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"Spirit, change of plans."

It was JiJi's (or Achara's, or Horizon's if things were super serious) voice in her ear. It was a bit late, to be honest. Naoko hardly thought that they were sticking to the plan when she'd ended up falling three floors deep into the stone labyrinth which was the innards of the Sorceress' fortress. Ji's... no, this was super serious, Horizon's instructions had said she was just in position to support Yamin (no, super serious time, Effortless) or Missmerise when they got into trouble, but she'd ended up fading after coming face to face with some sort of awful shroud of gas which glowed with florescent pincers inside its mass.

Not even one of Naoko's parties had that kind of entertainment. This Sorceress woman was messed up.

So Naoko clenched her lips into some semblance of a game-face and put on the still-cheerful-but-a-bit-more-reliable mask of Spirit when she answered Horizon.

"Think we've already been doing that a bit!" She sounded cheerful, because if there was one thing Spirit had learned from her gruelling amateur years back in Hokkaido, it was that people in danger needed some positive energy probably more than they even needed a competent saviour.

"I thought you liked surprises?"

Spirit was proud of Horizon in that moment, even though her voice was clearly stiff with tension, she was still trying to make jokes. Of course, Naoko preferred her surprises in the form of 'cute half-Ainu girl appears out of nowhere at some corrupt official's birthday party after having found evidence of his crimes' rather than 'otherworldly monster she had been told was not going to be there'.

"As in, you're the surprise."

Achara did know her!

"Oh! Why didn't you say so!?" She was running down a corridor to make sure the armed men that she had recently annoyed by popping out of the floor next to them couldn't follow her, so she wasn't sure if she had fully conveyed her enthusiasm to Horizon. She did like using the element of surprise, though. Usually helped make up her the fact she wasn't actually too good in a fight.

"Target's below you, two rooms on your five then straight down. Effortless roughed her up, but Sorceress got away. You need to beat her up before she heals." Horizon's voice was level - she was almost robotic when she was in game-face mode herself.

But even Horizon's calm delivery couldn't mask the fact that she was asking her to fight the Sorceress. Solo.

Spirit was on the team because Eraser and Momentum liked her, basically. Everyone liked to tell her she was really useful on missions, and Horizon made sure she always got equal billing in public appearances. But even with all that, it was plain to see that Spirit was the weak link in NINE. She didn't really mind - she was here to make people smile and lend a helpful ghostly hand.

She wasn't here to fight someone that Effortless couldn't touch.

"Erm... If Yamin-chan couldn't take her down..."

Horizon talked over her in a way that only happened when things were incredibly, super-duper serious.

"You just have to stop her from healing while the others clear the path. You'll be fine."

Okay, okay. She didn't need to beat the Sorceress. She just needed to punch her a bit and keep her from doing something. Like disrupting a cooldown in one of Kokoro-chan's games. Even Spirit could do that.

She might be weak, but she was still physically fit enough to outrun armoured men when she was just wearing a loose tank top. She might be the least powerful of NINE, but she was still a beloved Superheroine even before Jiyeon-san had found and recruited her.

Spirit came to a stop. She took a deep breath. The Sorceress, a villain more dangerous than anyone she had faced back on Hokkaido, was below. But she just needed to hold her off until the others could converge on their position. She let her body fade. Her clothes, interwoven with her own hair, thankfully faded as well. With no friction between herself and the floor, she started to fall into the stone. After less than a second, everything below her knees had sunk, she let out the breath she was holding (on account of not being able to breathe in when her body was entirely incorporeal), and she slipped through the stone.

She dropped to the lower floor, her body whole and physical again. There was no-one else in the corridor, except the enemy. The enemy was just a bit taller than her, and dressed in a formal robe the colour of wisteria, and with a cold, sharp face that didn't flinch at all on the sudden arrival of a new opponent.

Both women assumed a fighting stance. Spirit turned to her side, her fists up to guard despite the obvious lack of any muscle on her slight frame. She even had to break her guard to brush a wave of hair out of her face. The Sorceress didn't reduce her surface area or bring up a guard, she simply drew a knife and slashed it through the air in wide, complex arcs. In its wake, visible tears appeared, forming a black rune which was simply a gap in reality.

Horrid ebony tendrils emerged.

Spirit jumped and let her body phase again. Her upper body strength was not remotely heroic, but five years of running around forests and towns meant her legs were strong enough to get some decent airtime. She saw the black tentacles go through her body. Ebony was the right word actually, they had the texture of warped twigs, even though they undulated like a living thing.

