Description: "Dear Diary, I was taken to a really hot place to complete the hunt that began months ago. I found him. The one that cut off K9999's arm before. Ideals must be a very powerful thing. They kept him moving beyond the point at which most would have died. Like choices and freedom, ideals seem to be pretty important. I will have to discover some for myself so that I can be like other people."
"You'll be compensated. But the task is of importance. No one will ever know you existed if you fail. Reprot back with haste."
The capital of Afghanistan, known as Kabul, has only recently recovered from the extensive bombings conducted by the alliance forces. Security is purportedly on the uprise, despite the occaisional attack. However, this does not mean that the third world is not a dangerous place. Unfortunately, that risk is necessary for his aims. Underneath the eye of the civilized world, Seishirou could not recognize or amass the resources he needs to complete the project to which the research group has been assigned.
The shantytown was a dense network of ramshackle roughshod, a thick multi-level grid of roof panels, clothes hung out to dry, and tangles of cable from illegally harvested power. Clay serves as the insulation to keep the houses from becoming ovens in the summer heat. Knives lurk around every corner, but these people were not the xenophobic type. Defense is presented only to those who seem a threat. Seishirou had a habit of being able to blend in, but not necessarily by method.
He gestures once. It's all that is needed before the shambled man who stands before him disappears. It's not the hobbled step of a transient, or squatter. It is something far more practiced, far keener than the drunken movement of the industrious and disillusioned. Of the hundreds of people gathered in the darkened caves of scrap and canvas, only the sharp eye of the ninkou priest could penetrate and tell exactly where the other person got off to.
His haori is stark white, to constrast the dark greys and rusted metals of his environs. He sticks out clearly, but he is not bothered. It is not by method that he remains unmolested. It is by sheer air. Ryouhara has no interest in these people beyond the privacy of their free men's grounds. So when he turns away and walks down a dirty path that is a few body lengths too narrow for comfort, he is left alone.
The heat of the noon sun lingers long into the eve when Ryouhara is about.
The mission started far over her head. To catch a ghost; to seize an enigma; to make sure that the factions of the world knew, in no uncertain terms, triffling with the affairs of NESTs would not be tolerated. To interfer can get one put on a list, earmarked for eventual retaliation, whenever it's convenient. To harm an agent might get one's name moved a bit higher in priority. To /harvest/ a limb from one of the most top secret living experiments within the Cartel gets one the prestigious promotion straight to the top of the list.
That so much time has passed since that incident transpired is perhaps evidence of the difficulty in accomplishing the feat of metting out proper justice for the offense committed. One might think that the moment it happened, alarms were triggered, reports filed, and investigations commenced instantly. But such was not the case. Organizations with the size of the Cartel don't turn on a dime, however. They are slow, methodical beings. Papers slow to work their way up the chain, clerks misfiling something here and there. But eventually it shook out - the simple headline on the top of one among many forms, 'Seishirou Ryouhara took K9999's arm' leaping out at one filing clerk some months ago. When the report was finally read, it jumped straight to the top, confounding and dumbfounding many of the higher ranked officers. Seishirou Ryouhara /cut off/ one of their strongest agent's arms in battle. For this he must be punished. If he were just any young man, field agents would have been dispatched to his home address and the murderous deed done in the cover of night.
But Seishirou is no ordinary individual, and he doesn't have a home address. He isn't alone. He has followers; numbers unknown. That makes his act an act of war, a daring prod against a fellow enigmatic faction, the existence of which few even know. And the easiest way for a lazy giant such as NESTs to win a war is to cut off the head of the beast. Finding Seishirou required some guess work, vast amounts of research, and analysis of files received from one Elle Belmounte during the mid fall of the previous year. Perhaps she could have provided more, if she hadn't vanished from existence. Maybe she irked the wrong megalomaniac... The files lead to a variety of seemingly disconnected locations. An eradicated harbor, bases long since left empty, a hospital room...
At last a tip - the words of a desperate man, his voice bought with coin, narrowed the search down to Kabul. And that's when they brought in the one agent they felt could face him. If the Ryouhara boy was too much for the tantruming K9999, then there was only one level higher to go. Kula Diamond, her last name bearing the dual reference to the priceless value she is to the Cartel and the diamond-like strength of the ice she wields with the greatest ease. Present since mid-afternoon, her coming was as unremarkable as the endless shifting of sands surrounding the capital city. Dressed traditionally for the region, her head is covered by the black shawl, her leather body armor concealed by the black, flowing 'dress' of the local girls worn over it.
