| “ | A miracle? Don't make me laugh. I am the murderer of miracles!
— Carol Malus Dienheim
|
” |
Carol was born in the middle ages, and her mother died while she was young. She was raised by her father, who taught her alchemy. The father/daughter pair lived in idyllic happiness, traveling to learn new things and help out where they could. During the Black Plague, her father's alchemy was responsible for eradicating the disease in a nearby village.
The villagers then declared his miracles a heresy and burned him at the stake.
Carol swore revenge on the world, taking her father's last words, to know more of the world, to mean dissecting it. Over the course of a thousand years, she mastered the art of Alchemy, learning how to create homunculi and gaining immense power. When her plans were complete, she exiled a failed clone of herself, Elfnein, knowing the homunculus would attempt to contact and assist SONG in disrupting her plans.
Utilizing every bit of power at her disposal, she took on the Symphogears and utilized Elfnein's upgrades to their equipment to power the Chateau de Tiffauges, which would send alchemic power along the earth's leylines to disintegrate it. She is ultimately foiled, requiring the Symphogear users to direct their strongest powers to stop her, and ends up merging herself and Elfnein to save the latter's life.
She would later reconstruct herself, using the advanced alchemic art of copy-and-paste to reconstruct her memories from Elfnein's mind. Rather than doing anything malicious, however, she lies dormant until Elfnein is in mortal peril. She then temporarily takes control of her body, and despite having less power available, still manages to curbstomp the new villain team, even managing to force the Symphogear users present into X-Drive again.
She then assists SONG in their fight against the resurrected Shem-Ha, fighting the resurrected god to a near draw alone and keeping up with the Symphogears in a boosted X-Drive form to permanently damage Shem-Ha without requiring her to burn too much of her memories. She then burns all of her memories defending the Symphogears from Shem-Ha's attacks, even scoring a hit, and leaves Elfnein with the information needed to fully defeat the resurrected god's plans.
Battle vs Setsuna's Team (by Leolab)[]
Part 1[]
“So, uh, we’re still heading to Heaven?” Lilith asks, picking her way through the fire-scarred Jimbocho, “Uriel was terrified of it, and according to Astaroth, even Michael thought it best to seal it away.”
“What else is there?” Setsuna asks, blunt as usual, “We need to find God if we have any chance of fixing this. And the second half of the Sefer Raziel is there, which…”
“Is probably your real reason,” Sorami says, her smile a mix of malice and sadness as she teases Setsuna and Raziel, “Ah, the entrance is there,”
“Well, if I have my book…” Raziel mutters, spaced out as she disconnects her tablet from her wrist and plugs it into the spine of a book. It beeps as she taps it, decrypting the password to unlock the seventh and final stratum. She steps back as she finishes, pumping her fist and smiling. The four walk into the shining white corridor that separated the strata, stopping once they entered.
“The mental contamination has… stopped?” Setsuna says, sounding confused.
“It’s being… dammed? Something on the seventh stratum is blocking it entirely,” Sorami says, the fear in her voice understandable. The mental contamination, the ever-present song in Tokyo Babel, had driven countless angels, demons, saints, and mortals alike mad during their pilgrimages. It only got stronger as one came closer to heaven, and if one entity could dampen all of that on their own…
“That’s going to be one nasty master,” Lilith says flippantly, “But hey, at least it won’t be like fighting the big guy Himself, yeah?”
“Easy for you to say,” Setsuna grumbles as he and Sorami fumble around for the keys that would allow them to continue.
“Yes, it’s not like our innocent maiden Witch of the Night needs to worry,” Raziel says.
“Oy, enough with the ‘cherry girl’ stuff already!”
Setsuna and Sorami laugh quietly at the familiar scene playing out behind them as they unlock the doors and step out, tension reduced. Their nervousness vanished entirely when they got a good look at the one standing in front of them, a young girl with a pointed hat larger than her head and nearly lost in the robes that swamped her body.
The blonde girl throws a contemptuous look their way and flicks her wrist offhand. A torrent of fire spirals out, destroying the block between them.
“Raziel! Take Sorami!” Setsuna yells as the four split, with him leaping over the attack and drawing the Sword of Peccati in midair. He kicks off the air and charges towards his foe, checking to see that Raziel has carried Sorami off on one side and Lilith safely vanishes on the other.
A shield of magic blocks his strike, so he flips off it and summons the gold of sloth to test the mage’s defenses. Carol doesn’t move a muscle, simply solidifying the molten metal with a flash of water.
