“Fantastic.” Natalia was sitting on a table while greatly enjoying some tea, with Gertrude at her side as usual, they were in a mansion that used to belong to arc trading, meaning Natalia, but it had been vandalized beyond recognition before they arrived to Ibinia. And it was now the stage for Natalia’s current fight.
“Is this going to be ok? Wasn’t this place quite expensive?” The maid asked in a nervous tone.
“Quit worrying about useless details, the enemy is already here.” Natalia said in a careless tone, simply enjoying the tea.
A cat-like lady jumped through the window, violently throwing glass shards all around the room.
Natalia sipped on her tea without a care, protecting herself with <Eve’s Bone Marrow>, Gertrude also dodged all the glass shards. “Normally I would just crush you on the spot, but this tea is simply delightful, in fact, Gertrude, could you serve it a cup of tea?”
The maid did as she was told and served the opponent a cup of tea.
“Not even a hint of a reaction! You have to be kitten me! I won’t say no though!” The lady dressed more properly for a tea party than a fight sat on the other side of the table, literally on the table, and drank from the tea. “Delightfur indeed!”
“Cheshire.” Gertrude said. “A frightful mercenary that’s part of the cult of the flying spaghetti monster, she can ignore the rules of physics to some extent, and has decent melee and long range capabilities.”
“That's miauw.” Cheshire gave a small bow while still sitting on the table “You sure are well informed mewssy!” she took a sip from her tea “Can’t say the same about mew, I thought teaming up like this was against the rules?”
Natalia waved it off “Don’t worry about Gertrude, I’m more than enough to beat something as worthless as a mercenary.” The tiniest grin could also be seen on her mouth, she was desperately trying not to show she found the puns funny.
Cheshire clicked her tongue, Natalia’s talent to make people dislike her was second to none. “You aren’t going to introduce mewrself?” Cheshire asked in a teasing tone, she was looking forward to beating this girl.
“Oh my! I completely forgot, Gertrude, your tea is simply too damn good.” Natalia cleaned her mouth with a handkerchief “I’m Natalia Balan, the one behind Arc Trading, the woman who will conquer the world, and the last person you will ever see.” after saying that she focused on drinking tea again.
Cheshire looked a bit surprised at this “Arc Trading? I didn’t think those chonky cats would come out and fight, guys like you usually sit in the back lines and have other people fight for them, people like me.” Cheshire also thought of Juda.
“Hmph! Don’t compare me to those bloated pigs!” Cheshire finally got a reaction from Natalia, as she responded with clear anger in her voice. “Though I assume someone as worthless as you can’t see the difference.”
Cheshire was on the border of grabbing her weapons and stabbing her right there, even Gertrude could only laugh nervously at Natalia’s remark, only a saint would have enough patience to deal with Natalia.
“Worthless this, worthless that, do you only know how to say that?” However, the tea was good enough that she didn’t want to ruin it just yet.
“Is there any other way to call someone like you? Anyone who is willing to die for something as worthless as money is, by definition, worthless themselves.” Natalia calmly drank from her tea, but there was still a hint of anger in her voice. “It’s not like that’s the only way a person is worthless though, those pigs in human clothes are even more worthless, they’re basically parasites, and this little rebellion who is willing to die for them is even more worthless.”
“What do you mean? Is your head a litter box? Nova and the sages are super enemies, are they not?” Cheshire scratched her head in confusion.
“Are you blind? Ibinia is the perfect example of what happens when you leave bloated pigs in power, slavery is common, there’s barbarism all around and the people who starve are willing to die just so that the boot that keeps stomping on them doesn’t stop, or at least, that’s what they want to try, but are simply too worthless to do so, and they must rely on worthless mercenaries to do so.” Natalia sips from her tea again, she almost finishes it. “The dragons who rule over this place have had it too good for too long.”
Cheshire looks somewhat intrigued at this “So you think you’re some kind of freedom fighter?”
“Me? Of course not.” Natalia shook her head. “But living in such a worthless world is a tragedy for the few of us who have some actual value,
Cheshire sipped from her tea, and stopped as she almost finished it “I see, to be purrfectly honest, I don’t really care about this, I just wanted some conversation with the tea, that girl clearly knows her stuff, this tea is simply amewsing.”
“Gertrude is the best.” Natalia nodded with a smug grin.
The maid blushed a little, but didn't say anything.
“Have this.” Cheshire grabs a bag of tea leaves from who-knows-where, and gives it to Gertrude, and then she grabs a deck of cards from a different who-knows-where, draws a card, and then gives it to Natalia.
“The queen of hearts?” The noble girl sounds confused.
