Luckily, Luke was able to pull himself together once Shin intervened. A little thrown off by the large fly swatter Shin was now brandishing, but otherwise okay.

The mass of crumpled papers was pretty quickly getting worn down. It seemed like each piece was 'animated' pretty weakly, and crumpling the paper shape could 'kill' it. So could ripping it in half with claws, though, and that was faster. And somewhat satisfying, admittedly.

Still, while the swarm was shrinking, it was still a pretty sizable cloud. Even worse, Luke was breathing hard through his gritted teeth, not from exertion (he was still running on a mostly-full tank) but trying to maintain his composure. Being surrounded by these small, fast, hard-to-hit things was agitating at best, and he was having trouble focusing when these damn flyers kept winging around him. Wild flailing wasn't going to make it easier, but God if it wasn't annoying as anything.

Smashing what he thought might be Samus' ship from Metroid, Luke tried to get a glimpse of the guy watching, who was definitely their baddie here. Luke was pretty sure he hadn't run off or anything, but it was hard to keep an eye on someone when a lot of small, colorful things were swarming your face.

"Get him!" Luke gestured wildly and shouted roughly, cutting another paper plane down. His brain wasn't working so great at the moment, so trying to communicate anything more useful was going to take a moment.

The rhyme and reason to why the surfer guy was doing his manic show had been lost to him, and lost to time immemorial. What did matter, now, was the malicious element behind what could have been a cute prank.

It seemed that they had seen him. What with his lurking inconspicuously in the broad open, untouched by papercraft madness and all of that. Well, good. That went right in with his plans.

The Asian man who’d had the sword was looking his way. Directed by the man covered in fur. They were still fighting paper, and that was alright, but at a mental command from him, all the paper crafts drew back. If they hadn’t made the connection between him and the paper attack now, they never would. Everything was flying his way.

The Asian took the opportunity to press the attack. He surged forwards, towards him. No doubt, the wolf man would follow. And if he didn’t, that was no concern of his. The surfer punk had stopped watching them entirely as his thoughts turned to his power, and magical 90s cartoons made from 80s cartoons.

“Form Voltron,” he said blissfully. The paper took the command, and did what it could to comply.

It wasn’t a perfect replica of the giant robot. It wasn’t uniform in color, and it was nowhere near as tall as a real giant robot would be. Topping out at around 10 feet in height, it would win no awards in Japan. After all, it was made of paper. But it had a sword nearly as long as it was high, and that was dangerous. It lowered the sword towards them, holding it in two hands.

Shin paused. He stared at it. Then he said a swear word out loud. Just one. But it summed the whole situation up quite well.

Voltron rushed them like a samurai out of an Asian swordy film.

In his current state of trying to maintain his composure, Luke was not sure what caused the infuriating swarm to suddenly subside, but he was definitely not going to complain. As he reoriented himself, taking note of Shin’s position and the guy’s, though neither had moved much, Luke quickly steadied his wits, clenching his fists (being sure not to skewer his palms with his claws) and took a few quick, deep breaths. He was smart enough to know the fight was not over yet.

He was right, of course; when he heard the guy speak aloud, he looked over at Shin, hoping for an explanation. He could make it out perfectly, of course, but…what was Voltron? The name was familiar…

“Wait, what?!” As the mini-giant robot came into being out of the remaining fleet of paper, Luke could barely believe he was seeing this. Paper planes was one thing, but…a mecha? Why?! Who does this?!

…Present company not included. Shin was many things, but at least he didn’t turn his nerdy interests onto random people in the streets.

The robot moved forward with unexpected speed; Luke supposed it was quite light, though it was very plausibly less fragile than the sum of its parts. The obvious solution was to take out the controller, but the paper-bot was right between the guy and Luke and Shin. All that said, it made it halfway across the 50-foot space in a couple of seconds. There wasn’t much time to plan. He had an idea. If it worked or not, it was going suck.

