With extremely swift movements, Alicia launched herself right in front of me - it was as quick as a blur, her left foot slid as her shoulders tightened, for a second it seemed like she was standing still, before she punctured the air with her sword momentum, a single ruthless thrust to my good arm. But as luck would have it, I had trained heavily in learning to parry, from all my duels with Monoco, who always relentlessly beat me down with surprise attacks and new moves - his ability to transform into nevrons was a cheat code. God knows where he stashed all those feet and interchanged them, as he always showed different abilities.
But I digress, planting my feet sturdily into the ground, I parried her attack with my shield, the sound of metal scraping piercing my ears. But just parrying, didn't mean I couldn't feel my insides churning from the enormous force she wielded. If I hadn't been prepared, I would have been spitting blood like a fountain by now. But parrying one attack wasn't the end of it either, I had to counter-attack if I didn't want to be put on the back foot. Luckily I had my hand cannon loaded, in the opening I created by deflecting her attack - I rapidly fired 3 shots of elemental bullets. With the little we knew of Alicia, we could not confirm any weaknesses - the best bet would be to try and identify in live combat what worked best. Adding in some inspiration from yourself & Lune with her elemental abilities, this was the best method I could cook up.
That push back, gave enough time for the three of us to assemble into a formation. Adrien using his Lantern Cane bestowed several buffs upon us. Whilst Guillaume was gulping an energy tint to prepare for a heavy attack with his Dragoon Lance. However, Alicia was no pushover, her recovery was almost instant. She leaped into the air, spun around and landed a flurry of attacks on us, testing our defenses. Using swift movements, misdirection and leveraging her full body mass to maximise the impact - she targeted Guillaume with his heavier Lance making parrying more difficult. To push her back I opened suppresive fire, whilst Adrien focused on applying Rush & Powerful buffs to support Guillaume.
Somehow, we managed to drive her back a few steps - but this was already proving challenging. None of us could match her speed and her abilities were tying down 3 of us, highlighting a difference in power already. Not to mention, none of her paintress abilities had come into play just yet. She hadn't even spoken a word, from your journal - she seemed the expressive/ talkative type. Didn't seem like talking tactics would help any of us buy time.
Pushing our advantage, I overgeared the gun and used a mechanism to extend the barrel to push a bigger calibre. It seemed like she was toying with us, but we would push every advantage we would get. I fired, whilst Adrien suppressed with slowing and defensless debuffs. Guillaume launched forward, closing the gap and using all the force he could muster to slash. It did connect, but with her sword in front blocking Guillaume's strike it didn't seem to do much damage and using her speed she had blocked the larger calibre strike - what did catch her unexpected was the explosion after. But that hadn't rattled her, she simply glanced over and smiled menacingly. Not allowing for a recovery, I used the terrain we laid out in advance to fire a barrage of richocet strikes, with Guillaume pulling back to regroup. It wasn't looking optimistic for us at all, could we even last another 10 minutes? Let alone however long Team One was going to take there and back.
Unexpectedly, we had managed to get Alicia in the correct spot and tried using the Chroma Field to freeze her, yet it seemed like there was something about her that prevented the Chroma Field from working on her completely. All we had managed to do was slow her down slightly, but that was still something we could work with.
Meanwhile, Francois appeared from the ground, with Noco chilling on his back, sat down with his legs crossed over and classicly aura farming, as what else would you expect from a gestral. They had chosen a corner, where they could act as the vanguard and hit the enemies rear, yet as fate would have it, they appeared right in front of Lune & Sciel, who seemed to be snacking on some pastries.
One moment Noco was sitting, the next a scythe seemed to be swiftly approaching, as if by the grim reapers hand itself. Whereas Lune locked sight with Francois, some electricity sparking between them, before both fired elemental attacks at one another - Francois spitting out ice and Lune trying to burn him. Back to Noco, he leaped backwards in the air, suddenly enlarging himself, pivoting on Francois's shell and returning a fist to strike the scythe.
On the sidelines, Verso and Gustave seemed to be itching to get involved, drawing their blades in tandem - at one angle they almost looked like twins. Before they could intervene, Monoco & Golgra cut off their paths.
