Description: The best way to get a sociopathic serial torturer to do what you want is to ask him to do something he already kind of wants to do. Osore no Oni, the Demon of Horror, is happy to assist the BWA in their plot to sabotage the CWA, and take a meeting with a schoolgirl that has caught his attention.
BACKSTAGE
Sada, or is it the Shadow? Or is it SADA? She isn't sure just how to render herself yet, but despite being squashed underneath the sweaty and not so fresh thighs of Rainbow Mika and the evil coils of Snake "The Snake" Bite previously, she remains eager. Almost thirsty for battle.
She can feel it. She can feel, perhaps, the sense that there is more to life than school, but that something might just take the form of 'slam'.
Sada had arrived at the stadium discreetly, along with several other people who she nodded at and then moved away from by mutual agreement. In the dressing rooms, she had what is a glorified closet in which to prepare herself, because, of course, you can't be seen without a [mask] in these conditions. The mask in question was different from the one last week; this one, in fact, purely a black domino-style face covering, with an elastic band decorated with sequins.
On it went.
Sada stared at herself in the mirror, and made some faces, laughing with the closest she will approach innocence on this fine day. The leggings and tank top were easy enough. With that, she opened the door, stepped out into the close warren of backstage hallways -
The lights flicker once, then die.
"What the hell?" Sada says.
Then, "Hello...?"
There are tiny flickers then; the red lights over exits and the occasional high-set emergency glarelights coming on in an uneven chorus. Standing in the gloom, shadowed by a stack of surplus turnbuckles, Sada breathes uneasily for a moment. Nobody seems to be around.
This place is a maze, she thinks, before moving towards one of the exit signs. Easy enough, she thinks. Hopefully they don't fuck up her shot on the top of the arena, at this rate...
Sada's foot strikes something.
If she is particularly observant, she will realize that there was nothing there to strike a few moments ago. Did anything else move? A flicker to the right?
A body, barely illuminated in a lurid streak of red. Is there blood? Impossible to see without looking closely. Alive? Dead? She'd have to check - the pulse is there, but you wouldn't know it from looking.
There is a coppery smell in the air. Not... not quite blood. A close cousin. The air is growing thick, oppressive. It's so /warm/ back here all of a sudden.
Something scrapes to the right, a few bright sparks shooting off the concrete floor, the sound sharp out of the silence. Shouldn't there be more noise? Shouldn't there be a panic? The oppressive heat is deadening the senses. Everything is redder than it should be.
They say you can feel it when you're being watched. Is that what this is?
Sada's personal cloud of irritated outrage at the world at large dissipates slightly every moment. She hit something with her foot. She looks down -
The air smells thick. Coppery, wet. Her lips purse. She swallows.
It's dark in here now. Close. Sada feels her heart pulsing.
She is slightly brighter now, a faint outlining. Not really light - though it might show as such if she were in a completely dark room, a ghostly and suboceanic luminance from the microscopic leakages between cells, from the tiny glands at the base of each and every hair.
Then something scrapes. She jumps, twisting to face that direction. Crouching, Sada shouts into the darkness. "Hey, asshole!! Come out if you're trying to hide!! I don't give a shit if you're not supposed to be here, I'm not going to bust you -- just tell me how the hell you snuck in!" Her tone drips with bravado and the vulgarity of someone doing it deliberately.
She reaches to the side for something suitable to hit with. What, she thinks, if it's the bear?
The voice is unnatural - sharply modulated. It shifts pitches randomly, careening from a piercing shriek to a rib-shaking rumble, pausing in between, reversing directions. "False bravery. I despise the taste of inearnest emotions."
To the left, a stack of empty equipment crates shoved out of the way and left there. An emergency light is slowly travelling up it, illuminating first a pair of wooden geta sandals, black tabi feet and bloodstained black pants.
"That disappoints me. I thought I had tasted something else within you. Something darker." A long black changshan, more slashes of that blood red color.