They were, in a word, icky. She didn't like them touching her even if they didn't actually touch her body. She landed, letting her body become physical again before she might embarassingly fall through the floor.

And then the tentacles whipped back towards their creator.

Spirit felt something both wet and supple and sharp and stiff slap against the back of her neck. Luckily, as well as her legs, half a decade of operating as the Ghost Heroine gave her an excellent danger reflex. She let out a little meep sound, and her body faded away.

Because she was still crouched, her weight low, she immediately and embarrassingly slipped through the floor.

The strange feeling of being sucked through solid matter overwhelmed her for a second, but then she was stood on stone floor again. The corridor below the Sorceress looked much the same as the one above, except for the homocidal mage. Spirit allowed herself a moment to get her breath back before she jumped, fading her body so it would phase back up through the ceiling.

At the same moment she felt her spectral body escape the stone, she un-faded and threw a punch. The Sorceress had moved, and Spirit's technique wasn't exactly the best, so it was easily deflected. But the tall woman flinched and grabbed the arm she had used to block. Every time Spirit recorporated, she took in a bit of energy from the air around her, which made the temperature drop suddenly and sharply. The Sorceress must have been feeling the strangest cold burning on her wrist. It was a bit too painful to be a fun prank, but Spirit had no sympathy for this woman.

Fading in and out of incorporeality, Spirit flailed her arms in moves which could charitably be called hooks, uppercuts and haymakers. The technique didn't matter, the lack of strength in her arms didn't matter. Heck, even the minor pain she caused her enemy whenever she did make contact didn't matter. All Spirit needed to do was be annoying.

And, according to reviews from literally hundreds of criminals across East Asia, Spirit could definitely be annoying when she wanted to be.

The Sorceress dodged easily, weaving her slender body between and around Spirit's clumsy attacks. She didn't even seem to be paying full attention. Spirit could see her lips moving, whispering something she couldn't hear (especially when half the time sound waves literally couldn't touch her eardrums).

More than once, Spirit mistimed her combo and ended up falling through the floor, and had to jump back into the fray. Once she even slipped through the wall and had to come back through with a charging kick which had little effect. Even as the Sorceress' pale skin reddened from exposure to the cold, she kept up her whispered incantation. The vile woman's face did contort into a grimace, but it was definitely more of frustration than pain.

Spirit just hoped the whispering wasn't some sort of healing spell she was too non-magical to understand. Her arms hurt. Her lungs were starting to burn from the lack of air (breathing also does not work when air passes right through you). But Horizon was counting on her, Effortless was somewhere nearby and needed to be protected. Momentum needed more time to get a clear path.

So Spirit forced herself to keep smiling, keep fading and unfading, and keep up her assault.

And it worked. Until the Sorceress exhaled, mumbled something about something being 'enough', and stopped her whispering.

"Four minutes, I think. And you barely touched me. Your telekinetic friend upstairs did better than that." She spat.

Spirit froze in place. Her body rematerialised and made a little thump as she hit the floor mid-jump. "B-Blueprint's down, too?"

"That's Baek's codename, correct? In which case, yes." The Sorceress didn't give Spirit time to answer. Her eyes made it clear she didn't see the heroine as worth her time. "You'd already be with her if you would stay damned still for a second. Nevertheless, it's over for you now."

A dagger flew up from her belt, and Spirit jumped backwards, fading as she did to dodge it. Then she saw the Sorceress' fist clench so hard that her nails dug into her own smooth skin. Blood dripped down to the floor, but in her palm it boiled. The villain swung her hand downwards, dismissively but forcefully.

Pure, crushing energy came down from above Spirit's head. If she hadn't lasted her entire superheroine career on escape instincts, she might have been crushed. Instead, she flung herself forwards, her body rematerialising to avoid falling through the floor.

Instead, the Sorceress' trap caught her.

The rune carved into the ceiling erupted with yellow bolts of arcane lightning. They sparked around her, and then wormed they way painlessly into her skin. She suddenly gained a very strong appreciation for how the little puppet boy in that Disney film must have felt.

Without discomfort, but also without any of her choice in the matter, per arms rose above her, her legs stretched below her, and her entire body rotated to face one of the walls.

There was a pattern in the wall. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It would make such a good party centrepiece. It glowed with colours that didn't even exist. It shined in dimensions that Naoko couldn't even fully perceive. It was... kinda cool. Really cool actually.

