Magical Girl Combat in the Internets (Pyxis)

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

Sakuya had a pretty tiring week, all things considered. She hadn't felt like doing anything at all today. And she literally spent the whole day asleep and just only got up a couple of hours ago. So she figured she'd relax with some gaming. There was a particular fighting game she enjoyed playing. It seemed to be called Soku by its players very often, and featured basically powerful magic girls flying around and trying to beat each other up. And one would suppose using magical cards to become stronger as well. Anyway, some nerd decided it would be cool to build a lobby system that interfaced with the game that allowed facilitation of looking for opponents to play against. Sakuya didn't have any arcade sticks so she was actually a textbook keyboard warrior, though she wasn't too bad at the game. However, she wasn't considered incredibly high-level, though sometimes she can keep them on their toes. She's above-average and could probably place low on a tournament setting.

Sakuya was already sitting in front of her computer and using the SokuLobby system to... well, see if she could find anyone. Sakuya played under the username BrideKnight, a name that actually usually freaked out most of the regulars at the place she was at. Though Sakuya observed proper chatroom decorum, the less experienced players would be overwhelmed at her reasonable skill at using the character who she shared a name with, and those who did stick around would often find Sakuya talking about incredibly weird things.

Today, Sakuya was bored and looking for a match.

[12:56:03 AM] BrideKnight: Evening everyone <3 Anyone awake? Wanna have some late-night games? It'll be fun <3

[Pyxis]

Ahh, finally. With everything going on as of late, chances to just sit back and play a game were starting to become a rare commodity. So rare, in fact, that it was already late night before Pyxis finally found the time. With how long her days were getting, she could only count it as a miracle that she had any time at all. A miracle owed to the fact that she took less time to recharge than humans took to sleep. So, finally, she had a few hours to kill and the only challenging part was deciding what game to play. But even that solved itself quickly as she brought her computer out of sleep mode to find that she'd still been logged into SokuLobby from when she'd been on that morning. A message popped up from a user named "BrideKnight", someone she'd seen around occasionally but never played against. In fact, all she really knew about her (Pyxis assumed 'her' from the name) was that she tended to scare off less experienced players.

Contrary to popular belief, robots are not flawless at gaming. Pyxis was designed for combat, not for cheating at video games, after all. Heck, even 'bots' in some games (a term Pyxis always got a bit of private enjoyment out of when playing games) were not programmed to play flawlessly. But many of the things that allowed her to excel in combat, such as being good at strategic thinking and having fast reflexes, also allowed her to excel in competitive multiplayer games.

That said, the most competitive humans always managed to surprise her.

But, needless to say, a name and reputation was not enough to scare Pyxis off. So when BrideKnight asked for a match and no one else responded, she saw no reason not to do it herself.

[01:01:12 AM] PhantasmMachine: I'm up for it. Got a few hours to kill.

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

Sakuya fidgeted about for the next five minutes before she noticed that somebody had responded saying that she was available for some games. Well, that was great for Sakuya. She could kill some time by playing against this person. She couldn't tell who they were, but they were probably good, as Sakuya noticed that people who were not really great or were new players tended to avoid her. Regardless, she responded simply by hovering over the name, it appears to be 'PhantasmMachine', and issuing the challenge for a game respectively, attaching a message to it which simply said "Okay, let's play some matches, good luck and have fun!" And so, whenever this 'PhantasmMachine' person would accept the request, immediately the system would boot up the game itself, automatically inputting players to the character selection screen, of Soku.

Well, Sakuya played the character that... Well, had the same name as her. At first, she wanted to see what she was like, and it seems she had very powerful pressure and rushdown game, and to do well with her you needed to capitalize greatly on her strengths and make sure you didn't fail to keep up the offensive. Anyway, Sakuya liked that character, who looked like a maid wearing blue and white in colors. But it was possible to change the color scheme palette, and did so to her usual colors, which were black and purple.

Sakuya muttered to herself. "Ok, let's see what you've got..."

[Pyxis]

After a minute or two of waiting, Pyxis was issued a challenge by the user BrideKnight. She accepted the request and was immediately taken into the character selection screen. Pyxis smiled at the simplicity of it. The game had come a long way from the first time she'd played it, when she had to use a virtual network client and manually input the IP addresses it provided into the game itself.

She gave a small chuckle as her opponent picked the knife-wielding maid character. What an ironic choice, considering what Pyxis wore whenever visiting the outer circle and fighting shadows. She sometimes played the character herself, and was quite good with her, but not this time. Mirror matches weren't really her thing. Instead, she picked a character with pink hair and a blue kimono. Her playstyle in many ways fit Pyxis's own combat style. She could use projectiles for cover, high damage output, melee attacks with a large range, and, when necessary, area saturation. And on top of that her flight capabilities, a major factor in this game, were among the best of any character. At least, Pyxis couldn't think of any other characters who could freely control their movement in the air.

She changed the color palette to one vaguely similar to her own hair and outfit: reddish brown and dark blue, then hit A and waited for the match to start.

