Last time! On Crash the Test Dummy!
EDI was already over three kilometers away and bleeding off speed by the time Fate turned to his departure angle.
"I have buzzed the targets," he informed. "Begining engagement procedure."
(BGM with Melody
http://www.sheezyart.com/view/1312910/ )
(BGM with no Melody
http://www.sheezyart.com/view/1435564/ )
(Begin Song)
"Roger that," Crash snapped, dropping into a dive and configuring a little more attack power with his MAD system. "They got barriers up, so your run didn't knock them out of the sky like we wanted."
"Their temporary Tinnitus should last perhaps a minute," EDI toned. "I advise we hit as hard as we can now, since we won't have a second oppertunity."
"Already in a dive," Crash informed the AI. "I'm going to engage unit LIGHTNING, she's specialized more for close combat, so I should stand a better chance in my heavy armor than your airframe. You take STARS unit."
"Affirmative," EDI responded.
Crash was almost on them, the switching to full auto, he quickly took aim, EDI bled off the last of his speed in a high G turn no organic lifeform could have managed and came around hard.
(Song + 0:16)
"Here they come!" Fate shouted.
"WHAT?!" Nanoha shouted back. Hearing loss was a pain...
'Here they come!' Fate responded again, this time psychicly.
'Oh,' was Nanoha's mental reply.
EDI and Crashed opened up at once, unleashing streams of moderately effective magical bolts.
[SONIC MOVE!]
[FLASH MOVE!]
Nanoha and Fate bolted in opposite directions just before the stream of attacks hit. EDI immediately calculated trajectory and chased after the pink contrail. Crash managed to keep his eyes on the yellow contrail left by Fate's departure and tracked his weapon along her trajectory, but she quickly outpaced his ability to lead her movement.
"You're not getting away," Crash muttered to himself. Battery redirected energy to speed and he accellerated, thundering up close to supersonic as he chased after his target Ace.
(Song + 0:39 )
Nanoha came through a cloud in a dive, bolting through several thousand feet as she evaided fire from behind. EDI had locked on, and engaged in twin rotary cannon fire, sending quick bursts of orange magic at her, with a snap turn, she evaided, but the super-fast calculations of the AI controled aircraft weren't as predictably easy to fool compared to the drones Jail had used.
Going fully evaisive, she dove straight down towards the water, EDI following in her high speed dive.
They broke the sound barrier as she dove. Inertia meant she would be able to stop sooner in a little game of ocean chicken than the drone chasing her.
EDI calculated that among many possible end results of the dive, and decided not to let her get that position. His underside internal bay snapped open and the rotary rack spun into position, and deployed a weapon mechanism. In two seconds it formed an orb of orange magic on the forward end.
"HORNETS NEST," he droned.
'BAM!'
[MASTER!]
(Song + 1:02)
Nanoha barely heard Raging Heart over the ringing in her ears, but the shout of warning was enough. With a fast glance over her shoulder, she spotted eight fast moving orange streaks diving at her in a corkscrew as EDI pulled out of his dive.
Nanoha, in her surprise, almost forgot the water below her, but instantly came up with a counter move. Pulling out of her dive to skirt the water close enough to send a jet of spray into the air, she shot paralelle to the waves at high speed, throwing up a barrier behind her as the orange shots arced to follow her path. Three of them arced too shallow and exploded against the water in towers of spray, the remaining five slammed into her barrier with a little more force than she expected from an unmanned magic vehicle. Above, and still slightly behind, EDI prepared a second volley, intending to knock her into the drink.
Thinking fast, Nanoha deployed a barrier directly into the water, creating drag, and slowing her down rapidly enough to cause EDI to overshoot. Nanoha brought Raging Heart to bear and launched her counter attack.
[AXCEL SHOOTER]
In her oppinion, THIS was how you did multi-shot attacks
"SHOOOOOOT!"
'BAM!'
Sixteen pink streaks blasted from Raging heart into the sky.
(Song + 1:27)
Calculating the trajectory of the shots, Edi immediately pulled back, and began to roll, corkscrewing through the air in a loose, high speed, barrel roll. She shots missed and began to twirl in an attempt to hit the MADCAP. Nanoha's excelent control of them meant that even this evaision would fail eventually, but EDI accounted for that. As the first one managed score home, it smacked against a barrier that flickered up just long enough to deflect it. EDI broke his corkscrew and came around hard, losing most of Nanoha's shots again while a second one scored. Gunning the engine power, he accellerated directly at the stationary mage, unleashing another firestorm of magical energy from the twin cerberus IIs at the stationary mage.