She was not the one who investigated his whereabouts. But when it comes time for action in the field, they had no choice but to send her. A troop of lessor agents wouldn't be sufficent. They had to send their best. Contact is made with the nervous informant, eager for his money, even more eager to find another city to live in. "You shouldn't be so afraid," the girl had told him consolingly just an hour prior. "He will be dead; he will never know." Her words brought him no comfort, and he left in a rush, having revealed where she should seek the ninja out. A finger resting against her chapped lip, she watches him flee, fearing for his life, his soul.
She had narrowed in on Seishirou as he met. The only way to catch him was during the brief moments he held still, if not in the open, at least out from hiding. A creak of a neighboring metal roof, lightly stressed by the minimal weight of the featherweig
featherweight operative, warns quietly that he is not so alone afterall.
Ryouhara had long since surmised he was toying with technology way beyond what the normal syndicates could have imagined from the analysis he had made of the sample, even now preserved perfectly, sealed airtight within a ninkou he devised explicitly for the purpose. That was some ways away, though.. right now Seishirou puruses a different goal. He knew K9999 had backers in some high places, but it was somewhat custom for Seishirou to move as if hunted at every turn. That was his nature long before it became real.
In the end, the leak was probably one of his own contacts within the capital. A necessity to determine the locations of the allied forces and major supply lines. This network of contacts was the rudimentary information web he was setting up personally to support the operations necessitated in the region. Far from the center of operations, this was one of six contact points he was using, their use rotating regularly to evade local suspicions. It was a feat of investigations that he was even tracked this far. Abandoned though they may be, Ryouhara's holdings were always particularly difficult to locate. Some were not even historically his, directly speaking.. It is impressive. If he had known that much, he might have worked on his counterintelligence in the region. But. Seishirou also knew that if K9999 were an animal, he was only one of many waiting in the wilds.
When he determines the source of the leak, he will have to capture the leak and interrogate him thuroughly. Seishirou is not a murderer. He is an engineer. Murder just to prove a point is not something that can be condoned by his interest. That would be a simple solution reserved for only the simplest of problems. But.
There were worse things in the world than being killed.
The shinobi walks along for a time, only the chance flick of his fingertips visible from beneath the wide sleeves of his haori, the barely-seen gray sea mist pattern on the edge of the garment shifting only momentarily before he comes, eventually, to a stop. It is some time before it's even clear he knows someone is there. He doesn't look up. For someone at that skill level, it would be pointless. He doesn't wear the headband of the Leaf anymore, but the Ryouhara symbol on his back is clear as day, wearing the skill of the shinobi age clear on his wrist. He doesn't need to see to tell he is being watched.
"You're not Interpol," Seishirou observes openly in the still evening. He would have known Jiro was in town before he got off the plane. Interpol simply didn't /work/ like that. "And you're not the military." He still hasn't gotten a location. Someone of this level of ability would have been a rumor in the region. He should know. He is one. ".. You must have come quite a way." His smile is white and his fang is sharp as he looks up, cool brown eyes dipping into the air and the burgeoning night it promises.
"From this point forward, hiding is useless."
He is fortunate that he knows the wilds better than most.
One might think the words wasted on the young assassin. Violet eyes gaze at Seishirou's back. She's read everything NESTs has on him. A lot of the info consisted of meaningless details. Dates, places, names, contacts, the trail followed, the intelligence network necessary to find him. Some of it was more interesting. Video tapes of his rare appearances in public, the footage often difficult to make out at key moments, as if the recording itself was tampered with, either before or after the events in question. But no, she listens well, a bit smarter than even her handlers have come to realize yet.
Some assassins do their best work by getting into the heads of their opponents, breaking down their psyche to such a level that they practically become the target, able to know what their victim will do before the hapless prey does. But Kula doesn't work that way. She's detatched from her marks. They're names, faces, corpses, in that order. In this case, perhaps it's best that she need not think the way Seishirou does in order to do her job. The profiles on his personality matrix were inconclusive and nigh useless. No, that aspect of the mystery would need to be solved in person. Should it even matter before the end.
He reasons who she isn't. No government sent this one, no leak laden bureaucracy possibly could get someone this close to the young ninja before he knew of it. The heat, even with the setting sun, is unbearable when one hasn't attuned themselves to it. Or when one doesn't practically bleed liquid nitrogen. "From this point forward-"
The voice is young, female. The tone is calm, unafraid, driven by nerves of ice or maybe blinding levels of brainwashing. Perhaps both. "- there will be no where to hide, Seishirou Ryouhara." The metal creaks, slight pressure applied to it, and a figure drops to the street level, landing lightly before rising up to stand straight, a flutter of black fabric shifting with her movements. Her body is concealed, but for the top half of her face. The sound her feet make against the ground suggest boots. "You did a bad thing, or else I wouldn't be here." A lot of times she has no idea what fault or offense has resulted in her needing to end some unfortunate's life. This time she knows exactly what he did. A bad thing indeed.
