Logan Starbright
SLEIPNIR ~ Flight Deck (South)
Monday ~ Morning
In the face of an enigmatic offensive, you decide that it's best to stay on the defensive until a more decisive opening presents itself to you.
There are simply too many unknown factors here for you to consider attacking, the purpose of the stored motes of energy, the fighting style and overwhelming speed of the enemy, and it's ability to seemingly disappear completely from most forms of detection through magic... Battles of a magical sort are best fought with some knowledge of the enemy's abilities, to charge in blind is a hazard that could easily lead one to being crippled from the get-go by something that had perhaps seemed negligible at a glance, yes...
For you... An analytical approach to these sorts of things suited you just fine.
"Hah-!"
Guided by your visions, you parry the first blow of that plasma saber with a swipe of your staff, stepping aside in the same movement to let the 'bullets' of energy pass you by, burying themselves into the ground rather than into your ankles.
---Yes. That is what the motes of energy had turned out to be in the end, bullets that fired themselves methodically in time with your opponent's movements, covering for any blind spots that might appear by going for critical parts of your body in the 'heartbeat' after the robot's attacks. It's a spell that seems to function exactly like self-manifested cover-fire, suppressing your own movements not just by it's incredible speed, but by also presenting a secondary 'threat' that you are unwilling to allow to touch your body...
It's not that the bullets feel particularly powerful however, as a Tamer, it would take much more than one or two 'bullets' to put you down; but at the same time, the unknown factor of the enemy's abilities has you wary of other effects the bullets themselves might have... Weaker attacks were rarely meant to put down an opponent by themselves, more often than not they were methods of applying curses to an opponent from a distance, a way to weaken them and -consequently- open them up to more decisive blows...
---So while it would certainly be possible for you to endure those attacks, simply power through the bullets to reach your enemy, the crippling threat they posed stayed your hand for now...
There was no reason to be reckless, after all, while your opponent had certainly put you in a tough position...
---It's not like you were fighting alone yourself either-!
Lightning erupts from your COMP completely independent of your own will; while the enemies speed meant that you needed to focus entirely on it to avoid letting it's attacks through your defenses, the COMP that has been asked to fight when it sees an opening, does so in the heartbeat after your fourth parry, as you leap backwards to avoid the shards of energy that again sought to cripple you by taking out your legs.
Your calculated retreat is predicted to draw your opponent in after you, and indeed, fire shoots from it's feet with a sound like a jet engine as it bursts after you in pursuit, seeing your sudden retreat as a moment of weakness in it's own right, and in that moment-
Lightning erupts to intercept it.
Ultimately, Spirit Tamers are at their strongest when they fight alongside their A.I's, a COMP is an empathic weapon, a companion, and it is the unity that they share with their user that allows both of them to be powerful, and to use tactics that would be impossible alone-! They exist as assistants for this very reason, to ensure that no one ever has to fight alone, and that there will always be someone watching the back of the guardians of the current world-!
"...!"
Caught in the air as a result of this baiting, there is little the assassin can seemingly do about the spear of lightning that threatens to run it through; it has been using magic constantly up until now to pressure you, so any powerful barriers or movement spells are likely unable to be deployed without risking overload... Zio itself is not too powerful a spell of course, at least not at it's lowest level, but it is the 'tap' that could easily create a moment for you to go on the offensive yourself, turning the tide of battle and forcing it on the defensive as your spirit power did it's job, but-
"Heh-!"
-even though it cannot avoid it, it laughs, it's voice deep and confident in a way that sets off all of the alarms inside of your mind.
---Because it knows it can turn this right back on you.
Yes.
Call it bad luck, but it emerges from the detonation of electricity no worse for the wear-!
---Immune to electrical attacks, or at least resistant.
The Harmonizer, the greatest program of the magic age, ironically shows off it's true worth against a human as your opponent doesn't even slow down in the face of your magic-!
---an unknown factor that scrambles predictions.
*Ba-dump*
Without complete understanding of your opponent's abilities, there is only so much Eye of the Fates can do... It was quite possible to poke holes in the possible futures by withholding information from the algorithms... In the end it's a false form of clairvoyance, something different from the conceptual ability to perceive time, and thus it is only natural that it could be momentarily broken by something it hadn't been able to account for-!
Even so...
Even so...
Even so-!
While it may have scrambled your predicted future, Logan Starbright is still here, and you are still a Tamer, someone who can defeat legends, who exists to challenge fate, and serves as a bridge between humanity and demons-!
Even if it catches you off guard, this body that has never stopped training since that day automatically moves to respond to the unceasing attack even as the 'future' you saw was sliced clean in half-! It's not a conscious motion, rather it's an instinctual one, a reflexive fall to the floor that sends you just beneath the opponent's slash at your chest, hand balling up into a fist as your precognition comes back online, a fist charged with spirit power throwing your opponent up and into the air-!
---It's an exchange that lasts little more than a second, two swift turnabouts into a launch, as a smug opponent suddenly finds himself being blasted into the sky, but-!
"...!"
It too, has it's pride as a warrior-!
Hurling it's blade at you from the sky, the swirling green of plasma seems to become a buzz saw to the naked eye as it approaches with all the force of a meteor impact, rotating so fast that the winds are pulling at your clothes-! Yes, it's clearly a form of spell rather than just a simple toss, something that might not be possible to parry or block normally, especially with how hard it's magic was to figure out due to it's nature, but-!
'Keep it busy, alright? I'll set something up to capture it.'
In the face of that chaos, a message from Astra drifts across the surface of your thoughts, beamed to you by a simple one-way communication spell; of course, she says it like it's easy, and has certainly melted away into the background since the fight began, but-!
That was how Roth did things you suppose, everyone was far more used to fighting in their own way rather than alongside each other, but-!
It's also not like you have much of a choice-!