'Hey, don't scare me like that, he's not real! The cops must've caught him decades ago!' 'He's totally real, but the news doesn't talk about him because it's way too scary. They say he's targetting the schools now. I know a girl who knows a girl who says someone she knew once got attacked!' 'No way, shut up! It's a rumour!' 'Do... do you think he's gonna target Seijyun? That's creepy.' 'Osore no Oni... I bet Zaki knows him. I bet they're totally friends!'
The mask is exactly the same as the rumors always describe. A leering bright red Hannya mask, thick red, white, and black hair streaming from it halfway down the man's back. Not an inch of skin is visible on him, nothing that indicates he's even a real person save for his eyes... and those are blood red and... glowing. Faint mist flows from the cuffs of his loose pants and the sleeves of his changshan, flowing down the crates, gathering against the floor, heavier than air.
The demon's head tilts. "Or was all of that a true show? Did you truly fake the ring of truth as you spoke of darkness? Have you /wasted/ my /time?/"
He steps from the crates, floating through the air as though gravity is more of a guideline than a law to him. His sandals clack on the concrete floor.
That voice... it's threading through her ears. The words are sonorous and elegant, even if the tone itself warbles horribly. Sada tenses up as he steps out from behind a crate, her eyes wide behind her mask as he looms. Her lips pull back to bare her teeth, but in this moment there is fear on her skin and in her face, what parts are visible.
The mask faces her. The mask with its blood red eyes. Mist flowing from him. Sada's mouth goes dry for a moment, and her shoulders - bare - tremble.
But the fear does not last.
Because through that natural reaction, there's a thin layer of acculturation... and underneath it, something hotter, like a spring just beneath the surface!
"So, did you come for me because I got famous?"
Sada raises up one of her hands and snaps her fingers in the air.
"I bet you're hoping I break down in tears -- I bet you can smell that I'm sweating, you weird freak. But I don't think you understand what that means. I bet you like that stuff, Osore no Oni!! But even if I did want to cry in fear, you'd just be dooming yourself."
And then her arms come back, folding in front of her. Impertinence! Bravado!! The masked figure can probably tell this is an act, but how much of an act is it? The answer would be 'significantly less than you'd expect'. A shimmering sort of excitement is filling her, from Sada's perspective. Mix anger with fury and simmer in vinegar until concentrated.
She sucks in a breath -- no, it's not that. "Let's see who's under that mask," she says, thickly.
And then, Sada Asai spits in the face of hell!
The spit bursts in the air as it flies, throwing an unnatural and sickly luminosity into the chaotic light. And it is perhaps a testament to how much that bravado /is/ an act... that as she does this, Sada unfolds her arms and takes a step back, towards the center of the hall.
COMBATSYS: [Warlock - Kiss of Death] "With a burning hunger I said goodbye / To every victim that caught my eye / I have no mercy, I tell no lies, / I kiss the strangers / And then watch them die..." SADA is ready to SLAM!
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Sada 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: [Metallica - Enter the Sandman] "Hush little baby, don't say a word .. / And never mind that noise you heard .. / It's just the beasts under your bed.. / In your closet, in your head....!!" KICHIGA is ready to SLAM!
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Sada 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Kichiga
COMBATSYS: Kichiga blocks Sada's Contemptuous Spit.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Kichiga
The man lifts his right arm as the brilliant acid spit flies toward him, hand loose, a pose that makes no sense for a split second. "Nothing so base." He chops his hand down and a lacquered red steel-tipped cane slides from the broad sleeve of the chinese shirt, the golden head of an ogre fitting neatly into his palm. He swipes it through the spit, paint hissing, a much-reduced splatter smacking into his masked face, leaving trails of bare blackened wood.
"My senses reach far deeper than you can imagine, girl. It is not your sweat that I taste." He draws in a thin breath, hissing through the modulation. "So furious for one so young. The world has touched you." He flips the cane in his hand and taps the butt against the concrete, a jarringly out-of-place dandyish affectation. "No... marred you. Like a vandal swiping his hand through an oil painting drying upon the easel." Wood scrapes as he shifts his weight. "Interesting."