“Purrfectly fitting in my opinion!” Cheshire laughed to herself.
“Hmph.” Natalia inspected it and after making sure it didn’t have any magic in it, she put the card in her pocket. “Don’t think I’ll let you get off easily if you try to butter me up”
“Not in a mewllion years!” Cheshire gave Natalia a thumbs up.
After that, the atmosphere tensed up, and the two of them gave their tea one last sip…
Natalia immediately summoned an eye and fired a laser at Cheshire, while she also threw half a dozen knives towards Natalia’s vitals as fast as she could.
Cheshire barely managed to dodge the laser, only burning some hair, while most of the knives were stopped without a problem by Natalia’s translucent ribs, however, one of them managed to slip past the ribs and sliced half of one of her twintails.
“You’re going to regret dodging that.” Natalia said with clear anger in her voice as she threw her teacup at the floor.
Cheshire jumped back and prepared to throw more knives, but Natalia summoned <Athena’s flesh> and punched Cheshire while she was mid-air!
Cheshire eyes seemed to pop out of her sockets as she was flung towards the wall, breaking it! Then hitting the wall of the next room, breaking it too! And then finally bouncing in the third room while making pinball-like sounds.
“Don’t get in the way.” Natalia glanced at Gertrude for a second before standing up.
* * *
(For the flying spaghetti monster! Why do the sages even bother hiring mewrcenaries when they have monsters like this!) Cheshire stood dusted up her dress, seemingly unharmed, but she knew that taking any more of those hits wouldn’t end well for her.
Cheshire immediately threw some knives and poker cards at Natalia’s direction and then ran into the upper floor, she wanted to increase the distance between herself and the Arc Trading brat.
* * *
“Annoying pest!” Natalia seemed out of patience already, she ignored Cheshire trying to run away, and did her best to dodge the knives and cards while protecting herself, but she wasn’t nearly as agile as her opponent, so she received a few cuts from the knives, one on her right arm and another one on the middle of her ribs, ironically enough, though neither of them were particularly deep.
“You!” Natalia extended her skeletal arms, breaking through any walls that were unlucky enough to be in her way, and clapped, destroying the remaining walls in front of her, and damaging the entire structure of the building with the shockwave, bringing down the entire mansion.
* * *
“Holy pawccheri! Is this girl out of her head!” Cheshire kept running towards a nearby window as the floor under her kept collapsing! She jumped through it and out of the building without any hesitation. Once in the air, she grabbed an umbrella from somewhere and opened it, slowing down her fall and ensuring a gentle landing.
Cheshire looked around her, the surroundings of the mansion were a highway and open desert, with no place to hide in sight, she could see the maid was watching the fight from afar, and though it was far enough that Cheshire couldn’t discern her expression, it was still clear as day that she was extremely nervous. (Why would you bring someone like that into a battlefield!)
The mansion itself had been completely destroyed and turned into rubble, that one attack demolished the entire building!
“There’s no hint of the girl… did she take herself out with her own attack?” Cheshire was doubtful that this was the case, but it wouldn’t have been the first time she’s seen something like that, it’s easy to make a miscalculation or get blinded by one’s emotions during the heat of battle.
However, her hopes were quickly destroyed as the debris was violently blown away by two truck sized skeletal arms, some of it hit Cheshire, but it simply bounced off her.
“I’LL KILL YOU!” Natalia screamed, blood boiling in anger, she was mostly unharmed but she still received some damage, and it seemed some dirt had gotten into her wounds, making her feel much more pain from them.
* * *
Natalia fired lasers at Cheshire while screaming in anger, she hadn’t suffered this much damage in a long time, much less by her own mistake, she wanted to completely decimate her opponent and make them suffer as much as she could, she walked slowly towards Cheshire, moving quickly hurt too much.
On the other hand the mercenary seemed unhurt, and was dodging the laser, albeit with some difficulty.
Cheshire grabbed a rifle from somewhere, put a cookbook where the magazine should go, and started firing pasta as if it was a machine gun.
Natalia immediately defended herself, while still trying to close the distance between her and Cheshire, but the mercenary maintained the distance between the two while desperately dodging the lasers.
One of the pasta-bullets slipped past Natalia’s defenses and painfully impaled her, as much as she hated it, if this tug of war continued Natalia knew she was sure to lose and turn into a penne rigate porcupine, while Cheshire had some difficulty dodging the lasers, she seemed to still have a lot of energy in her, and it was unlikely someone with as much experience as her would slip up in the last moment.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!” Natalia screamed at the top of her lungs, not from pain, but from anger, her opponent was fundamentally worthless, an animal, and yet she struggled this much to beat them, and there was a good chance she would not even be able to win! She might even die!
“GGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” Natalia absolutely refused to accept this, and began charging towards Cheshire, it hurt like hell, and a few pasta-bullets slipped through her defenses, but the pain only made her angrier, and the angrier she was the faster she charged at her target.
However, what was Natalia’s target? The last thing she remembers was drinking a delightful tea while waiting for an opponent that was ten minutes late, so why did she become so angry? Did she become insane?
Natalia did not care if she was insane, because she was MAD, and there was someone out there whose head had become too comfortable in their shoulders!
In this madness, a second stretched to infinity, right turned left and left turned right, color seemed to drain from everything, but at the same time everything seemed so much more vibrant, Gertrude in the distance looked much more cute, sandwiches became her favorite food, and the domineering heat of the desert felt like a freezing abyss at the bottom of the ocean, however, Natalia did not feel cold at all.
It was like Natalia was experiencing the world through several dozens of flawed reflections all overlapped on top of each other, but in her madness everything made sense, maybe even more than the normal world.
“<I WON’T DIE>!” Natalia screamed, and everything returned to normal after a second passed.
Cheshire appeared right in front of Natalia, like she had always been there, and stabbed the noble girl right in her gut, however, at the same time, Natalia grabbed her hand with an iron-like grip, not allowing Cheshire to remove the knife or back away.
* * *
(What?! Impawsible! Did she also ignore <Gone mad>?!... No, she did not, my knife is in her gut, and <Gone mad> worked as intended, but she’s not letting go of my hand, and this strength is not something she should be able to do with those noodle arms, especially with injuries like that.)
Cheshire looked at Natalia, the girl was in a sorry state, she had received a few pasta-bullet wounds, it was clear that the mansion collapsing on top of her did more damage than Cheshire thought at first glance, and there was no need to mention the knife in her gut, however, there was something unusual about her, Natalia’s pupils were heart shaped for some reason.
(Hearts? How weird, I also drew the queen of hearts for her a mew minutes ago, but I did it nonchalantly, any card would have activated my trap, but maybe I ended up performing a divination by accident? Was it a warning that she was hiding a trump card, or that she was going to get a new ability?)
Cheshire gulped, it seemed she underestimated Natalia, and that she got out of bed with the wrong paw today.
“What’s the matter… cat’s got your tongue?” Natalia said in a raspy voice, it seems that she didn’t have the energy to be smug.
“I yield!” Cheshire was in a extremely bad position, Natalia’s grip on her hand felt as strong as iron, and she wouldn’t be able to free herself fast enough to create enough distance to dodge one of those eye lasers, not to mention the skeletal arms, and Cheshire was not going to give her life for the cause of Nova Ordo or as revenge for Juda.
However, Natalia gave a weak smile and said “<Off with your head>” And Cheshire felt the cold blade of a guillotine cut her head off her shoulders right there.
…
Except she was still alive? Cheshire felt her head being cut again, but from a duller blade struggling to complete its task this time.
“I have no idea how long my <Queen of hearts> will last, I just got it after all, but sadly I don’t have the time to make you into a lab rat.” Just as said this, Natalia grabbed Cheshire with her skeleton arms, and threw her as far as she could, as if she was throwing a ball.
Soon enough Cheshire disappeared into the sky, her fate unknown to everyone here, and Natalia fell on her back and lost her consciousness, she gave it her all, but she couldn’t hold up any longer.
* * *
Natalia woke up in a hospital bed, it was the middle of the day, and her whole body hurt, her pupils were back to normal too.
Gertrude and Lixue were in the room with her “Natalia! I was so worried!” Gertrude immediately hugs her, not caring if it’s appropriate, however, since there’s not anyone in the room who’s not trustworthy, and Natalia is enjoying the hug more than she would do before.
After a moment Gertrude realizes what she’s doing and quickly composes herself, “Young mistress! I’m glad to see you’re fine.” The maid made a small bow.
Lixue chuckles to herself “Good to see you're doing fine, you had some really nasty injuries.”
Natalia coughs a little and asks “Have I been out of it for long?”
Gertrude smiled and said “Not at all young mistress, the doctors predicted it would take you 3 weeks to wake up, and 2 months to fully recover, however, it’s only been 1 week since your fight.”
“Hmph, typical backwater ‘medicine’, and just call me Gertrude, that young mistress bit is annoying coming from you, just call me by my name.” Natalia said in a grumpy tone. “Has anything happened in the meanwhile?”
“I have the results of the fights here.” Lixue lifted her hand to show off a folder “I have some good news, but some bad ones too.”
“Hmph, it’s always a headache with these things.” Natalia shrugged “Let’s get on to it.”
