Carrot and Stick - Carrot and Stick: Magical Self-Defense and Who Pays for the Broken Windows - Chapter XVII

Chapter XVII

Nah, that one's awful. Anyway, art!

Carrot, by Mingrix!

***

“Are you okay?” Carrot asked. She pitched her voice as best she could towards the magical girl, so that the owl-daemon wouldn’t here. Or so she hoped. The rain was picking up, little droplets pitter-pattering on the brim of her hat. 

The girl shafted, then rubbed her wrist where one of Carrot’s chains had grabbed her. She felt a smidge bad about that, but she had been trying to punch Carrot. Actually, she had hit Carrot, and it still hurt.

“I don’t need your pity,” the girl said.

“Huh? That wasn’t pity, that was me checking in on you,” Carrot said. “Also, do you have a cool magical girl name? I can’t just keep calling you ‘the cute magical girl’ in my head.”

“Cute?” the cute magical girl repeated. Then her cheeks puffed out and she glared, cutely. “I’m not!”

“Hehe!” Carrot hehe’d. 

“Are you two quite done?” the owl daemon asked. It spread its wings wide, then its eyes glinted with joy. “Because I am. Cursed Invocation: Winterward Wind.”

Carrot prepared to dive away from an attack, but none came. Still, she could tell that there was more and more magic in the air around her, and it stank of bad vibes. The wind picked up, and she tensed, but other than kicking up some powdery snow and making the rain come in at a strange angle, it didn’t do anything.

“Tsk!” the magical girl hissed. “It’s freezing us!”

“It is?” Carrot asked. She didn’t feel cold. Well, no more cold than before. It had been a few degrees below warm, but she was wearing her favourite winter coat and good mittens. Still, when she looked at the edge of her hat’s brim, she noticed the frost gathering, and with it, the dribbling water was turning into increasingly long icicles.

Icicles happened in winter, sure, she used to have fun running along fences and clinking each one down with an outstretched hand, but they never formed so fast that she could see them growing.

“Ah, finally catching on, little morsels?” the daemon asked. 

Carrot jumped a little as the magical girl started to run, she rushed over to a fallen branch, picked it up, then flung it up towards the owl daemon.

It cackled as the stick clattered uselessly against the jungle gym nearby.

“Oh, are we doing something now?” Carrot asked.

“Shut up and help me,” the girl snapped.

“Sure!” Carrot said. She never said no when someone asked for help. She raised her hand and gestured towards the daemon. “Born of night and nurtured in moonlight, bloom and spike, Black Petal Thorn!”

When she’d used that same spell against the magical girl, she’d put less power into it, making it fly slower, and she’d done what she could to change the overall shape of the spell, making it a lot more blunt. She didn’t need to cut into anyone, not when that would hurt a lot! But for a daemon?

Three petal shot out and raced in an arc towards the daemon.

“Hmpf,” it said before waving a wing dismissively at her.

The rain shifted, forming three watery sheets that her spell stabbed into. She was happy to see them punch right through the watery shield, but it was still enough to deflect the petals off-course, and she lost sight of them for a moment, which more or less broke her connection to the spells. She gave up on them for the moment.

“It can manipulate the rain?” Carrot asked aloud.

“Obviously,” the magical girl said. “It’s too cold to be raining. I fought this one earlier. It’s able to make the water freeze and turn colder.”

Carrot nodded, sending a scattering of water off her hat. She noted that the magical girl looked like a cat that had been given an involuntary bath. 

She made a very rude gesture with her finger at the daemon. “Come down here! I’ll show you what a Ulvent can do!” 

“No, morsel, I think I’ll stay right here where it’s comfortable,” the daemon said. “Watching you flail uselessly is enjoyable.”

The magical girl grunted, then ran across the playground. Carrot turned, and followed her a little, though she slowed down when she felt her feet slipping out from under her. Her boots were usually pretty grippy, but the ground was covered in a thick layer of ice that made it hard to find traction.

So, she mostly just watched as the magical girl ran, then skated, all the way over to the jungle gym, then launched herself up and grabbed onto the metal bars. She flipped up, then spun her entire waist around to kick at the daemon.

It missed entirely, the daemon hopping off the bars and taking off with a casual flap of its wings. It chuckled as it alighted on a swingset further out. “Come over here, this time, why don’t you?”

Carrot grimaced as she took in the situation. 

Tactically, this was... not ideal. The terrain was slowly turning to favour the daemon, on top of it having an aerial advantage to start with. Her ranged spells would have a hard time reaching it. Rite of Dark Purification wouldn’t work well either, and her chains might be too slow. 

She chewed on her lower lip and crouched a little, allowing her hat to cover more of her against the rain. Her skirt was soaked though at the hem, and it was starting to freeze over, turning hard with ice that would definitely make it harder to move. 

What advantages did they have? 

They could run, of course. But the magical girl was just running towards the new spot where the daemon was waiting.

She didn’t recall her having any real ranged attacks except for that one punching move.

No, okay, the problem wasn’t that. She could totally hit the daemon if she tried hard enough, she believed in herself! But... well, she had spent a bit of magic already, but she had plenty more...

The big issue was that even if she hit the daemon, it might not be enough to take it out in one go, and then it would just fly off, and that Master person would then know a bunch about her and the magical girl while they barely knew anything about the Master.

Carrot shook her head. No, it wasn’t time for negative thoughts. She needed to focus on what she had. Rite was out, her Petals didn’t hit hard enough, and she didn’t think she could grab the owl with her chains so easily.

She watched the magical girl climb up the slippery steps of a jungle gym, then launch herself over towards the daemon. It laughed, then flapped a wing hard and blasted her back with a strong gust of wind.

