Buckshot was a nasty thing to use on anything, humans especially. Marceline was a vampire, not a human, and yet telling himself that did little to steel Kruger against the fact of his combat. What did was that her sheer durability made the damage dealt a great deal lesser. So much so in fact that he was awaiting the chance to swap his gun out entirely. Bad choice, buckshot. Awful in fact, what had he been thinking? Here was a woman with a hundred times ordinary human durability, two hundred perhaps. Her skin might as well have been sheets of steel and even the soft tissues below were sturdier than stone.

No, buckshot had been an awful choice indeed.

Kruger wasn't going to pay for it though, not against this enemy. She tried to keep her distance, which suited him just fine, and fought by conjuring great spheres of white-hot flame to hurl his way, which suited him rather less. Kruger kept on the move, enjoying a considerable physical advantage and using it well to keep from being caught as he changed his weapon.

An M60, now there was a fine choice for such affairs. The seven-six-two rounds took flight at north of double mach speed and thudded into their target five times a second, exhausting themselves against the resilience of her flesh only after digging through an inch or more of it. A human would've fallen fast and died shortly after, it was only undead survivability—the lack of functioning organs or flowing blood—that kept Marceline from dropping into death's grasp.

But that didn't mean she wasn't taking damage. She still needed muscles to move and bones to stand, chip away at them and Kruger would immobilise her if nothing else. Immobilise her, and he could focus on his remaining opponent. Hopefully before they defeated his allies.

Eager not to get ahead of himself, he forced his thoughts back onto the here and now—spraying out another burst at the vampire. Marceline waved her hand and threw out a wall similar to the ones that Emma girl tended to make, though Kruger recognised its bloody texture as his bullet splashed into it. Oddly durable for a barrier of blood, the armour-piercing rounds crumpled and splintered attempting to get through.

Kruger didn't bite the bait and try circling around it, seeing how poor an idea that would have been a moment later as flames descended along great lengths spanning both spaces beside the barrier. No, he took the chance to reshape his weapon all over. They were fighting out in the open now, which meant he could be a good deal less conservative than he had been before. The Milkor grenade launcher fell assuringly into his hands, and he began shooting a moment later. This one did actually tug at his reserves of power—mana, as Emma called it—with each new grenade he replenished into the chambers. Kruger wasn't certain why, but it seemed explosive substances and other exotics were harder for him to conjure than the basic materials of his weaponry.

On the other hand, their results now were hard to deny. Three shots blew the wall of blood apart, and the fourth hit its controller before sheets of ichor could re-close to protect her again. He watched as the vampire Marceline fell down and rolled away trailing smoke and flickers of blood upon the stone. Two more grenades in his chamber, Kruger leapt for a clear shot and fired them both together.

One went slightly wide, hasty shooting on his part, but the other hit directly. A human might have been de-limbed by the resulting blasts, but Kruger found the large lacerations thrown across his target suitable enough. Before he'd landed, he was already re-filling the chambers of his weapon and shooting a furtive glance at the rest of the combat.

He froze as he did, because the vampire Eric was winning somehow. Krummer seemed incapacitated, lying ten metres shy of the melee and twitching in the mud. Aexilica and Vari were both fighting with admirable unity, but even their combined skills were doing no more than fending the vampire off. And not perfectly. Both were collecting wounds, weakening by the moment. He didn't have long until they fell.

Kruger changed his weapon again, wasting precious moments to make a device that wouldn't injure allies in close proximity to the target. When another M60 dropped into his hands, he fired. Just a burst, not a full spray, but accurately-aimed. The four seven-six rounds smacked into the small of his target's back, broke the skin and left puffs of blood wisping out from where they hit. Eric hesitated, marked by a deep cut on one side and a heavy hammerblow on the other. Kruger did not get the chance to enjoy turning the tables for his allies however, suddenly everything was pain.

***

From the corner of her eye, Aexilica could see Kruger caught from behind by the bolt of lightning. She winced at the sight. It looked rather like he ought to have come apart, body twisted to pieces by the energies on display. Maybe a lesser one would have, but he certainly didn't ignore the hit. He fell, dropping down into the mud and actually making it sizzle where the excess heat he'd absorbed found an escape.

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That was another ally out of things, leaving Aexilica and Vari alone against their opponent. The hits he'd taken from Kruger didn't seem to slow him at all, and the hits he'd taken in his moment of distraction where Vari and Aexilica had hit as one were scarcely better. Even now she saw them closing up, slowly but surely. The enemy's sword found her calf, and Aexilica didn't see anything much for a few moments as pain flared up and left her wincing through tears. When her vision cleared Vari was already falling away, blood gushing from his side, and she was left to fight the vampire by herself.

It didn't last long, not at all.

