-Ancient Anugypt, collapsed city, throne room corridor, Jade-
Sandy wasn’t exactly an elite jackal and was basically a rookie until she joined the war effort. Not that it was going to help these guys coming at us, being possessed pretty much dropped their skills drastically. They still had muscle, but none of the reflexes or skill they would normally be known for.
With this in mind, Sandy should be fine if I couldn’t watcher her back entirely as I slid under the spears coming at me from the left, right and in front of me. The three spears crossed over my head as I threw my yo-yo straight up in the air.
“Falling moon shot!” The spinning yo-yo’s string pulled taught above me and with a yank the yo-yo came down and smashed the jack between the eyes.
This forced his head downwards and he staggered back a few steps, I moved forward while grabbing my tail to avoid getting it sliced off from the two spears that slammed into the floor behind me.
Using the momentum from the downwards swing I brought my yo-yo back towards myself and swept it upwards behind me an overhand swing that launched it straight forward and caught the jackal in a stomach knocking him over.
I stretched my tail to the right with my right hand, while flexing it to the left as hard as I could as the yo-yo reeled in. I dodged into the stab of the jackal on my right moving too close to hit with the blade.
This meant the jackal would either drop her weapon to attack me with her bare hands or she would try to kick me, I had to remind myself this would only happen if my opponent could use her actual skills. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of the sphere wielding jackal now behind me, I leaned to the right over the spear at my side, avoiding the spear from behind that nicked the right shoulder of the jackal in front of me.
I released my tail and it slapped out and across the right side of the skull to the jackal behind me like a whip. Having knocked that guy down, I used my yo-yo to perform the reverse of my last trick.
“Rising sun shot!” I tossed the yo-yo straight forward into her throat and while she was grasping that in pain and leaning her head forward, I pulled the yo-yo back over my shoulder, then brought it around and up into an uppercut with the yo-yo.
There was a sharp crack followed the sound of the yo-yo smashing her in the chin that laid her completely out, unlike the other two I think she wasn’t getting up again… at least not as a possessed jackal.
Within a second of that happening, I yelped as I dodged a blast of magic that shot by my face. The other two jackals were slowly getting up and the unicorns were reminding me that they were here. I took a quick glance to see how Sandy was doing.
Sandy pushed the jackal in front of her back with her shield which was getting more damaged by the second, I probably should have reinforced the wood. Thinking on it, I should have probably done that to her baton too.
I quickly made my way over to Sand Shroud while dodging the shots from the four unicorns focusing their attentions on me, their aim was about as good as Celestia’s royal guard… which is definitely not a compliment to their current skill level.
They were coming close to hitting me, but they weren’t obviously trained for hitting moving targets.
“Walk the dog…” I tossed the yo-yo out and it came to a stop on the floor near the right most jackal battling with Sandy. “The bite is worse than the bark!”
A tug and the yo-yo stopped kicking up dust on the ground and slammed straight up into the jackal’s loin cloth, he grunted and squatted slightly. A second later he stood up and swung at my chest, I stumbled back looking at him in shock as I retrieved my yo-yo.
“You know, I have to ask, what does that jackal happen to be made of?!” As I queried my Ancient Anugyptian friend, she deflect a spear upwards and landed a blow on her middle jackals left shoulder. She also blocked the spear from the one on her left being swung for her.
“They are elites for a reason Jade!” That didn’t really explain it Sandy, I hit him in a weak point that any female or male would go down to and he staid mostly standing. The pain didn’t even seem to bother his combat ability in the slightest as he twirled the spear at me and tried to slash me from shoulder to hip.
“Cat’s Cradle!” As odd as it was to do a weird move like that, I got the yo-yo hanging in the center of a triangle and the blade struck the yo-yo before hitting the string. The string flexed with no damage at all given most of the force when to the yo-yo, but the spear didn’t do what Jacky’s bow normally does when something was put to the string of it.
I pushed the spears blade back with the string making the jackal stumble, if it was Jacky’s bow this guy would have gone flying.
“Cradled Claw!” The blow to the yo-yo took from the spear sent it out of the cradle in two revolutions around my hands, I fully released it and slowly twisted myself into a clockwise windup for the third swing.
I added a little momentum on the swing putting some muscle into it and then slashed him across the chest with the two edges of the yo-yo. Said edges were spinning fast enough to deal a cutting blow.
The odd thing about my counter attack was that there were three marks across his shoulder, chest and left hip. I wonder where the third phantom claw mark came from?
I noted some blood dripping from the string as I reeled the yo-yo back in, ah the yo-yo and the string… those five years of limbo weren’t wasted when it came to learning how to use a yo-yo as a completely viable weapon.
Not only did I claw the jackal up with a yo-yo I knocked him out cold from the force of the blow knocking him head first into the pillar behind him. I noted Parasite Anubis had a vaguely amused grin on his face.
“I feel humbled by the fact that you dealt with two of our opponents while I still struggle to put down one.” Sandy seemed to be in awe of my yo-yo skills. She moved forward and braced herself for several magic bursts from the four unicorns, then deflected the next two spear swings with a simple flourish of her baton. “Still, I have become fairly talented at defending myself, but my shield and weapon are getting fairly damaged here.”
I noted the position of the jackals was lining up, I took a position behind Sandy and smiled. I wanted to do something flashy and impossible to do on the sand. It would only be possible with a griffon feather sustainment and even if we weren’t going to win the fight with Anubis, I still wanted to show off a little.
“Hold them for a bit and get ready to move when I tell you to, I’m going to need you to leap to the side.” The unicorns had moved closer, but they were still keeping their distance. The jackals were alternating left and right, the four unicorns form a circle behind them, yes… if I could pull this off...