The girl flipped around in mid-air and landed on the top bar of the jungle gym she’d jumped off of, then she waved her arms around, running her cool landing by almost slipping off. The ice probably wasn’t helping.

“I have a plan!” Carrot shouted.

“Are you going to finally try something, wizard?” the girl barked before she reached up and flicked aside a lock of brownish hair that had stuck to her face. 

“I’m not! A wizard, I mean. Uh, okay, I can’t say the plan aloud, so you’re gonna have to trust me!”

“Oh, the morsels want to work together now, do they?”

“Yup!” Carrot shouted.

“Well, I might have to change that. I like my meals warm, but I can make exceptions. Cursed Invocation: Storm of Eternal Ice.”

Carrot hissed as she felt something flick at the back of her hand, even through her mittens. The rain pattering onto her hat quickly turned into small bits of ice, then slightly larger ones as the air filled with hail. She could feel the magic more clearly now. The owl was casting into the space way above them, sucking air and water down onto this one area and turning it into ice on the way.

“Magical girl!” she shouted. “Get ready!”

“For what?”

Carrot squeezed her eyes shut, then spread her arms out, one towards the jungle gym, one towards the trees nearby, she ignored the constant pelting feeling on her arms as she started to cast. “Woven from gloom and sealed with dread, bind fast, Chains of Darkness!”

She swung her arms around, and with that gesture long chains shout out from the trees and jungle gym, both aiming more or less towards the owl.

He chuckled as he took off once more and casually avoided the question chains... only he wasn’t what she was aiming for. The chains passed by each other, some so close that they sparked as they made contact, then the chains reached across and formed a bridge of sorts.

Carrot closed her hands into tight fists and grinned. Stage one, complete! “By the night’s soil and the moon’s pale light, I summon the abyssal bloom! Black Petal Thorns! Now, Magical girl, get him!” 

***

Iris blinked. This situation wasn’t good, and it didn’t look like it was getting any better... then that idiot wizard girl went and covered everything in her weird black chains. They weren’t even high enough to tangle that bird daemon in. 

Only...

“Now, Magical girl, get him!” she shouted.

And Iris saw it, even as the wizard girl launched six of those darts of hers with more power and speed than any of the others she’d fired. They raced up wards and swept around, coming down onto the daemon from above and punching through his hastily thrown shield.

It forced him lower. Closer to the chains.

The chains laid out like steps. 

Iris didn’t hesitate for long. She jumped off the junglegym, foot landing arch-first on the nearest chain. It barely shifted under her weight. Then she bounced onto the next, then the next. 

She waited until she was almost on the daemon before she started to suck in magical energy from the world around her to channel it into her clothes and, more importantly, her brass knuckles.

The daemon’s head snapped all the way around to stare at her, but it was too late by then. “Got you!” she shouted before putting all of her energy into a single swing.

The daemon summoned a shield of water, then an inch-thick layer of ice behind it.

Her fist rocketed out and blasted into the shield, exploding through it to punch the daemon in the chest. 

Then two of the wizard’s black petals flew past her and stabbed into the monster, plunging it even faster into the ground.

Water and flakes of ice flew out in every direction as the daemon crashed down. The chains slackened, and for a moment Iris was worried, but she managed to land on her feet and bled off her momentum with a roll. Her battlesuit was all wet already, what did a little more water matter?

“And... tangled!” the wizard cheered. The chains that had got slack had fallen down all around the daemon and were now circling around it, tightening until the monster was held in bindings three chains deep. 

“Hmm, well done,” Iris said. She blinked as the rain just... stopped. One moment there was a constant downpour, the next nothing, as if the sky were a tap that was pulled closed. 

“Thanks! You hit him good too!”

Iris paused, then looked the girl up and down. She seemed unharmed. That had been a lot of magic, though. The wizard must be on the edge of exhaustion. Iris certainly was.

“Did you say that you weren’t a wizard?” she asked.

“I’m not! I think magic is cool, though,” the girl said.

“But your hat is wizard artefice,” Iris said.

“Oh... uh... well, it might be a little bit borrowed?”

Ah... it was stolen. Well, anyone who stole from a wizard wasn’t an enemy, exactly. Iris sighed and stood up straighter. “I’m sorry for attacking you earlier. I though that you were working with these daemons, with this Master.”

“Oh, that’s okay! And I’m not. I’ve been fighting with them for a few days. There were these big bats, and a doe the other day too.”

More of the Master’s pets? 

“I see,” Iris said.

“There’s an actual wizard in town too, hunting down that Master guy. Sounds like he’s a lot of trouble, huh? By the way, I’m Carrot, Carrot Cuddlesworth, Dark Magical Girl! Potentially your eternal rival!”

Carrot extended a hand.

Iris ignored it. “Iris Ironhand,” she muttered.

Carrot’s grin only grew. “So cool! So, what do we do with that? I can use this neat spell I know to un-daemon it?”

“Hmm, go ahead, if you think it wise. But first, I have a few questions.”

That turned out to be a waste of time. She smacked the daemon awake, but once it got past the surprise of awakening defeated and in chains and in no state to fight, all it did was swear at her and warn them that its Master was powerful and not to be trifled with.

She did note one thing. “Look, here. There’s a tattoo on its chest,” Iris said. “IV?”

“Four?” Carrot asked. “Maybe it’s the fourth one of its kind? Its name is Four? Or it’s a rank?”

“I am the Master’s fourth ranking lieutenant!” the daemon shouted. “But the triumvirate are far beyond me. And far beyond you! End me now, but I’ll die knowing that I will be avenged!”

“Whoa! So cool!” Carrot said.

Iris stared at her. She may have found a... person with a common enemy tonight, but she was also quite certain that this Carrot girl was some sort of idiot.

***