Meanwhile...
Smiling at Jail, Lutecia and the other cyborgs, Quattro nodded to Uno, who started to type on a holographic keyboard, causing a screen to appear behind her. "Well, I'm glad that you could all make it, now then..." The screen behind her lit up and the large, white humanoid mechanical creatures that Quattro had in her lab appeared on it. "As you know, I've come into possession of a lot of these things lately."
"Can we skip the preliminaries?" Nove asked and blinked as Quattro shook her head.
"I swear, no appreciation for build-up." Quattro sighed and nodded to Uno, who tapped a few more buttons. "I need to explain a few things, okay?" She narrowed her eyes at Nove, who nodded back at her. "These Megah, as I'm calling them, have one weapon, the giant cannon on their arms, however, I discovered, through some work, that there's an area between the cannon and the arm that holds a large blade under it. Anyway, that's all of its weapons, it does, however, have incredible physical prowess."
"I might have to agree with your sisters, Quattro," Jail spoke up as he looked at the thing, "what is the point of describing this?"
"Well, I discovered that the cannon blasts are unaffected by AMF, unlike most of the Bureau's forces," Quattro smirked as Jail raised an eyebrow, "in addition, with some modification, I think I may have created a weapon that even the Aces of the Bureau would fear and respect."
Now she had their undivided attention. Smirking, Quattro motioned for Uno to bring up an image of the gadget drones that they had around. "This is the standard unit that we use." On the screen, a digital image of the oval-shaped machine sprang to life against a digitized human opponent. "Against a C Rank mage, the AMF is rather debilitating." A bubble appeared around the drone on the screen, "and can be extended fairly far. The normal one, these ground ones, are, let's say, rated at 500. A group of five of them would be rated, combined, a total of 2400." She shrugged at the looks she was getting. "It's a slightly cumulative effect, anyway, the problem is, the strongest effect of the AMF is right up against the drones, as it spreads out, the effect weakens and becomes nothing more than a slight annoyance."
Quattro then snapped her right middle finger and thumb before pointing to Sein. "Thanks to the data that our cute little sister got us from her training period, I was able to learn quite a bit about magic... And something unusual happened."
Uno pushed another button and continued to speak. "According to the data that Quattro's shared with me, we'll use a simple spell, a chain bind. It's something that even a C rank mage can do without too much of a problem. At its current level, let's say that the number is 400." She blinked as Wendi raised her hand. "Yes?"
"Are these numbers accurate?"
"We're pulling them out of our asses." Uno shot back before snorting. "No, they aren't accurate, we're just using them for comparison, okay?" Wendi nodded, and Uno continued on, "anyway, a chain bind wouldn't last very long in an AMF by a single one of these gadget drones. It would hold, let's use Tre as an example. While it would stop her, she would likely break free a few seconds later." On the screen, five gadget drones appeared. "Under an effect like this, that same chain bind would barely be noticed by Tre."
"Of course, again, like before, the problem is, the strongest point of the AMF is right against the gadget drones and spreading them out causes the effect to weak even more." Quattro spoke up before grinning as the Megah reappeared on the screen. "However..."
Everyone blinked as the five gadget drones suddenly split in half before wires shot out and covered the Megah over its arms, legs and chest.
"When you combine them with the Megah, I found something interesting..." Quattro grinned as the data appeared on the screen. "Where five gadget drones would create a field of 2400, when they get onto the Megah, that same field increases almost five fold to 10,000." The glasses wearing cyborg sighed as she looked at the screen. "Sadly, where the gadget drones could spread the effect fairly far, the Megah concentrates it closer to the body."
"Instead of an AMF, think of it as an AMS, Anti-Magic Shield," Uno looked at her notes then at Quattro, "and I'm sure that you pulled that out of your ass." Quattro just rolled her eyes. "Anyway, the effect is a shield that would make even some of the strongest of Aces have trouble hurting the Megahs."
"Now, onto the reason I developed this." Quattro smirked as the screen changed again. "Under normal circumstances, the AMS would keep a chain bind, or even an ice spell from doing too much, however, I discovered why the hybrid magic is so... Frightening." The chain, which had been yellow at this point, had turned to an icy blue color. Quattro brought her hands up and entwined them together. "The hybrid magic uses the Belkan or Mid-Childan style, which is a mathematical formula to generate the spells, and this... Spirit style, I guess you could call it, which draws upon gods, demons and lesser spirits, to generate the spells. Normally they're incompatible, but..." Quattro looked up as a Belkan triangle and a Mid-Childa circle both appeared on the screen. "Someone found a way."
"Normally, again, we'll use the chain bind here as an example," Uno looked at the screen, "normally this would only create one circle for a Mid spell or one triangle for a Belkan spell. However, if you combine it with the spirit ice spell, you add a second layer to it."
On the screen, a second circle appeared on the outside of the first circle on the Mid-Childa magic circle while a second triangle intersected the first one on the Belkan side, making it look like a six-point star.
"Of course, that's just the simple stuff... If you use a really strong, high level spell," Quattro trailed off as a third circle appeared around the Mid-Childa circle and a circle spun around the Belkan triangles, "it's nearly impossible to do the high level stuff without a device of some sort."
"I see..." Jail nodded as the screen turned off and the lights turned on. "The AMF was never designed to deal with such a complex array. In fact, I would think that even magic cancellation would have a hard time breaking down such a complex array."
Quattro nodded at him. "That's what I think as well. If one doesn't know about the interlacing and interlocking arrays, even if you cancel the part of the spell that you know of, the remainder of the spell would still connect." Looking at the table, Quattro mentally smirked as she saw the glasses in front of Otto, Deed, Sette and Wendi were either empty or almost empty. It was a good thing that she had made sure that the temperature in the room was fairly uncomfortable, otherwise she wasn't sure if those four would have taken that drink. 'Now the fun begins.' She heard her master chuckle in the back of her mind.
'Not yet, master Levi, but soon.' Quattro thought to herself as everyone left the room slowly. 'Very soon.'
"Quattro..." She turned her head to look at Jail. "Very soon I'll be getting that package, you know the one." Quattro's eyes flashed in delight at that. "We may have some trouble getting it, make sure that, when I send you and your sisters to retrieve it, that nothing goes wrong."
"Of course!" Quattro smirked and walked out of the room. When she left the room, she frowned as she saw Lutecia with Due and Agito. "Lutecia..."
"Master..." Lutecia turned and bowed her head. "I'm sorry, but Due, Agito and I were asked by the doctor to find some relics."
"I see..." Quattro had a tight smile on her face and looked at Due. "Well, have fun, but make sure that you come back."
Lutecia nodded and turned to walk with Due and Agito.
"I don't trust her." Agito sent to Due, who could only nod.
For some reason, Due didn't trust Quattro either.
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(Posted Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:32)
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