“Don’t take me lightly,” she growls, lashing out with a blast of wind that sends Setsuna flying.
“Property apprehension! Throne!” Raziel yells, providing cover for her boyfriend with a barrage of flaming wheels. These, like Setsuna’s strike, are simply blocked by the alchemist’s hexagonal shields and only serve to draw Carol’s attention to the angel.
Another burst of fire goes her way, but Raziel ducks behind a wall, turning it to water to douse the oncoming attack. Setsuna leaps back into the fray, concentrating all his nerves on the pillars of earth Carol streams towards him. He utilizes his nanomachines to speed up his thoughts, running through a million calculations in the span of a few seconds. He deflects one at the last second, sending it crashing into another pillar.
That pillar crashed into another, setting off a chain reaction as he continued to charge through the created corridor of space. He strengthens his muscles, swelling his arms to nearly thrice their usual skinny Japanese schoolboy size, and brings his sword down into an overhead swing that could cleave the wings off an angel.
Carol’s shield shakes under the impact, but is otherwise no worse for the wear.
“And I was about to compliment your intelligence for deflecting those,” she taunts, “but you’re just another musclehea---” she leaps back, cutting off as a second Setsuna jumps over the first, bringing his sword down right where she had stood a few seconds earlier. A snap of her fingers sends several high-pressure jets of water upwards from directly under him, slicing the man to ribbons as a third Setsuna jumps out from behind her, only to be hit with a blast of fire and incinerated. The first Setsuna, taking advantage of the confusion, again summons the gold of sloth to distract his enemy.
“Gold again?” she sneers as she deftly moves out of the way, “Let me show you how it’s really done.”
A brief burst of gold leaves her hand, and Setsuna barely manages to summon the beast of gluttony. The massive boar-like-thing turns to a solid gold statue, and the bit of the beam that it failed to block catches his left hand, transmuting it to match. His eyes widen in surprise, and he sets his nanomachines to breaking down the useless hand and reconstructing it. A storm of Setsunas appear around their position, all with the same gold left hand, and he kicks back as Carol gives a derisive laugh.
A burst of power annihilates the hastily-made clones, but they had done their job. Carol sighs as she loses her quarry, while Setsuna breathes heavily on the other side of a building, next to Lilith. Or what he assumed was her and not an illusory copy, at least.
“Any ideas?” he asks her, figuring she would have none.
“I do, but it’s risky. One could almost call it a secret technique,” Lilith replies.
“It’s better than nothing.”
“Well, see, her legs are fairly small and thin.”
“She has the body of a child. That’s to be expected.”
“Now for this technique, you’re going to use your legs, and…”
“Lilith, if this is the setup to a joke I won’t understand you should just tell me.”
The demoness gives him a flat look, the very picture of unamused exasperation.
“You run until Sorami finds something you can use for your raison d’etre. Now go. Leave. Skedaddle. GIT.”
Spurred on by the jeers of his supposed friend, he scrambles towards the edge of the building and peeks out, seeing the young girl still standing in place, Raziel darting around above her.
“Property apprehension. Water, level three,” the airheaded angel states, sending a flood down upon Carol’s head. “I can give you about a minute more,” she telepathically sends to Setsuna, “She’s… strong.”
“Got it. I’ll be there in ten seconds,” he says, forcing the nanomachines in his blood to quicken. As she combines wind and earth to make a persistent, cutting gale. The wind only succeeds in blowing Carol’s hat off and blowing her braid and robes about dramatically, however, and the angel finds herself dodging as much as attacking.
“Raziel-chan, use the wheelie dudes,” Lilith sends to her as she creates a swarm of Raziels much like she did with Setsuna earlier. Raziel catches on, and complies.
“Property apprehension! Throne!”
A hail of burning wheels falls on Carol, who disinterestedly shatters them with blasts of wind and earth. She spots a swish of reddish hair behind one of the buildings, just above a pair of gold eyes. She points, and a fireball manifests on her finger. Raziel follows her gaze and swoops down to protect Sorami as Carol releases her attack, the ball of fire racing the angel to see who would reach their goal first.
Raziel wins the race by a hairsbreadth, barely having the time to erect a wall of stone before the fire smashes through it and into her, which she douses with a quick rush of water.
“Raziel! Are you okay?” Setsuna sends to her.
“She’s healing herself. And I’m fine too, thank you very much for asking. Flirt after the fight, lovebirds.”
“I am pleased you are safe as well, Sorami.”