The Oni springs forward, travelling unnaturally surely through the air like something out of a martial arts movie. He kicks off the wall to change his direction and flies right at Sada, his gloved left hand outstretched, reaching for her face. More of that mist is pouring out of his sleeve, spiralling up his fingers. He snatches at her, fingers digging into her cheeks, trying to bend her down with his superior (for a Japanese man) height. The mist starts to pour out - fear itself, striking directly for something inside Sada's soul, plucking at the strings of her will with a million incomprehensible whispers. "Enough of your shell. Where are your /depths/, child? Must I make a project of peeling you away, layer by layer?"
COMBATSYS: Kichiga successfully hits Sada with Die Screaming.
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Sada 0/-------/-----==|==-----\-------\0 Kichiga
Sada had expected to hit a terror mask and watch it evaporate, thin plastic withering and smoking away. Obviously, that didn't happen, and what's more, what has appeared is far more durable than that. She thinks she sees wood.
Do demons have wood for flesh?
The cane taps the ground. Sada snipes back, "There's nothing wrong with me, you --" She can't quite force out a swear.
The demon moves forwards, bounces off a wall, lays a hand on her face. The hand bends her backwards with its pressure even as that eerie mist washes over her face, her eyes wide beneath the mask as fear pours into her. Something touching deep within, revealing in subtle detail various images, nuances, those painting strokes.
Sitting still and watching others.
Grandparents wincing when she sneezes into a handkerchief.
Arranging flowers listlessly as seasons roll by outside.
Interminable visits to the dentist, anxious looks outside the doctor.
All of it mixes together. All of it put into a big clay pot and boiled and boiled and boiled until -
Sada snaps her hands up to grasp that proffered arm around the wrist. As she does she twists as best she can, throwing herself on the floor - and hopefully, with the element of surprise, the intruding demon as well. Strain and fear and turgid heat mean her hands are now hissing and painful to the touch, even through cloth. She accompanies this with an inarticulate screech, trailing off with, "YOU DON'T KNOW ME!"
COMBATSYS: Kichiga endures Sada's Audacious Slam.
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Sada 0/-------/-----==|=====--\-------\0 Kichiga
Osore no Oni proves to be no heavier than a man. The changshan sleeve smokes and burns, neat little holes forming as she forces him down to the ground. He goes down with her, the cane slipping between him and the floor, briefly painful.
His voice is barely above a whisper: "Do /you/ know you?"
Sada can see a flash of human skin, pale and aged, beneath the tiny holes in his sleeves, chains wrapped around his arms. He pushes himself up with the cane, bouncing right up off the ground, ignoring the bruises from the impact. He hangs impossibly in the air for a long instant above the schoolgirl, mist trailing from his ankles, his cuffs, his eyes. Reposition - twist in the air - both hands on the cane. "Scream!" he growls.
The demon has the butt in his hands, the heavy gold oni head swinging down for the small of Sada's back as he allows gravity some purchase once more, the cane rumbling through the air. The strike - whether on flesh or stone - also serves to hurl Kichiga himself away, feet clicking against the wall of the hallway before he alights on a table littered with a seamstress's detritus. A light behind him streams red around his masked face, casting him into shadow.
"You are... lying to yourself," he says, almost wonderingly, head tilting. "I have never understood that. Do people not realize how easy they are to read? How futile self-denial is? It is like, mmm... bad sauce upon a master's steak."
COMBATSYS: Kichiga successfully hits Sada with Phobia.
# Disabling hit! #
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Sada 0/-------/---====|======-\-------\0 Kichiga
"Ugh!! Why are you asking such weird questions?!" Sada screeches, her voice ringing off the concrete blocks of the walls. "What do you even care -- aren't you supposed to just torture girls to death?!"
Well, that's heavy. The strike comes down abruptly at the small of her back. Sada obliges. The scream that comes out is huge in the narrow confines, making her previous hollering seem like the cheeping of a tiny bird compared to the full-figured, ear-piercing cry of someone just now given a truly dolorous blow. She staggers a pace forwards, grasping onto an empty crate as pain runs up and down her spine. For a brief horrible moment, she wonders if her legs are still there.
They are, she can feel them. It was displacement.
She thinks. Her legs are still shaking.