Cool enough that she had slipped out of Spirit mode. And Naoko Kurri did not have the willpower to wrest her eyes away, even if her bound body could move. She was just kinda overwhelmed by how pretty is all was. Her thoughts short-circuited, fading away like her body did whenever she used her powers. Any attempt at a coherent idea simply fell through her mind, leaving only colours and bliss in their wake.

She had no idea how long it was until a new thought formed. When it did, it was because of a voice in one of her ears. Achara's voice.

"Yes, Owner. I am at your command."

Achara was speaking in her normal clipped, professional tone. But there was some little note of happiness there. It was almost musical, and it made Naoko really happy that her friend and leader had found happiness.

She realised the happiness came from submitting to the Owner. It didn't feel right, though.

Despite it all, she was pretty certain that she was meant to fight against this. That she was meant to be stopping the Owner. Even as Achara communicated with the almighty through the earpiece.

"No, my Owner. I will ensure the rest of my former allies become my current allies in servitude of you."

But those thoughts must be silly, so she let them drop out of her mind. Naoko was silly, she was weak and she was a burden. Achara was a genius, she was their leader, and she always knew what to do, and she was beautiful besides. Achara must have been right. Naoko must have been wrong.

So she gave in. The colours already filled her eyes and her mind, but she let them take over.

For a moment, she was a passenger in her own mind. Then, like her body rematerialising it all came back together. She could think, but she was a servant. She could see, but the Owner who was right in front of her was almost impossible to gaze upon. She knew she wasn't good enough to look her in her piercing eyes.

So she fell to her knees, and professed her complete obedience.

"Good enough." The Owner said shortly.

Even that was enough to make Naoko happy.

---

Previous instalment of Nine Against One here: Nine Against One - Horizon

This one was a bit harder to write, I never really figured out how to convey Spirit's benevolent clumsiness in the fight, so ended up kinda cheating it. But I think her personality and her being brought down into trance by Horizon's own submission worked well.

Three more to go! Then we'll be back to the usual Mauri schedule. They will be done by the end of the year, but probably not before Stupid Tree Festival. That means none of the fancy new proofreading because I have *checks notes* a week to finish them.

Description
"Spirit, change of plans."

It was JiJi's (or Achara's, or Horizon's if things were super serious) voice in her ear. It was a bit late, to be honest. Naoko hardly thought that they were sticking to the plan when she'd ended up falling three floors deep into the stone labyrinth which was the innards of the Sorceress' fortress. Ji's... no, this was super serious, Horizon's instructions had said she was just in position to support Yamin (no, super serious time, Effortless) or Missmerise when they got into trouble, but she'd ended up fading after coming face to face with some sort of awful shroud of gas which glowed with florescent pincers inside its mass.

Not even one of Naoko's parties had that kind of entertainment. This Sorceress woman was messed up.

So Naoko clenched her lips into some semblance of a game-face and put on the still-cheerful-but-a-bit-more-reliable mask of Spirit when she answered Horizon.

"Think we've already been doing that a bit!" She sounded cheerful, because if there was one thing Spirit had learned from her gruelling amateur years back in Hokkaido, it was that people in danger needed some positive energy probably more than they even needed a competent saviour.

"I thought you liked surprises?"

Spirit was proud of Horizon in that moment, even though her voice was clearly stiff with tension, she was still trying to make jokes. Of course, Naoko preferred her surprises in the form of 'cute half-Ainu girl appears out of nowhere at some corrupt official's birthday party after having found evidence of his crimes' rather than 'otherworldly monster she had been told was not going to be there'.

"As in, you're the surprise."

Achara did know her!

"Oh! Why didn't you say so!?" She was running down a corridor to make sure the armed men that she had recently annoyed by popping out of the floor next to them couldn't follow her, so she wasn't sure if she had fully conveyed her enthusiasm to Horizon. She did like using the element of surprise, though. Usually helped make up her the fact she wasn't actually too good in a fight.

"Target's below you, two rooms on your five then straight down. Effortless roughed her up, but Sorceress got away. You need to beat her up before she heals." Horizon's voice was level - she was almost robotic when she was in game-face mode herself.

But even Horizon's calm delivery couldn't mask the fact that she was asking her to fight the Sorceress. Solo.

