Cornelius was too shocked to move. Just as she planned it. He had left himself vulnerable, and her aim was true.

But she never could have been fast enough.

Genevieve’s arms wrenched back, seized and twisted by the inhumanly powerful hands of a looming automata. She gasped in pain, and the knife she was gripping so tightly clattered to the stage.

A deathly quiet fell over the crowd.

"You're putting on quite the performance, my pet," Cornelius said, visibly trembling with rage. His impeccably coiffed, pedigreed face looked like it was about to grind all of its teeth to dust. With a single heavy footstep, angrily and ominously stomped into the wooden floor, he leaned in right up close to her, and glared daggers into her eyes.

"Your Highness, what is–" the priest began to say, but a single look from Cornelius silenced him. He shut his holy book and left it on the altar as he walked off the stage. Cornelius didn't wait for him to leave before he turned his attention back to Genevieve.

"What did you think you were going to do, you backwoods ingrate?" he hissed in his most loathsome voice.  "Do you believe my father's pointless political dance will stay my hand?" He put his hand on her chin, squeezed her face between his thumb and his forefinger. Brushed away the bridal veil with his other hand. Looking her face over like he was inspecting a piece of fine pottery for chips and flaws. And he scowled at her for being a disappointment, squeezing her cheeks forcefully, speaking in a low, threatening growl from the back of his throat. "What use do you think I have for a toy I'm not allowed to break?"

Everything Genevieve could possibly feel was roiling through her all at once. Her limbs were frozen in fear, but her entire body shook with unbridled fury. The pain screaming from her twisted arms was just barely numbed by the adrenaline surging through her, the deep icy chill down her spine only warmed by her seething, raging, white-hot hatred. She wanted to fight, she wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, she wanted to live, she wanted to die, she wanted to strangle Prince Cornelius in front of all his subjects and every other soul in the world.

She wanted to go home.

The bastard's face was so close to hers.

There was nothing inside her now but spite and desperation. She was cornered, helpless, and restrained. But she needed to act. In whatever way she could.

Princess Genevieve welled up all the saliva she could get from her mouth and spat in the Prince’s face.

A gasp ran through the assembled crowd and was quickly swallowed by stunned, terrified silence. Cornelius took even a second longer to process what had happened. He stepped back, so taken aback he forgot to be furious for just one brief moment, and wiped his face off with the sleeve of his fine, luxurious, royal suit.

The Prince slowly turned his gaze towards the crowd. He stared at them all blankly. And then he turned that same blank stare onto Genevieve. Her brain started moving again in that moment, and she kicked and strained against the grip of the automaton holding her in place. But something dark and cold and monstrous in the Prince's eyes stopped her flailing. She froze, and stood numbly with the metal hand tight around her wrist.

He turned his back to her. The automaton waiting at the edge of the stage, the smaller one adorned in royal regalia, approached him. Prince Cornelius reached out to remove the long, thin blade that it was wearing on its hip. He held the sword up for a moment, as if testing its weight, and then he simply stood still. For one second, and another, and another.

And then he whipped around. His sword held out. The tip extended just far enough.

In the split second she had, Genevieve saw the point about to slash across her face. Held by the automaton, she could only jerk away from it. Her eyes closed tight, waiting for the cut. A small whimper escaped her lips.

Thock.

A sound like a knife smacking against the bark of a tree.

“What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

Genevieve opened her eyes.

Standing in front of her was a cloaked figure. Right arm held up, blocking the blade with a thick, padded armguard.

“Is this the kind of sick show you like to put on around here?”

The voice was feminine, but husky and brusque. A blue, spaded tale wound its way out from beneath their cloak and flicked the air in indignation.

Cornelius’s face twisted from confused anger to furious rage. “How dare you,” he snarled with open malevolence.

“What, you got this big-ass crowd of people and they’re just supposed to watch you slash up a lady’s face?”

The Prince pulled back his blade, keeping it in his hand but down at his side. “Get this thing off the stage,” he commanded furiously. “Get it off!”

At his word, the dozen automatons standing idle all sprang to life. Long, flat, heavy blades extended from inside their arms, and they charged at the cloaked person in uncanny unison. The closest one had been standing right by Cornelius. It lunged forward, blade extended, already close enough to strike. The figure in the cloak didn't move. Their hand twitched and then it was at their hip.

BLAM

A deafening explosion rang out. The automaton stopped in its tracks, a hole blown clean through its center. It fell to the ground in a shaking, malfunctioning heap. The cloaked figure held something–a black powder pistol, but not like any Genevieve had seen before. The hood covering her head fell back, and for a brief moment Genevieve could see a glimpse of a young woman. Her round, boyish face was covered in fine blue scales, and two nubby horns poked out from underneath her short, messy black hair. Genevieve could just barely make out, over the ringing in her ears, loud, fearful cries of ”Demon!” from somewhere in the crowd.

The girl whipped around towards the pair of automata closing in on her next. There were two more loud BLAM BLAMs, and a second pistol was in her right hand now, each gun blasting a hole into an automaton, each automaton crumpling where it stood.

She turned casually and–BLAM–fired a shot towards Prince Cornelius while he made a rapid exit from the parade stage. The small automaton in the military uniform leaped out in front of the bullet, catching it in the midsection. With an uncanny shudder the machine crumpled and fell to the ground as a sad pile of scrap metal.

Cornelius was out of her sights, so the woman turned to Genevieve. Her right hand traced an odd semi-circle in the air, looping around Genevieve’s body–then aiming just to the side of her head. Genevieve winced and

BLAM

the grip around her loosened as the newly-perforated automaton fell down to the floor. She wrenched herself from its mechanical hands. The demon girl leaped towards her and was suddenly on top of her. She didn’t look much older than Genevieve, and she was a few inches shorter, but she pushed Genevieve down, gently but insistently, arching her back protectively as she did so. She yelled something Genevieve couldn’t hear over the ringing in her ears, and Genevieve looked at her confused. The demon girl repeated it again, as uselessly as the first time. When Genevieve could only shake her head the girl took Genevieve’s hands and pressed them against her ears. Finally getting the idea, Genevieve hunkered down as it seemed the girl wanted her to, and pressed her hands against her ears as tightly as she could. She didn’t know how much it was going to help after her ears had already been blown out by gunshots, but it was probably better than nothing at all.

Evidently satisfied, the demon girl stood up–just as an automaton approached behind her and plunged its sword down into her. Or at least it intended to. Instead it found itself stuck in the wooden floor of the altar, the edge of the blade grazing harmlessly against the girl’s padded right arm as she pivoted out of its way. She raised her guns and with two more loud bangs blasted holes into the automaton, which collapsed against the stage with its sword arm still embedded in the floor.

The rest of the guards weren't simply standing still. Six automatons surrounded the gunslinger and swung their blades at her with precise coordination. She darted back from one sword, only to put herself directly into the path of another. She could only avoid it by bending far backwards and letting the arc of the blade narrowly pass over her midsection. Then she had to twist wildly to right herself and slip away from the blades of two more automatons, who clashed against each other as they struck where her gut had been just an instant before.

The last two automatons couldn’t get through the mass of their comrades to attack her directly. But they swung in her direction anyway, boxing her in with the tips of their blades. The devil girl had almost–perhaps literally–supernatural agility, and her nimble, sinuous body was small enough to dodge away from the automatons’ heavy protruding blades at every turn. That didn’t matter when she was surrounded by six guards that wouldn’t give her time to aim her guns or room to fire them. They’d forced her into a battle of attrition, and she was going to lose.