Luke moved, stepping sideways such that as the mech approached, it was quickly at the vertex of a 90-degree angle between Luke and Shin. Now he had an angle to the puppeteer. Luke rushed forward on all fours, bounding across the pavement in only a few lunges.

With unexpected speed, the paper pivoted on its waist, spinning in a full 360-degree from facing forward and whacking Luke mid-stride, slamming him in the chest and knocking him across the street onto the opposite sidewalk. He tumbled backwards once, managing to end his trajectory on his hands and feet, but was clearly a bit unsteady; the sword wasn’t sharp enough to cut him in half, thankfully, but he was pretty sure one or two of his ribs were cracked.

Luke dropped to his knees, gasping dramatically. He wasn’t winning any awards, but he definitely looked worse off than he felt. As he did so, he briefly turned his eyes to Shin, then to the bad guy, then to Shin.
The paper-bot turned to Luke and started moving towards him, quickly, sword over its head as though to squash him like a bug.

Luke could hear the guy giggling with probably-unhealthy glee at the sight of his enemy bouncing across the street. It was probably all very cinematic and ‘anime’, though he hated that phrase as a descriptive even before this. If they survived this, Luke was cancelling his CrunchyRoll subscription.

((OOC fight the guy. He uses paper. Once the Golem goes down, take him down. Well call the cops.))

It was lucky the sword hadn’t been as sharp as a real sword. Getting students bisected on routine community service missions for the mansion is frowned upon. It really puts a bad light on the mansion.

The moment the paper robot started rushing then, Shin dismissed his sword. It wasn’t going to do them a lot of good. He turned his mind to a mental picture of something else. But that something else would take time.

It isn’t good to rely completely on one trick. Even if the trick is a good one, the scenario may not be right. The power rangers always needed the enemy to get big before they could justify summoning their giant robots to fight it. They didn’t just summon a giant pterodactyl to pick a putty up off the streets and drop it from 100 feet. That being said, maybe Shins plan to fight the robot with his own suit of armor was flawed. He let that notion turn in his head as he stood, planning his moves.

The robot paper craft plodded towards Luke, raising its blade. The man in the background laughed. Luke lay there, injured. The man in the background laughed HARDER. Shin shifted his eyes between them. Werewolf, madman, robot. Werewolf, madman, robot. Madman. That simplified things. He turned and ran at the guy.

Again, the giant paper robot changed course. It spun towards him, and tried to hit him the same way it had gotten Luke. The Asian was ready for it, though. He had seen the speed, and made mental adjustments. He dropped into a sliding dive as the sword slipped over his body, slicing the air. Shin’s hair drifted lightly in the wind, as he came up from his roll.

“Go after the madman, Luke!” He shouted. “I’ll distract his Golem!”

He didn’t look at Luke, as he pushed up off the grass. Didn’t check to see if the guy was even capable of doing so. His focus was on the robot behind him. It loomed.

Shard dropped the mental image of the golden suit of armor. They had to be realistic. He focused on the tip of the first finger on his right hand. As he did, a tiny ball of shard triangles grew from the size of a grain of sand into the size of a ping pong ball. And grew. And glowed a faint white.

He jerked towards the direction of the guy, then rushed back as Voltron lurched towards him in a desperate move to protect his creator.

The Asian ran between Voltron’s legs. One thing he had, that Luke lacked, was training. He was used to fighting giant robots in the Danger Room. Luke was still a trainee.

As he ran around the other side of the Golem, he raised his right hand and fired! A shot the size of a ping pong ball flew from his fingertip and blew through one of Voltron’s shoulder guards. He dropped his hand back down as he focused on another shot.

From across the field, bits of paper sailed out of an open backpack. They slapped onto the hole, sealing it shut. Thus began a game of cat and mouse.

As he wove between sword strokes, underneath the Golem and around, Shin let fly shot after shot of hardened shard spheres. Each time they connected, they left little holes that were rapidly filled by paper from the bag. It seemed like an unsinkable situation, a for that healed every shot. Of course just because something seems one way, that doesn’t mean that’s the reality of the situation. As the battle went on, the time between shots grew, and the Asian slowed. Eventually, the shots stopped.