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

"Okay, okay, it's her... Ah, she's hard to do well against..." Sakuya sighed as the loading screen flashed by, the map was random as usual, turns out the map background for this particular bout was at a shrine in the woods. As the game ticked down to match start, Sakuya had been constantly dashing around on the field trying to read her opponent had picked a character who, while typically slow on the ground, was quite good in the air, and was packing a lot of field attacks. Regardless, the major advantage of this pink-haired glutton was her raw power and ability to overwhelm the opponent slowly. However, if you could force her onto the backfoot then it's much easier to deal with her. It would be very bad for Sakuya to be behind on momentum here.

Sakuya never started a fight with using combos or trying to go on an all-out offensive. Usually she would try to see how their opponent would play first in the first couple of seconds or so. She was a fan of using a mixture of knife projectiles and melee attacks in order to scope them out. However the pink-haired character had some meaty normals although they were slow, so Sakuya had to consider her options carefully.

"Ok, let's start with some basic attacks?"

Projectiles were mostly flung around, she expected her opponent to immediately take advantage of this by grazing and flying. Yet, the character being used there was meter-reliant, and flying would take slight amounts of that. So it would be a way to try and force Sakuya's opponent to become more resource-conscious.

[Pyxis]

In contrast to her opponent, Pyxis didn't mess around as the match ticked down to starting. She simply had her character glide backwards, putting some distance between her and her opponent. She was already planning a strategy in her head, one which would take advantage of her reaction times and nearly precise movements. She always had a few possible opening combos ready to perform, but which ones she used usually depended on how the opponent started out.

This time, the opponent opened with a couple basic attacks. The first set, Pyxis avoided with a very small air dash, grazing through the thrown knives until she was above their range, then firing off a series of homing ghostly orbs as she fell. Then, anticipating the second wave of projectiles, she dashed through them to graze, then stopped as she cleared them and used a light ranged attack while pressing back to give herself some extra distance while providing light bullet cover.

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

Sakuya noticed that the opponent was actually playing fairly mechanically, that is, her little toon easily grazed through the knives that Sakuya launched quickly. Yes, they were basic attacks, so it would be very easy just to graze through them. And predictably enough, the pink-haired ghost girl launched projectiles of her own, ghostly orbs as it were, and in response Sakuya grazed through those in return, and quickly needing to graze and block where necessary as it soon became trades of sorts. However, Sakuya noted how the target was moving back while releasing bullets into the field. Sakuya then responded to this attack aggressively.

She grazed through the bullet cover and attempted to open with a dashing slash, before following it up with Crossup Magic, causing her character to leap up into the air as knives began to float around her, impacting into the opponent, which then leads to her shooting 5 waves of knives in succession, leading to a jumping aerial knife slice, and then finally finishing with knives thrown straight ahead while both her and her opponent were on the same aerial level as each other.

[Pyxis]

Pyxis noted that her opponent was being very aggressive with her attacks. This was troubling for her own character, who had few defensive options, but her moves thus far at least were easily counter-able. As soon as she saw her opponent dash in, she switched to blocking, and deflected both the dashing attack and its follow-up: a special move that caused her character to leap into the air and carry the opponent with it. Well, so long as the opponent didn't block, at least.

Instead, Pyxis was able to block it and counter with her own special attack: Eternal Wandering. The attack created a ring of wisps at a diagonal above and in front of her, which would juggle the opponent and allow Pyxis to jump up to her and follow up with a one-two of a light poke with a wisp and a backflip attack.

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

"Ok, ok, she's so hammy..." Sakuya cursed to herself as predictably, the attacks were blocked and it seemed inevitable to go for a punish, though it seemed she opted for wisp-ring instead... From the movement of the rings it seemed clear to Sakuya that her opponent had gone for C instead of B, incidentally, Sakuya knew it could combo into itself when launched into a corner. Fortunately for her she was still mid-screen, though the attack did end up pushing Sakuya back a little. Amusingly her opponent did not high-jump cancel, in fact she simply just went for simple 5AA and then, curiously going into a j.8A, which Sakuya had ended up blocking for the most part. Though she took chip damage from it. It wasn't such a huge deal.

In response Sakuya knew she had to score a knockdown on the opponent to gain momentum over the course of the battle. Quickly, Sakuya had her character perform a dashing slice at the opponent while she was landing from the backflip, regardless if it would lead into a blockstring or not, did not matter. She needed to take the driver's seat. After the slice she leapt into the air slashing wildly with the knives, and upon landing she again attempts Crossup Magic. Sakuya then immediately cursed herself for forgetting to invoke Propelling Silver, but alas. It would have to do.

[Pyxis]

Pyxis's opponent took some minor damage from her attack, but recovered quickly and soon dashed towards her again. She once again managed to settle into blocking the attack, tanking the combo, but she never managed to fully regain control. One combo flowed quickly into the next, forcing Pyxis to play a defensive game. She managed to score a few solid hits, once through a timely activation of Ghastly Dream and a few more through sheer volume of bullets, but ultimately, once her opponent had gained momentum there was very little stopping her. Finally, the round ended as Pyxis's character was defeated, with her opponent's at a little under half health remaining.

