Semblance of Remembrance

Chapter 9 - Trauma

Satori's Perspective

I and the human known as Reimu continued our battle in the Great Hall. She shot wave after wave of red and gray amulets, occasionally sprinkling in a few yin-yang orbs that went in random directions. When these orbs hit a wall, they bounced off it with an unreadable trajectory. I could dodge the waves of amulets because I could see where she was intending to fire them in her thoughts. The orbs proved to be much more difficult to dodge as I could not accurately predict where they would go after bouncing off the walls in the room.

At the very least, I could prepare myself for when she would use the yin-yang bullets because I could read her thoughts, but it didn't really help me dodge them too much. I started getting hit a few times purely because of these fast-moving orbs, yet I continued my barrage on her as well. I kept summoning in waves of jagged bullets, occasionally changing where the two sides of bullets coincided to throw off her dodging. Despite this, she still managed to easily fly through the gaps I left in my danmaku pattern. I saw that her facial expression hadn't changed since the beginning of the match, probably thinking that this was too easy for her. What arrogance... I guess I should go a bit more serious then.

I started to use my mind-reading ability to see where she would dodge and then unleash a wave of bullets toward that location. The strategy semi-worked, I started landing a few hits on her, but she was still dodging the bullets with quite a bit of ease. To make matters worse, the damage I was taking to her bullets that she continued to shoot while dodging was starting to stack up, and I felt the energy stored in my first nonspell start to decrease.

'*Sigh* It doesn't look like my first nonspell will do much against her anymore. She has already seen through the pattern and even when I read her mind and shoot toward where she is planning to dodge, she easily changes where she dodges which makes my strategy obsolete. The energy in my nonspell is starting to run out as well. Oh well, I guess I should just use up all the energy in one last attack.' I thought to myself.

While Reimu was shooting out her orbs, I made the energy contained in my nonspell formation basically implode on itself. This would use up all the energy by creating a massive number of bullets, causing my nonspell to stop, but in return, making the pattern much harder to dodge. Once I did so, 10 times the usual amount of bullets spawned which made the gaps to dodge the pattern much smaller and much tighter. It looked like I had summoned a solid wall of bullets that moved toward the enemy. Despite its seemingly undodgeable appearance, I made sure to leave small gaps to make the pattern dodgeable in accordance with Spell Card Rules. The trick to this desperation pattern was that you needed to move closer to me to dodge it.

When the formation was closer to me, small gaps appeared in the wall of bullets, allowing one to slip through them to safety. When the bullets moved away from me, however, the gaps started to close and there was no way to dodge them.

Reimu did not notice this trick and moved backward to analyze the formation and find ways to dodge it. When she realized that she had lost the opportunity to dodge, she shot one last wave of her amulets and yin-yang orbs toward me. I simply sidestepped out of the way of the amulets before using my full concentration to dodge the bouncing yin-yang orbs. This time, I managed to dodge all of them by simply dropping down to the ground and waiting for them to disappear.

Once I had reached the ground, I looked toward Reimu, and I saw her getting hit by several bullets that made up the wall. I could see that the energy in her nonspell was heavily depleted as it started to flicker; however, it still had enough energy to continue.

"Recollection [Terrible Souvenir]!" I activated my spell card as the energy of my nonspell was completely drained.

Upon my declaration, thin red beams of light started to orbit around me. The light did not deal any damage but served to be a tracking system. They continued to circle around me until they pointed directly at Reimu. If she stood still, the beams of light would stop on her location until she started moving again. She was confused by what these beams did so she stood still for a few moments trying to analyze the gimmick of my spell card. This caused many of the beams of light to point directly at her. Then the beams started to glow with more intensity. In response to this, Reimu quickly moved out of the way of the beams. After a few seconds, these beams of light turned into lasers, which could deal damage. She managed to dodge the lasers because she had moved away from the beams of light seconds before they became lasers.