Spirit was on the team because Eraser and Momentum liked her, basically. Everyone liked to tell her she was really useful on missions, and Horizon made sure she always got equal billing in public appearances. But even with all that, it was plain to see that Spirit was the weak link in NINE. She didn't really mind - she was here to make people smile and lend a helpful ghostly hand.

She wasn't here to fight someone that Effortless couldn't touch.

"Erm... If Yamin-chan couldn't take her down..."

Horizon talked over her in a way that only happened when things were incredibly, super-duper serious.

"You just have to stop her from healing while the others clear the path. You'll be fine."

Okay, okay. She didn't need to beat the Sorceress. She just needed to punch her a bit and keep her from doing something. Like disrupting a cooldown in one of Kokoro-chan's games. Even Spirit could do that.

She might be weak, but she was still physically fit enough to outrun armoured men when she was just wearing a loose tank top. She might be the least powerful of NINE, but she was still a beloved Superheroine even before Jiyeon-san had found and recruited her.

Spirit came to a stop. She took a deep breath. The Sorceress, a villain more dangerous than anyone she had faced back on Hokkaido, was below. But she just needed to hold her off until the others could converge on their position. She let her body fade. Her clothes, interwoven with her own hair, thankfully faded as well. With no friction between herself and the floor, she started to fall into the stone. After less than a second, everything below her knees had sunk, she let out the breath she was holding (on account of not being able to breathe in when her body was entirely incorporeal), and she slipped through the stone.

She dropped to the lower floor, her body whole and physical again. There was no-one else in the corridor, except the enemy. The enemy was just a bit taller than her, and dressed in a formal robe the colour of wisteria, and with a cold, sharp face that didn't flinch at all on the sudden arrival of a new opponent.

Both women assumed a fighting stance. Spirit turned to her side, her fists up to guard despite the obvious lack of any muscle on her slight frame. She even had to break her guard to brush a wave of hair out of her face. The Sorceress didn't reduce her surface area or bring up a guard, she simply drew a knife and slashed it through the air in wide, complex arcs. In its wake, visible tears appeared, forming a black rune which was simply a gap in reality.

Horrid ebony tendrils emerged.

Spirit jumped and let her body phase again. Her upper body strength was not remotely heroic, but five years of running around forests and towns meant her legs were strong enough to get some decent airtime. She saw the black tentacles go through her body. Ebony was the right word actually, they had the texture of warped twigs, even though they undulated like a living thing.

They were, in a word, icky. She didn't like them touching her even if they didn't actually touch her body. She landed, letting her body become physical again before she might embarassingly fall through the floor.

And then the tentacles whipped back towards their creator.

Spirit felt something both wet and supple and sharp and stiff slap against the back of her neck. Luckily, as well as her legs, half a decade of operating as the Ghost Heroine gave her an excellent danger reflex. She let out a little meep sound, and her body faded away.

Because she was still crouched, her weight low, she immediately and embarrassingly slipped through the floor.

The strange feeling of being sucked through solid matter overwhelmed her for a second, but then she was stood on stone floor again. The corridor below the Sorceress looked much the same as the one above, except for the homocidal mage. Spirit allowed herself a moment to get her breath back before she jumped, fading her body so it would phase back up through the ceiling.

At the same moment she felt her spectral body escape the stone, she un-faded and threw a punch. The Sorceress had moved, and Spirit's technique wasn't exactly the best, so it was easily deflected. But the tall woman flinched and grabbed the arm she had used to block. Every time Spirit recorporated, she took in a bit of energy from the air around her, which made the temperature drop suddenly and sharply. The Sorceress must have been feeling the strangest cold burning on her wrist. It was a bit too painful to be a fun prank, but Spirit had no sympathy for this woman.

Fading in and out of incorporeality, Spirit flailed her arms in moves which could charitably be called hooks, uppercuts and haymakers. The technique didn't matter, the lack of strength in her arms didn't matter. Heck, even the minor pain she caused her enemy whenever she did make contact didn't matter. All Spirit needed to do was be annoying.

And, according to reviews from literally hundreds of criminals across East Asia, Spirit could definitely be annoying when she wanted to be.

The Sorceress dodged easily, weaving her slender body between and around Spirit's clumsy attacks. She didn't even seem to be paying full attention. Spirit could see her lips moving, whispering something she couldn't hear (especially when half the time sound waves literally couldn't touch her eardrums).