One final sword stroke was flung down. A vertical strike, two-handed. It cleaved down just where Shard has been a moment before. But he wasn’t there. He’d leaped to one side, landing on a triangular platform. He’d stopped summoning shards so he could summon the large platform, all at once.

Voltron tugged at the blade. He jerked back with his shoulders. He put a leg down to steady himself as he hauled back with all he was worth. It was stuck. Buried nearly two feet into the ground, and the paper had gotten wet. Wet earth had tumbled in to lock the blade in place.

Shin smiled. “Always wanted to do this.” He hopped onto the buried blade. The scene came back to him from his childhood as the platform shifted and rearranged itself from a massive triangle into a simple katana. A sword with the blade on the opposite side. A reverse-blade sword. “Over here,” he admonished the Golem. Then, he ran at it, quick as a whip, cutting it to ribbons with lightning-fast moves.

It was your typical Japanese nerd wish fulfillment. What every geeky Japanese geek wanted. It was pretty disgusting. Just a scene out of a cartoon about a Japanese swordsman fighting someone with a sword bigger than them. But it worked. And here was the kicker. No paper flew back to replace the paper lost from the attacks. He’d exhausted the bad man’s supply. So whatever paper he’d been using to defend himself against Luke’s attacks? That supply had effectively ran out. As had the prankster’s time. Tough luck.

Luke's plan...kind of worked. He'd figured Shin would go for the baddie, but turns out not telling people your plan makes it hard to follow them!

On the plus side, Shin was much better at distracting the killer robot than Luke had been. He was blowing many little holes in the thing, and from the looks of it was wearing it down. Eventually, the holes stopped being repaired by new sheets flying in from the guy's bag. Plus, with all the sounds of fighting, the guy didn't seem to have heard Shin calling out. But Luke heard him!

After observing this for a few seconds, Luke readied himself. The guy looked entirely focused on commanding his mecha thing, and there was no more paper coming in to reinforce the robot. That left him wide open. His feigned injuries vanishing instantly, Luke snarled, "C'mere!" Not that loudly, but he was ready for some catharsis by now.

Lunging forward on all fours, Luke stopped right next to the paper-mancer, who turned and gasped only briefly before being grabbed around the torso and. With a growl, Luke lifted the flailing man over his head, then past him, before slamming the loser on the ground behind him. A textbook vertical suplex. He probably shouldn't be taking too many tips from Travis Touchdown, but dang, it felt good.

The guy was out cold, and his big paper mech deflated, scattering shredded loose-leaf and construction paper across the street like a flood. Luke sat up and turned to look at Shin, who at least seemed to have enjoyed himself. "We good? I think we're good." He stood up and put his hand in his pocket for his phone.

Well, he tried. Ow. Luke laid down on his back again. Ribs. Ow. "Uh, good-ish. Yeah. I'll be fine, just...yeah."

As the paper Golem fell apart, he managed to catch sight of the aftermath of Luke’s fight with the man. Suplexed. Damn. Part of him was horrified. Part of him was impressed. Without a word, he broke the distance between him and the trainee.

Luke asked him a question. Were they good? The Asian glanced back over his shoulder at the paper. Paper. Everywhere. He turned his attentions to the katana still in his hand. His brow furrowed. The katana transformed into a litter trident.

“Can you call the police?” He asked, and gestured to the mess. “You watch him. I’ll start cleaning this up. Then we can take you back to Doc Prof. He will not be pleased...” Shin trailed off.

Doc Prof would get a bit of memory of the events surrounding the injury he healed. He’d get the sparknotes version of every minor papercut and sprained wrist. At lest it would save Luke the trouble of having to explain things.

Sighing, Shin went off to do what he’d set out to do earlier that day. He went to clean the park.

The End