Sophie vs Bastien, knowing the inside story - it almost felt embarrasing seeing it play out. Were they even trying to make it look authentic? Sophie seemed to be going extra slow on her sword strikes and Bastien with his rapier seemed like he was fighting the air. Both were on standby to surprise Alicia when she started bombarding her paintress spells - but if she saw what baffonery was going on there, it wouldn't take 2 braincells to see through us.
We seemed to be doing just dandy restraining her, bar a few cuts getting past our defenses. But it did seem like her patience was running thin, as suddenly a mass of chroma blasted us a few feet away and Alicia seemed like was painting some armoured soldiers or something. I grimaced hard, this was about to get 10 times troublesome. Just as she was distracted, Sophie & Bastien slid towards her and attempted an ambush - yet were yeeted back effortlessly. Damn it, she probably had accounted for that. I rushed in, guns blazing, sandwiched between Adrien and Guillaume, barreling towards Alicia with maximum fire power. Yet she seemed unbothered, almost as if we were flies that could be swatted away. A distance of 1.5 metres was our stress point, we couldn't seem to make it past that invisible line, her attacks pushed us back and our best wasn't enough. Damn it, sweat was soaking my back like there was no tomorrow. We definitely had the short end of the stick.
Our chroma reserves were starting to run low, somehow, we had managed to maintain this balance for an hour. We could drop any moment, yet something mysterious kept us going on. Maybe her arrogance would help us in this case, we could keep this going, we just needed to find a slight opening and we could knock her out. Sophie & Bastien were now openly supporting us to hold her down, perhaps that was the only reason we had lasted this long. Unfortunately, it seemed like crossing the hour mark broke the camels back. Alicia was done playing cat and mouse with us and knocked out Adrien, who was constanly buffing us and debeffing Alicia, providing much needed breathing space. Seeing the change, all of us, almost in sync consumed a new tint we discovered, overdraft tint - it pushed us past our barriers yet it cost us our lifeforce. That was perhaps the only true moment, where we had an element of surprise and immediately progressed to within half a metre of Alicia. This was our only shot, we just needed one solid strike to connect and we would have the advantage. But it seemed we weren't the only ones full of surprises, a blast of energy hit all of us, a globe of void energy pulsing out of Alicia's sword, it must be her void energy. Was this a new attack? The distance we were pushed back was too far and it seemed to have taken Sophie out the picture as-well. Back to just 3 of us, we tried pushing our way back closer to Alicia, yet this time she was more vigilant. It had only been another 20 minutes, before Bastien dropped from tiredness. Alicia used that moment of lapse, directly attacking me with the same sword momentum she tried on first contact, I moved my shield in front from sheer muscle memory, yet at that moment it cracked, falling apart - her attacks had been relentless. Was this it? Yet in that sliver of a second, a staff seemed to strike Alicia's neck, finally knocking her unconscious.
Bewildered, with no one visible behind it, I saw Monoco suddenly appear from thin air. I had 100 questions, but now wasn't the time. Using the ChromaField, we froze Alicia's shell to ensure complete capture.
we all poured all the chroma of the canvas into it and embedded it into this journal. Just so it could reach you as far back as you first bought it. When you were 16 years old, the time Alicia first entered the canvas and her link to it was created.
This journal brings with it 3 items that will increase your chances of saving everyone.
1. Chroma Capture Device - those who gommage, instead of returning their chroma to Aline, it will get captured into this device. Don't throw this away, their ink is not on your hands.
2. Memory Anchor Glasses- will help you see& understand the history within any chroma you come across & make you more aware of the influence of this world.
3. Portable Chroma Field - allows you to freeze the chroma in a specific environment- Morocco was the one who proposed it and the grandis helped build it. This version is portable, so it only works for 5 minutes and has a cooldown of 1 day. If you overdrive it you can push it to 15, but that will damage it. You'll need to gather large amounts of chroma to repair it. Overdrive also corrupts with you paint, same thing happening to painters from high usage of chroma. There is no known solution for it.
Final Battle & Paquette's arrival.