“Thank you thank you. Not bitter about being second string at all, nope. That’s why I won’t tell you that I’m close to figuring out her power, no sir.”
“Thank you, Sorami.”
Setsuna cuts the banter short and charges in again, taking the heat off of the illusion of Camael that was ineffectually flailing at Carol. He swings at her, making note of the potential blackmail material to keep Lilith in line later, only to be met with a blast of wind. As the illusory Camael fades, he summons the lion of pride. It reflects the blast back at Carol, taking off part of her robe and leaving her in the sleeveless red dress worn underneath. She stops in midair and launches another strike at Setsuna, who drops under the blast.
“I’ve got it!” Sorami sends to the entire team, “Her powers are fueled by her memories. Literally. If you can cut those off…”
“Understood. Thank you,” Setsuna says, storing the Sword of Peccati in its pocket dimension. He weaves back and forth between the barrage of raw elemental power, chanting as he does so. “There is no God. I shall not revere Him. I shall not pray to Him. I shall not believe in Him. I shall not crave His blessing. In order to suppress all adversity through devastating power, I shall create God. I shall mold Him into being. Come! Universal Machine!”
“Wow, that’s… probably the cringiest raison d’etre I’ve heard,” Lilith snorts, clearly holding back a laugh even through telepathy, “And man, if you’d heard Beelzebub’s before he went mad…”
Setsuna focuses on his raison d’etre as he blocks out Lilith’s inanity, willing into being something that would destroy the memories of those hit by it. A glassy blade materialized in his hand, seemly wet with beads of water. Its name came to his mind, unbidden.
“Ameles Potamos,” he says, and charges back in at the girl. The sword, an embodiment of the river Lethe, would sever the memories of anyone hit with it. Carol turns aside his first slice with a shield, but the follow-up stab manages to slip through her defenses, final scoring a graze on the girl, if not a full hit.
Carol’s eyes grow wide with shock, feeling the sword’s magic tear away some of her memories. She glares at Setsuna, hate evident in her every motion.
“You… your sword erased some of my memories of Papa,” she growls, furious at losing one of the few times she felt truly happy. She flings her arm out to the air, and a large harp flies into her hands. “I was hoping to save this, but…” she says, and strums the harp. It then comes apart, attaching itself onto the young girl and increasing her apparent age. She gives a confident smile before opening her mouth.
And beginning to sing.
Part 2[]
A burst of power throws Setsuna back and shatters the block around the alchemist to rubble. He rights himself, still airborne. He brings his sword to a hanging guard and holds his position, trying to figure out what this new form – likely her raison d’etre – can do. Carol gestures at him, sending a line of harpstrings arcing towards him.
“Dodge, Setsuna! And Raziel, get Sorami out of there!” Lilith says, dropping the jokes for once. Setsuna dives under the strings, which continue on to slice through the skyscrapers behind him. He kicks off the falling rubble, accelerating towards Carol, disengaging to a thrust as he closes in.
More strings wrap themselves around the blade, stopping it in its tracks. Setsuna, undeterred, orders his nanomachines to convert his blood into napalm before spraying it from his fist. A spark of electricity ignites it, sending a wave of fire at Carol. It’s met with a blast of wind, blowing the flames back at his face.
Setsuna appears to split in two, one plummeting to the ground while the other kicks upwards to deliver an overhead strike. A snap of Carol’s fingers rips the rising one to shreds as the falling Setsuna lands, pointing his sword at her. An offhand wave breaks more flaming wheels, the Thrones proving useless once again. Setsuna launches into another underhand slice, only for the strings to catch his sword and rip it out of his hand.
He leaps, catching it by the blade, and slams the hilt against a shield created by alchemy. A contemptuous blast of wind throws him back, and a shackle of earth roots him to the ground. A blast of fire knocks Raziel out of the sky, and as Carol goes to finish her off she halts, seeing a flash in her vision.
The pommel of the sword knocks her in the head, removing some more of her memories. She moves with the impact, dodging Sestuna’s follow-up strike, and sends a barrage of strings behind her, shredding Raziel and collapsing a building on Sorami and Lilith. She then takes advantage of Setsuna’s shock, immolating him with a blast of fire.
Carol lands, dismissing Daur da Bla and returning to her younger form. She looks around at the ruined and abandoned city, smiling as she plans to dissect the world from here.
Expert's Opinion[]
Setsuna's Team needed every member to work together to defeat Carol, while Carol could rely solely on her own powers. Carol had a much simpler time finding victory, and thus won the match.