10 Chapter 0: Another Day in Neverland (9)

The undead were spreading throughout the streets and crawling onto the dragooun like wildfire. It was unbelievable to everyone how Lloyd was capable of conjuring such a force. If it had been against them, they would have been certainly overwhelmed in an instant. Lloyd had given the power balance and the upper hand they needed to conclude this mission.

Shogo performed his shield ability once again, although it was a much more powered version, and he didn't use it on himself. His shield ability conjured up a tough barrier that was hard to break through, so it was good enough to act as a trap to corner something. Using Nathan's boost from the environment, Shogo leaped forward and was passing right on top of the dragooun, he took his chance and wrote the shield right above it, before getting back to the rooftop. That way, by even the slightest chance that the dragooun was able to fly, it would be blocked by the shield.

Now, the next step of immobilizing the dragooun was up for initiation. Emiya stood among the undead crowd on the streets. She was still trying to get her act together because of earlier. The others were doing their utmost best to ensure everything worked in order, it was time for her to do something as well.

"All right, body! Don't fail me now. It's now or never." She encouraged herself.

She breathed in and out deeply. Once again, she began to write her paragraphs to print on her limbs. After finishing, she rolled up her sleeves again and slammed all her writings on her arms.

[Literary Technique: Steel Set]

The letters on her arm lit up greatly. She could feel the amplification flowing through her veins. Just as her powers were back in action, so was her confidence.

She placed the tips of her fingers on the ground, getting herself ready to take off and strike the dragooun head-on. Her aim was directly at the dragooun's legs to get it off its feet and make it easier for the undead to swarm it up. Once that thing was on the ground, it would be checkmate.

"This better work…"

Emiya blasted off from her place. Even if the leap came directly from the push of her hands and not her legs, it was enough to set a blast among the undead and split the crowd, making indirect gaps in Emiya's path. Within a few seconds, she was already facing the dragooun's left leg.

She tightened her grip firmly, primed to take out the great force that stood before her. There was nothing of more power when Emiya used her ability. She could overpower anything, that was what she believed.

[Sub-Technique Activated: Steel Knockout Rush]

That specific move she was about to go through was a sequence of punches performed in quick succession, with each punch greater than the next. It would also leave an after effect by each surface it touched, a phantom punch to double the damage. With enough strength, she might be able to strike through the dragooun's leg and immobilize it completely.

And so, the first strike went through. What followed after was chaotic, as Emiya kept smashing through the dragooun's leg with only one fist, only taking a split-second break between each punch. Her movement was at an unbelievable speed that the after effect only left light in its presence.

The others were able to notice that from afar because of the light being emitted every second.

"Stand clear!" Shogo alerted Nathan. They needed to keep their distance from the dragooun to avoid getting caught in the impact once the dragooun is brought to the ground.

The final strike went through. Emiya was done with one leg. The dragooun began to falter and was slowly falling to the ground. But as long as it had the other leg functioning, there was still a chance it was going to hold itself together.

Emiya wasn't going to let that happen and moved on with her plan. A second later, she was already standing before the right leg. It was constantly moving left and right, shaking from the damage that had been done from the other as it barely held the weight of the rest of the body. It wasn't going to hinder Emiya's attack, however, it was going to make it much more effective.

Although the leg seemed to move frantically, Emiya noticed a pattern in the movement and decided to take full advantage of it. As the leg stepped forward, she shifted from the side to right behind, waiting for it to swing back. She readied her fist and struck through once again.

"If. You. Weren't. Such. A. Lousy. Dragon." She spoke heavily with each strike. "I would have had my breakfast by now!! Take this!!!!"

Like a flash, Emiya struck right through the leg and onto the other side. It was then that she felt the ground beneath her shake, and it wasn't because of another one of Lloyd's antics. She had succeeded with her strength, and the dragooun had lost complete control over its leg.

The first leg fell, leaving a blast in its fall that blew all the undead away. Emiya shielded herself with her arms, but it still pushed her back a few feet away.

It was nothing to her, she would think.

That was when she suddenly felt the world around her spin for a few seconds and came back. The pressure of a thousand tons was right above her head; she felt she was about to pass out any second then. That was when she looked down.

On the ground right beneath her feet was… blood… clear scarlet blood splattered all over, flowing through and seeming into granite gullies like a calm river. But it wasn't its malodorous odor seeping through her nose that made her extremely nauseous.