A flash of yellow and then her shawl is removed, cast to the side dismissively, revealing the child for what she is. Long auburn locks of hair drape down over her shoulders and back, and the hand that removed the headwear is covered in a very distinctive, insulated yellow glove. Seishirou has seen its like before, though the color would have been deep red and kept uncontrolled fires at bay instead. Her other hand slips out from beneath her sleeve a moment later. Gloved, just like the first, it clasps at the black robe near the neck and draws it open, tossing it to the side as well. Now she can move freely, her speed uninhibited.
Her body is clad in black leather, different from the violet she wears when engaging in less grave business. Long sleeves, and pants, the material is no ordinary matter but rather an amazingly thin, flexible body armor that does little to restrict her movements. Seishirou was interested in technology, and now he's face to face with another specimen that shouldn't be, another lab-created life possessing impossible power.
A wind sweeps through the canyon of hovels, whipping at loose clothing, toying with the girl's long hair, and carrying off the discarded shawl with it. "I am going to recover the arm you amputated. Or I am going to kill you. Maybe both." That the limb is not near isn't known. Intel on its whereabouts was extremely sketchy. Kula doesn't know that one of the recent injections she received before embarking on this mission just so happens to have possessed nano-bot level tracking devices which have diffused throughout her blood. NESTs isn't interested in letting the Ryouhara get another sample limb or body with which to dissect their science. She was told it was to keep her from getting a
any icky illnesses while in the dirty city. She gets told lots of things.
"A bad thing..?" Ryouhara questions. For all of the stale heat in the air, his voice might as well had come from Kula's own mind, as chill as it was. That was her location. He turns slowly to face Kula. Eyes flick over the young girl's form as she lands, a glance here or there, making note of the black leathers she wears. For an engineer, it was trivial to determine that they were not natural. But even for Seishirou, it was significantly harder to tell how or why. There is an unnatural grace to the young one's movements. It is as his own. That sort of thing is incensing to the Ryouhara shinobi.
Though he cannot immediately place her nature, it is explained merely in her exultation of his crime. As someone who deals in information, he understands that this diamond has him at an explicit disadvantage. She knows him. The only way to offset such a thing is to watch her closely and gather intelligence from every move she makes, every word she speaks, every breath she takes. Still, similarities to someone else he has fought are obscure enough that they escape his notice. So far.
He lowers his head, until the shadows cast in the harsh fading lights encompass his eyes.
To the sound of his own voice, his lips move. "...The ideal of a man is a weapon. With it, he can forge his own future. The imagination of the masses become his to capture. But the ideal is nothing to the forge without the tools to aid it.." He opens a hand, his sleeve hanging around it loosely as he raises the arm. The glimpse of his own armor--padding on his hands secured by a half hand glove and white straps--can be seen. "I have full confidence that the dirty child Kay-Four-Nine will recover from the injury that I dealt him. In time. Does an assassin really presume to accuse me?" Again, that whip-thin fanged smile. It is a lazy, bitter thing. "I know you've seen worse."
"But if they've sent someone to kill me... I will classify you as another problem that I will solve." His wrist turns, and a gleaming thin blade hisses out of his open sleeve. This he plants in the ground tip-first, his fingertips sliding down its hilt for thoughtful moments before his hand draws away. "I've weapons which wrote history decades before your birth. I've weapons which will write history decades after your death. What makes you think you won't just be another part for my collection..?"
Though Kula will never see it, Seishirou blinks softly.
There is another element to the story. One which Kula may never become aware of.
"Saa. I suppose what we think doesn't matter, does it? The strength we attain today will determine the future of those we hand the world to. If you think you can kill me... come," Ryouhara invites openly. "Come and write my destiny. If you can."
If she is combat ready, it would be hard to tell, with the way she stands there, calm, unperturbed. The heat of the Afghanistan desert weighs heavily on her, threatening to sap her endurance a little if this drags on too long. But compared to the inferno that raged within K' when he stood over her but a week prior, clutching his near dead sister close to him, the sun above has a long ways to go to catch up before it becomes nearly as menacing. She moves with a certain calculated grace; her motions were determined ahead of time by engineered mathmatics and programmed into her behaviors before she ever saw the light of day outside of a NESTs facility. But that's when she's moving. Right now the wisp of a girl stands still, arms resting against her sides, violet eyes gazing back at the young man.