“Right.” Sandy set up more defensively and the jackals were not moving to attack her three on one, which was a good thing as the two approached and attacked her and she stayed on the defensive.
-Sandy-
I had no idea what Jade was doing, but she was great at fighting with her bare paws as well as wielding lightweight weapons. I actually looked up to her because of this.
I could hear her spinning her yo-yo behind me, but I had absolutely no idea what she was doing aside from spinning the yo-yo faster and faster.
She was just doing it up and down, what technique was she going for this time? Every single one so far had made absolutely sense, given that weapon worked on momentum. For something so simple it was really quite hard to wield.
I deflect a stab with my wood baton and moved a little, one of the jackals stepped forward and raised the spear for a downwards swing.
“Now!” I immediately leapt to the side and was witness to something I’d never forget in my life.
The blade of the spear slapped against the floor and Jade took several quick steps forward, she had backed up for what she was about to pull. She tossed the yo-yo forward and it started kicking up dust as it spun against the ground, it moved forward slightly as she charge and then she jumped.
She twisted and inverted her body upside down above the yo-yo and scrunched up and then she seem to explode outwards and spun. The three limbs whipping around were her legs and her tail, notably her tail was curled around the spear blade she had taken from that jackal I saw following after her.
She slammed into the first jackal and he was sent flying with several bleeding cuts. Jade scrunched and exploded forward again spinning all that much faster as she deflected the spear of the next jackal, scrunch and she started to spin even faster as she passed that jackal after launching them away in the same state the first one she passed.
She chews through the third one who tries to defend themselves, only to have the wood of their spear turned into kindling. The fourth one does fare much better after Jade explodes forward from the third, one last scrunch and the spiraling spinning upside down cat shot forward flipped and then lashed out with her yo-yo from the floor towards the four surprised unicorns.
The last thing she did was strike all four of the glowing horns making the unicorns back off in pain and the yo-yo spiraled inwards until it slapped into her palm.
“… that… I… no words…” Jade tried to take a step and started to stumble about as if she had partaken of a powerful nobles drink, her tail dropped the spear blade it held and she soon fell onto her butt. What was wrong with her? I moved forward slightly and saw her eyes spinning. “So dizzy… so much spinning… did I… did I really manage to… do a Gazer Spiral?”
One of the unicorns shook their head and went to attack, I charged forward and clubbed him across the head making him go down. I swiftly took down another with a backswing and blocked the next two magic shots. That attack had obviously taken a lot out of Jade.
-Break-
“What is a Gazer Spiral and why is it so hard to do?” Asked Gene as he held his son Gavin, behind him Jacky was running a fire extinguisher over her body which had caught fire. Whatever was in the odd fire extinguisher, it really smelled quite good.
“Because it requires momentum, at best you can only do one inverted spin before having to stop unless you’re a pegasus or some other form of winged creature that can control the air to perform the trick.” Jade started to explain. “Every time I hit something with my feet or tail I used the griffon feather to keep my spin going while also keeping myself airborne. From what Sandy told me, it looked like I kept spinning in one direction the entire time. That was far from the truth, as I reversed my spin every time I hit something, I was spinning so fast that it only looked like I was spinning one direction. I was quite out of it on the floor after my helicopter kicking ended, but Sandy handled the unicorns fairly well. At least until I could get myself back to my senses.”
“Why is it called Gazer Spiral?!” Several winced at Flamberge’s loud voice, but all Sweetcakes did was snuggle up to him. Some of them couldn’t believe he had a nice looking girlfriend, much less someone that can stand his obnoxiously loud voice.
“It’s because you become like a tornado to everyone looking at you while balancing your spinning flight above a rolling yo-yo. Looking at me from above or below you’d definitely see where the spiral part comes in.” Jade rubbed at her left ear idly. “It was rough on my body and I was going to do that again, but it did put down the four elite possessed jackals with relatively little fuss thanks to the blade I had on my tail. They all survived my attack, but they were too injured to move after getting kicked with my toe claws and slashed multiple times with that spear blade I took.”
Jade took up a glass of apple juice and sipped it, she turned a look over to Fizzle and Maries cuddling one another. The strange herd’s relationship was as physically fluffy as it was emotionally complex.
-End Break-
With downward strike and a forward leap, I put a bit of force behind my blow to fell the last of the unicorns. Around this time Jade started coming to her senses, but she wasn’t standing up.
A clapping noise brought my attention forward as I turned to Anubis and raised my shield. Anubis clapped his clawed digits together several times.
“Well… well… looks like I might have to get up after all.” Even when he was surrounded by Baast and her grand army, most of which was currently digging jackals out of the destroyed city, he didn’t seem troubled. Taking up his royal battle crook, a full length staff with a hook at the end, he stood up and stared me down. “After I deal with you two I can still escape and continue my plans for taking over the world, once I have that bone back the dead shall rise and none will stop my armies!”
“You’re not even hiding it anymore?” I asked hesitantly.
“No, I don’t see the point if everyone knows.” The green miasma around Anubis was scaring me somewhat. He leapt forward spinning to bring the hook down at me, I raised my shield to take the blow.
I suddenly found myself hitting the wall across the room with my shield shattered, I fell to the floor with my grip tightening upon the still intact baton.
“Yeah, that’s about what I expected of his strength honestly. We’re not going to win this unless we can keep him busy!” Despite his godly strength, Jade still manage to work herself into standing position before him. She put her yo-yo away. "Don't worry Anubis... we'll save you.”
-Break-
“I did that because I knew that my yo-yo would have little to no effect whatsoever on Anubis.” Jade showed everyone the slightly blood stained yo-yo, one side had her name intricately carved on it and the other... a cartoony unicorn with a broken horn, a toothy tiger head, a snake head wearing a top hat and a goat head with an earring.