Before she realized it, she was the one coughing up the blood, and at an excessive amount at that.

— So this is it, huh…

Emiya knew what was going on with her. This was the consequence of her breaking right past her limit. But this wasn't the result of losing spectral energy within a limb like what happened with her legs, this was the direct result of a human body actually reaching its final limit and breaking down. Even when she thought she could use her other limbs, her body as a whole couldn't take it. Underneath all that strength, and despite her being a writer, she was still a human, a sixteen-year-old girl.

Knowing full well this was it, Emiya still wanted to push further, to push enough strength within her to get herself away from the dragooun's next blast.

There was one thing she had forgotten: she wasn't alone.

Like the wind, Shogo jumped down, snatching Emiya off the ground and carrying her away with ease. It was the leader's job to ensure the safety of his members.

"I really messed up…" Emiya tried to speak, despite her weakness.

"Messed up?" Shogo landed on a rooftop away from the dragooun. He placed Emiya on the ground by the wall. "Emi, you rocked! This was phenomenal work. You've turned the tide even better than before."

As a leader, he was supposed to scold her for putting herself at risk and acting out on her own. But as a friend, all he had was words of praise and encouragement. That was the flaw of Shogo Kuroiwa, he was still a friend above all else.

"Be careful next time, will you?" He jumped on the fence to get back to the battle, "Guess it's my turn to do something. Can't let you and Lloyd have all the glory."

Getting praised by Shogo was enough to settle her down just as it would everyone on the team. They all agreed on disliking some of his traits, but when it came to his acknowledgement towards things as a leader, they respected it as they would anything. It was all part of his mysterious charm.

※※※

Everyone was doing their job in suppressing the dragooun properly. If need be, they could easily capture it without needing a sealing script. But Juno thought otherwise. The thing with Wonderland creatures, especially rare ones that were barely documented, was that one should always expect the unexpected. Those creatures were outlandish and chaotic, they had no control and just acted on the instinct naturally foretold to them.

To Juno, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

On the contrary, it was fascinating. It meant a good amount of study was neeeded to completely understand them. Because despite everything, there was still meaning behind their "uncontrollable" actions. Unlike humans of the modern age, every action an animal took meant something to them. They were constantly doing something to help themselves and others of their kind.

So to Juno, properly sealing the creature would protect it from harming itself and from harming others. Who knows what could happen to it from all the chaos happening?

But… not everything always went according to plan.

Juno was busy performing her sealing script.

[Literary Seal Script: Elemental Antithesis Seclusion]

A script capable of concealing creatures of opposing elemental powers. It wasn't necessarily made for dragons, since there was no dragon with two elements, and certainly not of two opposing elements. But if the horde of undead was enough to reduce its size, the script should be more than enough to work on it.

"Ah oh," Zoe said, who was reading her surroundings as she was told, "Emiya's out. Her energy has been greatly depleted. She's… she's losing a lot of blood."

"What?" Juno stopped her script midway.

"She used all her energy to break through the dragooun's legs, she's the reason it's down to the ground now. We gotta do something about her. If you can help get there, I can probably use my—"

"No… no tonic. It's not going to heal the damage if she's losing blood."

Juno, a scholiast herself, knew very well what must be done, but it would be at the cost of something else.

Now, she was faced with the dilemma of either doing her job and going through with the plan or saving her friend. It didn't take a second for her to decide. On the surface, everyone thought of her as one who was perfect to a fault with her work. But she was still a human being with weakness toward her friends.

"But what about the script?" Zoe knew it was the right thing to do, but it was putting the plan at risk.

"This whole thing would amount to nothing if it meant losing my best friend." Juno spoke with her still calm, yet confident, voice, "The sound thing to do would probably be going through with the plan so that her sacrifice wouldn't be in vain. But I don't care about that. I'm not about to lose Emiya to something this pathetic. She messed up, bad. She knew the risk of breaking her limit, yet she went through with it. Her screw-up is my screw-up."

Compared to everyone in the team, Zoe knew so little about every one of them. Despite it being a year since her enrollment, she was still the newbie among them. She had always thought of Juno as someone who was "by-the-book" and fit her the name she was famous perfectly according to all the rumors surrounding her, but it was all still completely wrong. Zoe knew all that from the start. But seeing Juno truly act like that still raised her respect for her upperclassman.