"Well -- if you're so clever," she snaps back as she pulls herself fully upright, "what am I lying to myself about, huh?? I'm pretty comfortable with myself. That's why I came here - I knew I wanted to fight, no matter what they said! No matter how much they bitched! I may not be at the top yet... but everything has to start somewhere. I know how this works! You don't just leap to the top like some cartoon hero..."
Sada sucks in a deep breath. "And if you're here to protect Snakebite, I'll just haul you up there with me..." Her resolve is flagging slightly as she says that, but shit-talking a demon is hard work.
COMBATSYS: Sada gains composure.
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Sada 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Kichiga
Osore no Oni's breath quickens in that instand that Sada feels the primal terror of becoming crippled. His fingers twitch, extending and closing into fists.
It took him years to get that right, to learn exactly how much the spine can take.
"Girls... boys... men... women... but never to death. The dead no longer fear." He watches he climb to her feet, he himself coming back to his full height upon the table. He raises his hands, mist pools around his feet -
- the table collapses with a crack, the man /willing/ himself through it, sandals clacking as he strides out of the wreckage. The regard of those red eyes is intense. With the mist, all the red, the lights, staring into them makes them seem to expand until they are everything. The damn mist, it's like a drug. "I begin to see," he says, eyes narrowing. Behind the mask, he grins, the tight fabric on his neck bulging.
And then.
"Geh... gehahahahahaha! Protect! Do you truly believe that?! I did not think you so simple."
The demon opens his hand and the cane slides back into his sleeve as though retracted with a hidden cord. He spreads his arms, Christ-like. The mist abruptly stops flowing, quickly dissipating without the effort of his will. Things, for a moment, look normal. "I do not believe that you want to fight. I can see that. Fighting is simply the shortcut."
"Strike me. I will not resist."
COMBATSYS: Kichiga takes no action.
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Sada 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Kichiga
Sada's face burns beneath the mask. She may not understand herself, but she can tell when she is being insulted - derided. This damn fool, she thinks. It's just a guy in a costume...
But, she thinks further, if he's really just one person, how could he have done what he's said to have done for so long?
Either way, she straightens upwards, her spine popping loudly. She sucks in a deep breath, lets it out, and rolls her tongue around the inside of her mouth. The man spreads his arms, invites her inwards.
"You're setting me up, I bet," she says with suspicion--
But then she runs in, building up a bit of speed during her approach. It's amazing what even three or four paces can do for your momentum when you're putting your back into it; those extended arms are helpful too, as Sada reaches up, grasping one and twisting around to try and contort one of them backwards. Her legs grasp firmly on one extended and probably elderly thigh.
From this position she twists.
Not so bad, if it wasn't for all of the sweat she'd worked up being ridiculous earlier. Whether you see it as the pure essence of human emotion, or, more accurately, a fluid that oozes out of you so it can air-dry and cool you off when it's nasty out - Sada is pretty slippery with it, and it is definitely inclined to soak into cloth.
Soak - saturate - and sting.
As she wrenches, Sada grunts, "The shortcut to WHAT?"
COMBATSYS: Sada successfully hits Kichiga with Sparkling Abdominal Stretch.
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Sada 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Kichiga
The demon makes a single motion as Sada charges him - he flicks his jaw to the left, sharply, something making an imperceptible click. From there, true to his word, he offers no resistance to her. Without the psychic mist everywhere, without the terror and hopelessness that radiated from him, he feels completely different. The chains on his skin. The curious looseness of the elderly, noticeable even through the whipcord muscle on his surprisingly slight frame.
Sada twists and he cries out in pain, the voice modulator deactivated. Weak. Pathetic. The sound of an old man near his breaking point. The man within the Osore no Oni shudders as the acid burns into his skin, his tremendous will no longer propping him up. "Isn't it..." he begins to gasp, "...magnificent?" He struggles, looking for a position that hurts less, squirming in her arms. "Control. Domination. Another's life in... the palm of your hand." He draws a sharp, high-pitched breath. His voice in unfamiliar and wracked with pain. "The horror of one helpless... is the greatest taste."
Without warning, Osore no Oni collapses into bloody mist, Sada feeling a slight pulling sensation before he's gone.
