the ground, yowling and clawing at the stiff filaments lodged in her arms and torso. Meanwhile, the red light of the sword and the glowing white runes shining through the paint on the armor illuminated the compound in hues similar to the writhing bakeneko’s fur.
The restraints that Ryoko had struggled with earlier that day worked on similar principles to the system in the armor. However, the shackles were made to drain the power relatively gently and dissipated that power into the earth and the aether. Ryoko had beaten them by producing energy faster than they could drain it away, burning them out. The armor ripped energy away as fast as possible and stored it up for use, but that meant it had an upper limit on how much it could hold. When that limit was reached, the system shut down to avoid suffering the same fate as those shackles. Unfortunately, in this case that meant it went offline while Ryoko’s full-power sword was still jammed against the armor’s chest.
Kyoko tried to rise and push the demon away, but Ryoko spun on the axis of her sword, keeping its point in place while using her legs to knock the armor’s arms away and batter the armor’s legs, keeping it from getting its feet under it. The metal of that artificial bosom quickly responded much as the neck of Arisa’s armor had, by glowing, softening, and then parting before the blade. The light shining over the battlefield shifted from the color of Nuku Nuku’s fur to the color of the blood seeping into that fur around the protruding needles.
The shackles, when overcome, had burned out quietly. The draining system of the armor, when punctured, lashed both combatants with arcs of multi-colored lightning. Ryoko took the worst of this, as the discharge flowed over the surface of the armor rather than through it. On the other hand, Ryoko had already proven herself difficult to hurt.
Then the system reached some sort of critical point and exploded.
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(Posted Thu, 06 Jan 2005 01:26)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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