He's younger looking in person than she had expected. No mere boy, but no aged veteran either. Too young to be a leader, a wanted terrorist, a labeled criminal element in many nations. Then again, she's too young to be an assassin. Fourteen, fifteen years at the most, with a mind struggling to catch up, compensating for the childhood she never had.
"Before a man goes robbing tools, he should make sure he can survive the angry neighbor he has made." Kula responds, a trace of a grin working its way across her lips, amused at her own metaphor, not to mention glad she even understood what the enigmatic target was talking about. Of K9999, she is silent. A strange statement to make with such confidence - that he will recover from the 'injury' inflicted. Making a full recovery from a missing limb is not only unusual to suggest, it borders on madness to even consider. "It isn't my job to accuse." she responds. He will make no progress presenting a case to her. The judgement was rendered before she even came into the picture. Trying to turn it around on her is as likely to succeed as a death row convict pleading his situation to any guard that will pause.
The sword hits the ground, tip first, and she doesn't flinch, eyes straying over the weapon briefly before returning to him. He means to fight it - the inevitable. He pricked the leviathan and the monster demands his blood in vengeance. "If there was any doubt as to my success," Kula speaks, only to pause, breathing in then exhaling slowly. A shimmer passes over her, a flash of white in the dimming light of the narrow alley. Its passing leaves a change on the child. Her hair a frosted, sky blue, her eyes a hint of red when contrasted against it. The wind that blew past the two individuals but moments before seems to take a second pass, rushing out and way from the girl, the air itself disturbed by the suddden charge of energy that has been unsealed within the operative.
"...I wouldn't be here." She's too precious to lose on a gamble. The number crunchers were certain, the officers confident. She could handle this. And woe be to the grey haired mid-level NESTs executive who commissioned Kula for this mission should she be lost. He would probably not live to see her replacement born.
They were both too young. Far too young. But then again. Seishirou has learned the benefit of not judging by the cover. That was the way it was historically, wasn't it? If you never leave the nest, how do you ever learn to fly? The strongest creature on this earth may be little more than a child. Strength is not something decided by age, only circumstance, and the will to succeed. A skill. And it would seem that they both have all three in quantity. Candor draws the end of that smile as Kula's response plies from him a more serious mood.
"..heh. Not bad," he admits. It would be folly to suggest that Seishirou attempts to change Kula's mind. The condemned does not beg for mercy. It's at a higher level than that. Is it to confuse? Hardly. The syndicate which birthed K9999 would not be so foolish as to make it that easy for him. Ryouhara, a shinobi whom routinely deals in mind games and shadow. Instead, the words stated with such confidence were chosen exactly, to draw response from the assassin youth. The devil-may-care slant of his words were exacting. Does she really care in the end, about what he did?
Silence.. thought it reveals to him nothing.. can yet still be telling.
"Still." What part of what the shinobi says is even truth? "Of angry neighbors.." he mentions coolly, taking his hand off the blade to secure the ties at his hands, "... I've plenty of those ..." His eyes settle down the pathway to Kula, measuring the length of ground exactly. "... And I will welcome one more with open arms."
His hand graces the hilt of that cheap straightblade again. His own shoes, a complex affair of secured leggings and an open-toed style of boot, move soundlessly over the ground as he steps forward, approaching Kula when she tints herself with that delicate ice haze. Interesting. The utter void of sound is an odd thing to consider when the gravel beneath his feet shifts clearly. There is no crunch, there is no sound of the many baubles and charms that litter his person. "I hope that the people who do your thinking for you aren't wrong.."
The heat of K' is legend. But the chance ember that floats on the wind, just above and past Kula's head, is telling. K' isn't the only lost inferno. His half-hand gloves now secure, he draws the blade from the ground in his passing, beginning to move more quickly with each step as the thin length trails behind him in his wake. "... Because if you don't have an ideal to back up your word, you're in for a long night."
Ryouhara does not pause for even a single moment thereafter.
She holds her ground, a glacier molded from patience, watching, listening. It is as if she has no plan, no trap, no contingency prepared. But to assume such would be folly. The temperature in her immediate vicinity seems to have cooled some, taking with it the edge of that summer eve's haze. Seishirou begins to move, his blade retrieved, his armor readied. That she didn't just ambush him at first sight implies either foolhardy over confidence, or a style that simply does not lend itself to leaping down off roofs with a battle cry at her lips. Of course, had she simply unsealed that freezing aura of hers before meeting Seishirou, he would have easily sensed her from a great distance off. No. This approach suits her fine.