'SNAP!'
[BUSTER MODE, DRIVE IGNITION]
(Song + 1:50)
Raging Heart discharged a cartridge as Nanoha took aim at her target, her barrier shimmering from the hundreds of weak magical bolts that pelted it.
"DIVIIIINE..."
But then she noticed EDI's internal bay was open again and the rotary rack deployed. There was a brief glow and suddenly an orange beam lashed out at her. Perhaps a low powered buster of his own.
[FLASH MOVE!]
Raging Heart got her out of the way as it tore past her, and she quickly retrained her staff to attack...
Then EDI broke off, and she realized there were still a good fourteen bolts from her Divine Shooter attack chasing him, and now they were coming right at her... Clever decoy tactics, but Nanoha had absolute control of them, and they broke their chase and traveled right around her before she willed them away.
Coming about as the Drone Hunter thundered past her, she brought Raging Heart to bear again, getting a reassuring pink glow as she began to prepare her specialty once more. Bands of magical markings appeared at the end as she steadied her aim to take down her target.
"Deploying Iron Curtain," EDI droned in acknowledgement of the magical energy spike he detected. He needed immediate defense from this attack.
'CRACK!'
Nanoha paused from her shot to assess this new threat. A single red orb had just launched from EDI's upper midsection. Why was it so familliar?
'CRACK!'
One became two.
'CRACK!'
Two became four.
Then she remembered. It looked just like-
'BOOM!!!'
With a roar and a blinding flash of light, Nanoha's chance of tagging EDI with her Divine Buster evaporated instantly.
(Song Fade and Pause at + 2:15)
"Wait, that's MY technique!" Vita shouted. She practically would have pounced on the MSM display showing EDI rocketing for the upper atmosphere with Graf Eisen, if Signum hadn't managed to clamp a hand down on her fellow knight.
"It may have been your technique," Cooper stated from his own chair. "But I IMPROVED IT!"
"As if..." Key sniped, but Cooper kept going.
"The new version there is called the Iron Curtain, producing an order of magnitude more light and turbulance for the same amount of magic, making it more effective at blinding the opponent for a longer period of time over a wider field of view."
"And what's with that corny name?" Vita glowered at the chubby engineer.
"Because in Soviet Russia," Roland interjected, balling his fist. "Spells name YOU!"
Everyone in the room, including the Maidens virtual resprisentations, simply glanced dumbfounded at the Major General. Tough audience tonight. He glanced at Fox, who silently rolled her eyes before he waved it away.
"Earth Joke."
(Instrument track solo mode, song drum beat only.)
Nanoha blinked away the tears that had formed in her eyes in response to the temporary flash blindness. The ringing in her ears had redoubled in intensity from the roar, and she could feel the magic boost from her cartridge already dropping away, completely wasted. This battle may just turn out to be quite fun.
'Fate,' she broadcasted telepathicly. 'Keep your eye out for EDI, he can launch Vita's Iron Howl, and it splits up.'
'Where is he now?' Fate broadcasted back.
'I lost him for the moment,' Nanoha responded. 'I think he was heading up. How are you doing?'
'Crash isn't half bad actually,' came the response. 'Sloppy, but fast reflexes.'
Nanoha took a look around, but didn't see anything moving in immediate sight, but kept up her scanning.
'What kind of attack methods is he using?'
'High velocity projectile,' came the telepathic response. 'Accurate, but weaker.'
'Okay so that-'
Nanoha felt it as Raging Heart delivered a warning.
[MASTER!]
(Break beat, Song Resume at + 2:14)
She leaned in and shot forward as a orange beam twice as wide around as she was tall slammed into the waves from above her, blasting a collumn of water a hundred meters into the air.
'Nanoha?'
Putting on as much speed as she could, she managed to clear the attack as it was followed up with another cluster of eight orange streaks.
'Nanoha?!' Fate's telepathic broadcast was slightly more urgent.
'I'm still in the game,' she responded. 'EDI just tried to snipe me with a full power buster.'
'At what range?'
'Beyond Visual.'
'BVR? NICE!' Fate seemed pleased. Nanoha looked off to her left as the telltale thump of a sonic boom gave away EDI's position. She could see a glint of sunlight off something moving through the cirrus clouds at ten thousand feet, and immediately took off after it.
'I'm reengaging the MADCAP,' Nanoha broadcasted.
'Roger,' Fate returned.
(Song + 3:03 )