Zoe nodded, understanding Juno's decision, "All right! Leave the rest to us!"

"Thank you!"

Juno called for her owl and flew toward Emiya's location.

※※※

Emiya rested idly by the wall, watching the scenery from afar. Even when she was on the brink of passing out (with possibly no means of waking after), she was glad she was able to see that her attack made a tremendous result and a shift in the tide for the team. Perhaps doing this would have erased her guilt from earlier, a stupid thought, she would think, but a thought nonetheless.

Just as everything before her started to fade, destiny would pull her right back to reality, for it wasn't time to hit the bucket yet.

Juno came to her aid as quickly as possible with the most concerned look on her face. Time was running out, but she worked faster than that. It was the first time that day for her to turn off her switch completely and act on her emotions naturally.

"What… what are you…" Emiya coughed.

"Saving your bacon, that's what." She didn't pull out her book for instructions this time, as healing was her most powerful feat. It was plastered in her memories like her name and age were. "Try not to speak. It's gonna hurt a little, but that's fine."

Normally, in the case of extreme injury, a student would be deemed immobile and terminated from the mission, for the time being, putting them on the side with the company of a reader or any writer who wasn't actively engaged in the mission. It wouldn't be after the mission that those injured would be taken to the hospital, a special hospital for authors no less (with proper healers), to be treated.

But Emiya's injury wasn't going to wait for the hospital. That was why Juno was quick on acting out on her own and hurrying to her best friend's side. She was the only one among the team that could be considered a healer.

Was she the one fit for the job, however? She knew damn well she wasn't, but nothing was impossible.

"You don't have to…"

If Juno went ahead with the healing process, she very well might lose the last of her energy, and Emiya knew that.

"Shut it! We get out of this, and breakfast is on me for the week. No objections!" Sweat was dripping from Juno's forehead already. This was as exhausting as the script she wrote to save Nathan earlier, if not more. "At least no hospital bills, huh" She tried to lighten the mood for both of them.

Gradually, Emiya's injuries began to close up and the markings from the writing on her arm disappeared. The healing script meant erasing any effect whether it was the cause of writing or something inflicted by another factor. It wasn't exactly reversing the damage like it was never there, but it was doing enough repairs to keep her going for a good while.

"Ich rufe den Willen des Aimers an." Juno began muttering in German. Her family was of German heritage so it was natural that she learned chants that were in that language — that writing was considered one of the most effective forms of writing after all. "Der Wille des Aimers beruht vor allem auf Wundern aus einem fernen Land. Ich suche nicht meinen eigenen Reichtum oder die Gesundheit, sondern dass die anderen stattdessen Erfolg haben. Wenn du alles wiederherstellen und korrigiert, was es gab, wirst du helfen und ich werde bleiben. Vergib die Sünden der Vergangenheit und besteige den Weg der Heilung. Du sollst nicht vergessen werden, denn dein Geschenk ist göttlich. Und so gehe ich mit deinem Segen voran und heile die Wunde meines geliebten Menschen. Deine sanfte Seele, bitte beachte meinen Ruf. Denn dieser Gesang bringt Aimers Heilungsgeschenk."

[Aimers Restituo Chant]

Within a few minutes, Emiya's wounds were erased like they never were, but the damage was still not completely gone. What remained was the slight sensation of pain that should no longer be there, and in due time, it wouldn't be.

Nevertheless, Emiya regained most of her health, but was still not fit to head back into battle. Besides, even if she could, she wouldn't. She had already done her part, and now it was her turn to take care of the very person who nursed her back to health.

Dizziness pierced right through Juno this time. All of the work she had done the entire day was starting to take a tremendous toll.

As soon as she finished reciting the chant, she rested her head on Emiya's lap. Emiya still felt pain, but to Juno, she couldn't deny her the comfort she needed.

"I guess we're both out, then." Emiya chuckled quietly, "We'll leave it to the boys. You think they can manage without us?"

"Hm… They got Zoe still. And if Nathan is still sound as he is, then we shouldn't worry too much." Juno said, "Besides, you're one to talk."

"Eh… I'm not the one who summoned the dead without putting much thought."

"No, you're not. But you are the idiot who almost wasted her life."

"I'll take that—" Emiya coughed, "Hey. You think you can still run me up on that breakfast offer?"

Juno sighed, "Emiya Langley… ever the tireless opportunist."