More than once, Spirit mistimed her combo and ended up falling through the floor, and had to jump back into the fray. Once she even slipped through the wall and had to come back through with a charging kick which had little effect. Even as the Sorceress' pale skin reddened from exposure to the cold, she kept up her whispered incantation. The vile woman's face did contort into a grimace, but it was definitely more of frustration than pain.

Spirit just hoped the whispering wasn't some sort of healing spell she was too non-magical to understand. Her arms hurt. Her lungs were starting to burn from the lack of air (breathing also does not work when air passes right through you). But Horizon was counting on her, Effortless was somewhere nearby and needed to be protected. Momentum needed more time to get a clear path.

So Spirit forced herself to keep smiling, keep fading and unfading, and keep up her assault.

And it worked. Until the Sorceress exhaled, mumbled something about something being 'enough', and stopped her whispering.

"Four minutes, I think. And you barely touched me. Your telekinetic friend upstairs did better than that." She spat.

Spirit froze in place. Her body rematerialised and made a little thump as she hit the floor mid-jump. "B-Blueprint's down, too?"

"That's Baek's codename, correct? In which case, yes." The Sorceress didn't give Spirit time to answer. Her eyes made it clear she didn't see the heroine as worth her time. "You'd already be with her if you would stay damned still for a second. Nevertheless, it's over for you now."

A dagger flew up from her belt, and Spirit jumped backwards, fading as she did to dodge it. Then she saw the Sorceress' fist clench so hard that her nails dug into her own smooth skin. Blood dripped down to the floor, but in her palm it boiled. The villain swung her hand downwards, dismissively but forcefully.

Pure, crushing energy came down from above Spirit's head. If she hadn't lasted her entire superheroine career on escape instincts, she might have been crushed. Instead, she flung herself forwards, her body rematerialising to avoid falling through the floor.

Instead, the Sorceress' trap caught her.

The rune carved into the ceiling erupted with yellow bolts of arcane lightning. They sparked around her, and then wormed they way painlessly into her skin. She suddenly gained a very strong appreciation for how the little puppet boy in that Disney film must have felt.

Without discomfort, but also without any of her choice in the matter, per arms rose above her, her legs stretched below her, and her entire body rotated to face one of the walls.

There was a pattern in the wall. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It would make such a good party centrepiece. It glowed with colours that didn't even exist. It shined in dimensions that Naoko couldn't even fully perceive. It was... kinda cool. Really cool actually.

Cool enough that she had slipped out of Spirit mode. And Naoko Kurri did not have the willpower to wrest her eyes away, even if her bound body could move. She was just kinda overwhelmed by how pretty is all was. Her thoughts short-circuited, fading away like her body did whenever she used her powers. Any attempt at a coherent idea simply fell through her mind, leaving only colours and bliss in their wake.

She had no idea how long it was until a new thought formed. When it did, it was because of a voice in one of her ears. Achara's voice.

"Yes, Owner. I am at your command."

Achara was speaking in her normal clipped, professional tone. But there was some little note of happiness there. It was almost musical, and it made Naoko really happy that her friend and leader had found happiness.

She realised the happiness came from submitting to the Owner. It didn't feel right, though.

Despite it all, she was pretty certain that she was meant to fight against this. That she was meant to be stopping the Owner. Even as Achara communicated with the almighty through the earpiece.

"No, my Owner. I will ensure the rest of my former allies become my current allies in servitude of you."

But those thoughts must be silly, so she let them drop out of her mind. Naoko was silly, she was weak and she was a burden. Achara was a genius, she was their leader, and she always knew what to do, and she was beautiful besides. Achara must have been right. Naoko must have been wrong.

So she gave in. The colours already filled her eyes and her mind, but she let them take over.

For a moment, she was a passenger in her own mind. Then, like her body rematerialising it all came back together. She could think, but she was a servant. She could see, but the Owner who was right in front of her was almost impossible to gaze upon. She knew she wasn't good enough to look her in her piercing eyes.

So she fell to her knees, and professed her complete obedience.

"Good enough." The Owner said shortly.

Even that was enough to make Naoko happy.

---

Previous instalment of Nine Against One here: Nine Against One - Horizon

This one was a bit harder to write, I never really figured out how to convey Spirit's benevolent clumsiness in the fight, so ended up kinda cheating it. But I think her personality and her being brought down into trance by Horizon's own submission worked well.

Three more to go! Then we'll be back to the usual Mauri schedule. They will be done by the end of the year, but probably not before Stupid Tree Festival. That means none of the fancy new proofreading because I have *checks notes* a week to finish them.