A thin stream of mist races along the ground to the downed man, blooming into a cloud that he steps out of a touch gingerly, grimacing behind his mask as the acid continues to burn his skin. He twitches his jaw. "Have you been controlled? Is that the mar? Unfair hands forcing you onto a path that is not yours?" He stoops to seize the downed production assistant by the back of his neck, pulling him up. His other hand drifts toward his mask. "Fighting is a shortcut to feeling that control for yourself. But it is... a shortcut. Understandable that one so young would move to the path of least resistance."
He makes a pulling motion, as though unclipping the hannya from his face. The pressure in the area increases as Psycho Power starts billowing from him, the mist so thick it seems more like liquid, like blood. It courses into his wig, rippling it in the absent wind, forms great wicked horns atop his mask, spirals down his limbs and body to add to a newly inhuman cast to his features.
Bearing the guard, Osore no Oni's sandals clatter as he dashes across the intervening space, bodily rushing Sada with the man to knock her off her feet. "But! Enough of the freedom! If you want to feel more of that, you must earn it, girl!"
COMBATSYS: Kichiga successfully hits Sada with Illegal Weapon.
+=+=!= Power Slam! =!=+=+
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Sada 1/-------/=======|=======\=------\1 Kichiga
When she hears the sound of an old man groaning, Sada hesitates for a fraction of a second, and then does it twice as hard. Hearing those words she lets out a little noise, not quite a giggle, not quite a gasp. She pushes --
He falls.
No he doesn't! Sada wheels around, staring through the eyeholes of her mask. Staring...
Her brow furrow as a man is hoisted up. "You replaced yourself with him?!" she says, perhaps to get the sting of the masked man's words out of her mouth, out of her mind. "I..."
She trails off. From the burn of embarrassed revelation in her heart, it's clear that the answer is yes. Of course, a wholly different sort of blow comes towards her quickly, and with her heart in such turmoil, her fighting form is not in good condition. (In fact, to be frank, her fighting form is awful. If she wasn't coated in horrible acid stuff, like some kind of underaged poison dart frog, she would be mere fodder for the grinder... or worse... Shingo.)
Slammed, she flies, and she hits the door where she came in hard enough to knock it off its hinges, the cheap wood toppling backwards as she lays atop it for a moment, gasping for breath, stunned in that instant. Laid out like she's on a coffin.
She pulls herself up.
Staring at the man, Sada seethes.
But then a thought occurs to her. It worked before, didn't it?
Fear, doubt, hesitance go away, replaced with an inner capering glee at what she has, perhaps, seen in the future. She lets her tongue stick out, childishly. Her right hand goes up to her eye, pulling the eyelid down.
That dancing vicious monkey in her soul doesn't go away, and a second later it's clear why. Something erupts out from that eyelid - the iridescent red of the blood bursting into an accursed warm glow in the darkness towards the demon, the acrid scent of burning flesh rising upwards.
Of course, she's managed to (somehow) squirt three ounces or so of blood out in this grisly display, so there's plenty to land upon him - or the production slave - with a sizzling, rippling crackle that's half-explosion and half-agony. Sada giggles as she struggles back upwards, blood dribbling down onto the cloth of the mask.
COMBATSYS: Kichiga just-defends Sada's Haemolacria!
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Sada 0/-------/-------|=======\=------\1 Kichiga
Osore no Oni discards the man's further-punished body like a crumpled paper and he observes Sada as she recovers, regarding her coldly. "Once again, you accuse me of simple trickery." His horns drip, actual eyes invisible under the rippling power roaring around him. "Soon, I will feel insulted."
She then steps it up to /actual/ insult. That little fragment of the demon's cover personality drifts through and the Justice teacher within stiffens, affronted. The stream of blood almost catches him off-guard. His left hand flicks forward.
Four chains stream out of his sleeve, Psycho Power wrapped around them so completely as to make them seem more like cords of muscle, and they wrap around the chi-infused blood. There is a brief struggle before Psycho Power and chi eliminate themselves in a crackle, the smoking ruin of the chains lashing further out.
