Artifact Contest Three - Teaser/Backstory

Artifact Three: Time to Strike...?
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Marisa flew into the Scarlet Devil Mansion, anxious to see if she could legitimately borrow a magical codex from Patchouli. After the last...incident, she decided that maybe she shouldn't annoy the elementalist if she wanted her hakkero to not be in the possession of others. Countless others. Marisa was pretty sure that all of the copies were disposed of.

Maybe.

Regardless, Marisa would visit Patchy. Stopping in front of the door to the library of Voile, Marisa raised a hand to knock.

A sharp object whistled past her head and embedded itself in the door, where her hand was about to be.

"You can't go in there."

Sighing and turning, she was face-to-face with the silver-haired maid, Sakuya. a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶p̶p̶e̶r̶

"Dammit, Sakuya. Are you trying to take off a finger? You usually just do your timey-wimey nonsense and stand in my way."

The maid smirked and walked to retrieve her knife. "I would do my 'timey-wimey' stuff, as you put it, but doing it now would take far too much strength. Patchouli is busy working on a new spell, and disturbing her casting would be...unfortunate."

"I'm sure Patchouli is skilled enough to not freak out when I open the door. Smell ya later!" said the witch, as she LOUDLY and ABRUPTLY slammed the library doors open.

Patchouli, to her credit, did not "freak out" when the sudden motion and loud noise occurred. Instead, she merely lost concentration for half a second.

During that half a second, her spell reached a very important point that demanded her full attention. Which she very well could not give.

Marisa barely had time to throw up a barrier before magical sparks flew about the room. Marisa strengthened the barrier while trying to make sense of the situation. An object was glinting above Patchouli, and it was the source of the sparks. Was it...a clock? No, a watch.

A pocketwatch, to be precise.

Marisa relaxed. After all, she had a spell shield. No magic could possibly get past it, and all she saw was magic. The odds of something physical flying at her were absurd!

As such, Marisa barely had time to gasp before a metallic object beaned her in the face.

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"So you're saying she was trying to clone ANOTHER object?"

Marisa and Sakuya were in the main dining room of the Mansion, sipping on tea.

"Yes, Marisa. She says something about the spell working, but the effect being dispersed when you so kindly disrupted her. You happened to be hit in the face by a copy of it." This explains the giant lump on her forehead. It also explains why she was knocked out for two hours.

Sakuya sighed, and took out her pocketwatch to glance at the face.

"Luckily, I had my underlings recover all of the copies we could find throughout the mansion, and they were summarily destroyed. My original copy is safe and sound." She leaned against the wall. "You know, I can use time magic without this thing. It's just...exhausting." The maid continued to walk briskly, with Marisa struggling to keep up. "The copies reached very far. I even found one in the basement, but Flandre was asleep. The front door was open a crack when the maelstrom of watches occured, but it's very unlikely that one esca-"

***From our point of view, the world turned a shade of gray and a feminine figure appeared near the pair, who seemed to be frozen in time mid-conversation. Leaving behind a square object, our intruder exits the scene and time resumes.***

"-ped. So, because of that..."

The maid paused, noticing a strange feeling in her hand. She looked at it, and it turned out to be a rectangular piece of paper.

"Oh no."

The paper read as follows...

"Greetings, i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶  Sakuya. I assume you're perceptive enough to know what circumstances have led to this note. If you wish to retrieve the final copy of your precious stopwatch, you'll have to fight me for it. Come to..."

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Well, you don't get to see what the rest of the note says.

Because you will decide what it says.

Artifact Three will discuss the theft of Sakuya's pocketwatch. Though not necessary for her to use her powers, it certainly amplifies them, and will enable anyone who wields it some control over the flow of time.* Patchouli has refined her formula, so the stopwatch is a perfect copy of Sakuya's.

However, there is only one.

And some conniving individual not only took it, but had the gall to challenge Sakuya to get it back.

You will decide who it is, where they are, and design a contest entry based around this.



*This isn't canon but I'm making it canon for TrickyContests. Deal with it.

*** MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW. THIS IS JUST A TEASER AND NOT AN ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SAYS WHEN THE CONTEST STARTS ***