"Whew. She's good," Pyxis said while waiting for the next round to start. "I guess I'll have to be more aggressive right from the start."

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

Managing to maintain the momentum, Sakuya was able to take only about 50% damage before managing to break through the patient offensive of her opponent. It seemed like she would be able to get a ready on Sak's playstyle now after having lost, so it seemed inevitable that she had to step up her game. Though she won the first round, it wasn't very clear at that point who would win the next. "Okay, okay, this... Yuyu... She knows how to fight back. It just so happened I was able to secure the momentum very early on. I don't know if I can manage the same thing again, but let's try." Sakuya murmured as the next round was about to begin after both combatant's life bars were filled up appropriately. As it started, Sakuya immediately started with her basic bread and butter, however it appeared that this time, her target seemed to have an idea of what was going on. She reactively blocked and grazed through the bullets only in short distances, and because of it, Sakuya ended up whiffing an important part of her BnB, which gave the opportunity for the pink-haired ghost to punish her very hard.

"Oh, crap! This is bad." Sakuya cursed under her breath.

[Pyxis]

Just as Pyxis had hoped, her opponent was much easier to read the second time around. Already able to take advantage of precision movements and reactions hampered only by slight amounts of latency in network play, she was able to block and graze with even more precision now. With no wasted movement, she threw her opponent off and caused her to miss an attack just outside of hitting range. Pyxis capitalized on this instantly, countering before her opponent could recover, then following from her initial counterattack into Ticket to the Netherworld, a spellcard that would easily shave off half of her opponent's health in one go if she couldn't avoid it.

But Pyxis wasn't about to give her that opportunity. She followed up the spellcard by continuing into a second melee combo that would knock her opponent down and drastically reduce the time left to do something about the ticking time bomb that was now floating around her. Then, as the time came for her opponent to get back up, Pyxis followed up with a few bullet cover attacks. Anything to keep her blocking or grazing.

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

"Ahh, this is ridiculous. It's like I'm playing against an advanced Booster... Is this really human playing?" Sakuya sighed as she desperately tried to regain control over the match but actually she was punished by having Ticket to the Netherworld placed on her... Actually, it's a powered up version of a card "Ageless Dream" which deals DPS on afflicted targets, but it's possible to end the duration by hitting her... In this case, the wisps were harmless, but they ticked down and dealt about 4500 total damage if the explosion occurs at the end of the wisp countdown.

Sakuya hadn't really encountered anyone using "Ticket to the Netherworld" over "Ageless Dream" because she knew you could easily cancel the damage from the former. But, it seems that her opponent definitely was aware of the glaring weakness behind utilizing the spell - every character had at least one way to completely negate the damage, so she had to make sure that Sakuya had no time to react. Sakuya attempted to make a gamble, as she got up she grazed the cover of bullets her opponent, she did not land right next to her but maintained some distance.

Then, she activates Buriallusion "Phantasmic Killer." Of course it was risky because it can be interrupted to lower the damage potential, but if it hit before the wisp ticks out then it will do lots of damage because it's much faster to come out than its weaker version "Killing Doll." However, it's quite bad if the explosion still procs. Yet, it was a risk Sakuya was willing to take.

[Pyxis]

That was quite a gamble. This girl played a dangerous game, trying to counteract a spellcard with one of her own. It wasn't even one with invincibility frames. She was actually trying to score a hit in the last second before the 'timebomb' went off. But Pyxis was ready for such a possibility. The moment the spellcard activated she countered with the fastest normal move that would serve her purpose, one which threw a single homing wisp forward. Once the wisp left the character's hand, she immediately cancelled into a special commonly known as the "fanspin", which grazed through what little of the spellcard managed to come out before the wisp hit and nullified the rest.

It was a gamble in her own right. Without perfect timing, the combo would knock her opponent down by the time Ticket to the Netherworld went off, nullifying the attack she had struggled so much to preserve. Her only saving grace was the very same thing that endangered it in the first place: the sheer amount of time that had already been taken off the countdown. Sure enough, halfway through the knockdown animation following the fanspin, while her opponent was still in the air, the delayed attack went off, triggering a large explosion of what Pyxis could only assume was spiritual energy.

"Whew," Pyxis said as the attack went off. That should hopefully give her the advantage for the rest of the fight.

[Sakuya Kyoudou]

"Ahhh, that's dumb..." Sakuya sighed as she realized that it didn't work out in the end. She still ate the damage and only did a minimal amount in return. Sakuya had been knocked down to about 10% at this point so it was really futile to try and make another comeback if something like this were to happen again. Of course, going back to her original tactic was a bad idea again... All Sakuya could really do was to try and use projectile attacks like Magic Star Sword, but that probably wouldn't work out in the end and she realized it as well as she found herself unable to regain control over the match, her opponent was able to overwhelm with slow projectiles, grazing led to being punished with meaty wisp-pokes or fan-spins. It was only a matter of time before Sakuya's life hit zero mostly from chip damage... And her opponent was still pretty healthy.

"Ah... Well, there's to Round 3 I guess." Sakuya sighed to herself as she waited for the next round to begin. "...That seemed way too precise from the opponent... And calculated."