"You could have hurt that man uselessly. Do not waste your efforts on an unconscious man, what is the point of pain that cannot be felt?" Osore no Oni's fingers twitch like a puppetmaster's, the chains seeking to wrap around Sada's shoulders and upper body, wrenching her painfully back toward him.
COMBATSYS: Sada blocks Kichiga's Tie-up Lock.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|=======\===----\1 Kichiga
Whether it's the statement of being insulted - or soon being insulted - or something else entirely, Sada doesn't screech insult or vituperation forwards. She stares at Osore no Oni through her disintegrating mask, before...
Sada straightens up, blinking several times, an expression that the man behind the mask has likely seen before. An expression that indicates that, despite all odds and statistical likelihoods, something has gotten through. "I never..."
'thought of it that way,' she had been about to say, but instead she says "ghhhk!" as she's wrapped, wrenched, and pulled forwards. She skids on the ground --
But no!! One foot drags there, wrenching her ankle. Another comes up, her foot jutting out, the fabric of her fightin' tights already falling apart from gratuitous sweat and the fact that she got thrown through a door. Hopping as she is, she holds it out - a tooB giB, perhaps, rather than the classical technique.
But all's fair in suffering and slam.
"Hnfh-- how long have you done this?!"
COMBATSYS: Kichiga blocks Sada's Big Boot.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|>>>>>>>\>>>----\1 Kichiga
As Sada nears, the demon - man - /monster/ reaches up to his chest with his right hand, placing his fingertips and dragging them down across three distinctly bright red stains on his changshan. Fresh blood darkens the stains and the power rippling around him warps again, the hallucinatory image of a hulking devil appearing behind him, a suggestion of red light and black void. The devil's arms appear transparently over his own, and as it sinks in, his mask appears real for a split second.
His right hand then snaps out to catch Sada's strike. He slides back along the ground with a hiss, chains along his arm creaking. He does not answer immediately, instead snapping out his left arm, the cane sliding into his grasp. Red Psycho Power floods down into it, blooming out of the tip like a razor-sharp sword, dripping even as the more solid manifestation of power starts to crumble off of his body, the liquid returning to mist.
Yanking Sada's leg up higher he aims to swipe the sword directly through her body. It does not cut flesh, is completely unhazardous to one's health... but burns with an impossible cold, a knife through the spirit. Even coming near the blade is a shocking experience, absolute horror rolling off of its edge.
"I learned who I was shortly after turning 17, when the mundanity of the existence I knew to that point caused me to beat someone dear to me to death. In the regretful absence I felt after that, I learned the true value of life and a true appreciation for the fear of others. I learned what it was to hold control. I have lived a fulfilling fifty years since then... a bit longer, perhaps, I lose track of time."
Why strike first, then speak? The man within simply understands that important words are best delivered to a mind unclouded by distraction, and his blade is... clarifying.
COMBATSYS: Sada dodges Kichiga's Terror of the Unknown.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|>>>>---\-------\0 Kichiga
The hand on her leg is - objectively - a ridiculous thing, hopping along as she is. Any such thoughts as this are removed when the sword slashes through her.
Sada stares ahead as the blade passes through her like ice. Antarctic chill swirls through her, her skin practically shrivelling up as she's able to stagger backwards, swaying as she stares dead ahead at Kichiga as he introduces himself, and explains.
That chill, like the arrival of a katabatic wind, stills Sada's heart for a moment. Her right hand comes up, cupping the side of her face as she stares dead ahead. The chill can't last, and sure enough, that moment of utter, horrified poise cracks - and Sada shakes, cold sweat erupting from her body as she does.
"You w-weren't coming here to attack me, were you," she says, slowly.
COMBATSYS: Sada takes no action.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|>>>>---\-------\0 Kichiga
The last of the liquid energy collapses off of the Oni's form, the horns the last to go, his red eyes once again revealed - though the ghostly devil is still there, a transparent vision around his upper body. The psychic sword does absolutely nothing to the concrete floor, though the steel butt of the cane scratches a long scrape at the apex of the downswing.