Another hit to the chest, then a final one to the upper thigh. Aexilica felt her strength ooze away as her body collapsed, limbs numbed, head fogged and mind plunged into the icy depths of unconsciousness. Her last thought before falling and sleeping was of Emma. Would she win this fight?

Hard to imagine so.

***

Isolde wasn't killed whenhwen Emma blasted her, that had been deliberate on her part. Emma didn't really mind killing people, not in self-defence at least, but sometimes it pricked. Cold-blooded executions weren't her style, and the thought of killing Isolde in any way at all left her…Reluctant.

She wasn't sure if Isolde was returning that sentiment though. Surely she was, right? She and Emma had a connection of some sort, love at first sight or some shit. Any minute now she'd be overwhelmed by bottled-up love, stop fighting and throw Emma over her shoulder to fly her back to the castle and fuck the hell out of her.

Any minute now, surely.

Isolde splayed her hands and built orbs of rolling fire between the outstretched fingers, letting them coil and curl for a moment, heat up further and widen before she hurled both of them in one volley. Emma threw up a wall of hardlight and winced at the resulting explosion. Scraps of fraying blue matter flew out in all directions of the blast and Isolde shot through it. No smoke, and no dust. Magical fire tended to leave the air cleaner than ones made from chemical incendiaries, and they were high enough that no debris rested near enough to be flung upwards.

So Emma had a nice, clear shot with her cavitation gun long before Isolde reached her. Isolde was tougher than even the magical stone of a gargoyle, so she didn't lose an arm. No, it was left dangling off her body by an entire inch of gristle. She screamed of course, seeming rather distressed and buying Emma enough time to level another shot up—this time at her gut.

The shot never rang out, because something impossibly big shot right for Emma and almost had her before she could loose the projectile. It was a last-moment warning from Larry that let her fling herself to one side and let the soaring attacker miss by less than a metre. It was the big vampire, Eric. Fuck.

He actually wasn't as fast as Isolde, something about flight being more magical than physical perhaps, but he still came after Emma at approximately the same speed as an orbital drop pod. She made like the Covenant and blew him the fuck up as he came within range, sending him spinning off-kilter with an energy lance and then peppering him with matter javelins that seemed to mostly bounce off him after barely tearing open the skin. That was when the fireballs started.

Marceline, it seemed, had won her fight too, leaving Emma in a three-on-one. She felt the panic creeping up her, turning, flying, twisting through the air in a hectic escape. Eric shot forwards after her as Isolde closed from above, intercepting. She felt magic run through the skies as Marceline wove a great net of flame to ensnare her.

"Calm down!" Larry roared, "relax!"

"Fuck you!" Emma shrieked, too scared to even register his words or truly think of how she ought to reply.

"Emma, calm the fuck down," Larry pressed her, "you can still win this."

"What!?" It was ridiculous, a three on one? Her? She—

—"Yes you fucking can, keep your cool. You may not have noticed this but you've been the most powerful player in your group for a long while, you were kicking Isolde's ass one-on-one while barely trying. And she's the strongest."

That was…Odd, but Emma couldn't actually say that any of it was untrue. She couldn't actually say anything about any of it, period, because the attack fell right at that moment. Instinct took over, and Emma lashed out a wave of water to meet the flaming cage. Whatever that fire was, it burned a lot hotter than any natural flame she'd seen. The liquid vaporized instantly and covered them all with sizzling steam. Emma switched to Cognition-sight without even meaning to, seeing the vampire's minds as human-sized, darkened specs of magic which she wove around quickly. Her cavitation gun was already prepared and charged by the time Eric's blob came for her. Emma shot him right through the fog.

It probably came as quite a nasty shock to him, and Emma didn't give him time to overcome it. She kept firing, two, three, five hits right in the vampire's body. That was when she sensed others moving towards her and started upwards. Steam rose, right? Right, so she'd still be in the cloud moving that way. Marceline was the next to get cavitation'd and fall out of the sky with just that one hit, making things a one-on-one between Emma and Isolde all over again. A great wind took to the air and started blowing away steam, which was already thinning out and dissipating, but while Isolde's magic was doing that, it wasn't doing anything else. Emma fired a matter-javelin into the woman, a very specially-made one.

This time the core inside its iron shell was conjured coal, not lead, and a quick flex of Energy ignited the stuff even as it remained sticking out of the vampire's arm. Fire worked on vampires, right? They were weak to it?

Right, because humans have water-pistol fights using flamethrowers.

If Isolde had some supernatural vulnerability to burning, Emma didn't see it at play here. The woman shrugged off the licking tongues of fire quickly and dragged the lance of iron out of herself with one motion. Emma caught the static around her right before Marceline's lightning bolt leapt out and smacked into her from below.

Funny, the feeling of being electrocuted. Not 'ha-ha' funny, more 'piss yourself three thousand feet in the air' funny. Her armour saved her, and did little else.

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