Land of the Blades

19. Puppy

Just after parting ways with Shirou and Ghost, Bort and I went on to fulfill our patrol duty. He gave me some advice, and despite his lack of tact and delicacy, they started to make sense. It made me notice that Bort was really making an effort to find and point weakness in others, not to confront them, but because he cared for them. He just really sucked at expressing this.

—So that's how you see it? —he said with a somewhat nostalgic expression on his face—, Dia hated this kind of interest.

That conversation didn't went further as we soon faced an strange phenomena, a Sunspot overlapping another. From it came a gigantic Lunarian with 6 arms. We tried to fight it, but the only damage we managed to cause him was to cut one of his hands using a surprise attack before he had fully manifested.

Bort made us retreat to the school, using her whistle, as well as the huge bell in front of the school, to make everyone stand in place. Bort's plan was to make the Lunarian follow us to where Sensei was, and have him exterminate it. With everyone away on duty patrol, it would only focus on us. The problem was that I was too heavy and slow, even when he was carrying me, and the Lunarian was almost catching up with us. For a moment I thought Bort was going to use me as bait, but before it was able to catch me, we heard the twang sound of a bow being fired. When we looked back, the Lunarian was gone.

As it turns out, Dia was practicing with the bow in the training ground Shirou had set, and the sound attracted the Lunarian to him. Dia tried to seek help or refugee inside of the school, and the Lunarian followed him. We tried to catch up to him, but with all the hallways and stairs, we couldn't find signs of any of them.

We were eventually joined by Alexi, who pointed us towards where Dia had gone. Apparently he went to the long term recovery facilities thinking Ghost would be there, not knowing that he had gone with Shirou to the sea. Dia got tired of running away and fought the Lunarian with the bow and some arrows he had been holding on at the time, as well with a sword he had picked up from Obsidian's workshop, then trying to fight it bare handed when he ran out of weapons, and even with his shattered stumps once his arms started to break in pieces. But despite his bravery, the Lunarian was too strong to be fought alone, and he ended up shattered to the point he was unable to move any longer.

Bort got there just in time to see Dia being smashed, and with the power of his rage he was able to cut the lunarian in two. This, however, only doubled our problems, as whenever that Lunarian was cut it would just regenerate as two smaller individuals. We keep cutting and cutting, but even with the help of a battle frenzy Alexi, there was no end to it.

We ended up with small fluffy beings that were physically incapable of hurting us and were somewhat manageable, but we still didn't know how to eliminate them for good. We were also not willingly to keep cutting them to see what would happen, as they were too damn adorable. When we had lowered our defenses, all the puppies ran away, and it took everyone, and all day, to gather each and every of them. Or at least we gathered as many as we could before giving up, throwing them all on a cage. We didn't expect them to reform into their big unified form, but that's exactly what they did.

After launching a loud bark, the Lunarian attacked again, taking Jade and Obsidian as hostages. To distract him, I made a very convincing replica of a gem using the alloy on my arms.

—Come —the replica said through the magic of ventriloquism—, I'll be your opponent.

He fell for it and I tried again to direct it to where Sensei was , but the Lunarian was faster than I had expected and caught me, trapping me in its fluffy mane. Sensei arrived there anyways, and the Lunarian leaped towards him. To my surprise, it didn't attack him, instead it gave Sensei his only paw when he extended his hands towards it.