Sada finally comes to a Moment. Osore no Oni releases her leg and makes a pulling motion with his hand. The chains shatter into dust, the stumps retracting into his sleeve, and he pivots his cane before clicking it to the floor in front of him, hands resting atop each other.
He does not dismiss the Devil, because he is not known for relaxing.
The man flicks his jaw. His voice comes out still modulated, but even, locked at a moderate pitch - enough to disguise his voice, but just enough kindness to make him easier to understand. If Sada attended Justice rather than Seijyun, the pose, the bearing, the slight tilt of his head would give everything away... but she might yet read 'teacher' rolling off of every line of his body.
"It was a shortcut," he begins. "People break down in conflict and become easier to read, to understand. Hotheaded young men refer to it as, ah, 'speaking with the fists', but they are too idiotic to actually understand how much easier it is to judge a person when you drag them closer to their animal state, you understand." He taps the cane, punctuating the point. "I bore witness to your... 'match' last week. Though I was not there in person, I thought I read something in you, something that understands that people that live in the light are worthless, and only suffering is truth."
COMBATSYS: Kichiga takes no action.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|>>-----\-------\0 Kichiga
It's clear this man is a teacher, even if Sada's girlish educational institution and, let's be honest, being a little unobservant when not under pressure, would keep her from sussing it out.
Her mask slips off her face, the corrosive power of her blood having finally ripped the fabric up enough. "Like when you ride someone until they say how they really feel," Sada says with the tone of revelation.
It continues. "Y... yes, exactly! They're all just stuck up! Like rocks in the woods, if you turned them over they'd have worms and rot underneath them, they just hide them. If they aren't bleeding, it's just because they've totally dried up!"
Sada clasps her hands in front of her. "Osore no Oni, please!! I know this is kind of forward of me and I spit on you and everything, but - please, tell me what you know!" The mask falls the rest of the way off; lit by red emergency lights, with blood and darkness behind her, Sada could pull off a cover job for a certain sort of tract right now. "I want to know more about how to teach people about suffering!"
Nary a slam to be found.
COMBATSYS: Sada takes no action.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|>>-----\-------\0 Kichiga
The man is not being entirely honest. Suffering and pain is not a philosophy to him. He does not have some kind of twisted, insane view of right and wrong. He is a perfectly rational human being that thinks that fear is delicious.
Sada feels that red gaze bear down on her for an extended period of time, the man's chest rising and falling as he draws deep breaths for that hinted-upon purpose, swishing it around in his mouth, looking for the deceit.
He taps his cane and the Devil vanishes, though a trace amount of mist, of his oppressive presence, continues to curl in the air. "The full title is cumbersome. You will call me Teacher," enunciating the word clearly in English, "and I will contact you for your first lesson when a proper opportunity presents itself. I expect that it will involve the interlopers currently interfering with my territory - I'm sure you have noticed the unfamiliar faces, the furtive strangers, the... alteration to Taiyo High's command structure, as it were."
COMBATSYS: Kichiga has left the fight here.
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Sada 0/-------/-------|
Sada stares ahead. She meets those red eyes. And perhaps in the end, she is found... worthy.
"Yes, Teacher!" she says with unwonted enthusiasm. She listens to the rest of what the man says, attentive, silent, her cheap sneakers slowly disintegrating as sweat accumulates in them. She nods several times, saying with revelatory surprise, "Like those assholes who stormed into the dormitory at Seijyun... fucking panty raiding pervert assholes!"
"One of them tried to freeze my tongue off," she says. "I'll make all of them regret whatever they've done."
This is perhaps what the Buddhists call 'crazy wisdom.' Or, perhaps, it is a complete stab in the horror dark.
"I'll be listening, Teacher!! You can count on me!!" And once again, she means it.
COMBATSYS: Sada has ended the fight here.
The mask hides Kichiga's grimace. "Time will tell. We will meet again soon."
The emergency lights suddenly go down, a precursor to the regular lights going up.
Perhaps inevitably, Osore no Oni is gone, a few curls of red mist and the general wreckage the only signs he was even there in the first place.
Log created on 20:19:05 11/15/2014 by Kichiga, and last modified on 11:48:17 11/16/2014.