Of angry neighbors, "Then you have made your last." There is no doubt in her mind. This is not a battle to determine winner or loser - only a single outcome is possible. One will live, one will die.
She moves at last, the motion benign enough as she brings up her right hand, clenching it into a loose fist. He speaks of a new word. Ideal. That's a new one. She's been talked to about choice, about freedom, about atonomy. But about ideals? It must be like what the Ichimonji boy had to say. About fighting for 'something'. If Seishirou were not her target, were she not here to snuff out the life of another name on the endless lists of NESTs, she would ask him what he meant by ideal; what were his - what were good ideals and why?
"I have my power. It is enough." she replies at last, a halo of white energy emenating out from around her closed hand. Her tone calm, if not terribly convincing. She is not a gifted orator, nor can she persuade by mere words.
A strange, localized phenomenon is taking place around the girl. Crystals of ice drift in from no where, moisture literally frozen out of the blisteringly dry air from around her form. White, glimmering snow flakes that swirl about her, carried by currents centralized on the science project. Now and then a flake drifts too far, and like the wings of Icarus, melts away, falling to the filthy ground as a quickly evaporating droplet.
The ember that drifts past her head is caught up in the circular ebb and flow of air about the girl, drawn down and extinguished before it gets close to her hair. If there was any question as to the nature of that fount of energy within her, it should be dispelled by now.
When she moves at last, it is swift, the creak of her black leather garb easy to hear over the silent footfalls of the shinobi. The halo of white around her hand shrinks, becoming more concentrated, solidifying into a guantlet of transluenct ice, as strong as diamond. Its surface is jagged and out over her center knuckle is a spike.
She is upon him quickly, the time allotted to react painfully brief as that right hand punches forward with puncturing intent for his chest. The blood of the enemy must be spilt here, the first of many wounds to come must be inflicted.
COMBATSYS: Kula has started a fight here.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Seishirou has joined the fight here.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
COMBATSYS: Seishirou dodges Kula's Medium Punch.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
Oh really..
"Prove it."
And he is silent.
From the moment Seishirou enters battle, there are no more harsh words, no questions, no barbs, no hesitation. Ryouhara has learned--long ago--words are meaningless, that pursuing a mental game when the battle is 'real' only serves against you. A refuge for the ego of the banal masses, a way to diffuse pain, a way to distract from fear. Cocky and brash, arrogance--Ryouhara's fought many of those. But all it has taught him is the value of absolute silence. When he speaks about fighting with an ideal, he means it.
When he moves, it is with a unique clarity of purpose, taken years of being reviled and recriminated to forge.
He leaps up into the air, knees tucked, over the line of approach and out of range of the curious haze of Kula and her glittering ice fist. He leaps into the air at a bizarre angle, redirecting momentum as if to dance away. And when he leaps, his eyes draw quickly in the blur across her attack form, familiarity not dawning in his eyes for even a moment as he is reverse engineering, even in his mind, the physics of her technique. It has been some time since he's seen someone with the ability to use hyou. Normally, the ability requires some measure of mental discipline, beyond that which he is capable of, despite the rumors of some. They didn't send a halfass to do this. He would be flattered..
His passage through the air is just a whisper of fabric on the wind, his leg drawing high and to further direct his momentum in the air, allowing him to draw his hand over cheap steel. He touches that forged blade in the interim, imbuing it with his own essence. No, Ryouhara did not have the discipline necessary for ice chi, his sensei had once told him. For all of his chilling behavior and seclusion, there is something--somewhere--deep within the shinobi's heart that burns white hot, hotter even than the blade he uses now, trailing thick tongues of flame. Something deep inside him that still howls.
He dare not move into that ice haze until he has more time to measure it. For now, his own chi will be used to combat it. Seishirou completes the short spin in the air, wheeling his legs. The change is such that he comes /straight/ down, snapping that fire saber out. Something deep within him calls. When he moves, it is with every ounce of that desire.. His ability is such that the fireblade carves a geometrically perfect line in the air, following his heaven sent killer's path. With aerial momentum precisely engineered, it will engage Kula deep into her guard at her side, opposite her thrusting arm. The line drawn is accurate, aiming to lay the female open from left hand shoulder to left hand hip. Seishirou's arm will only stop until it is stopped. Either by Kula's interference or his own, halting the blade at a perfect level just an inch over the dirty ground. His landing will be quiet, his body will be low. Much like Kula, he has no need for battle cries, no kiai to focus what is already beyond that. He is still, silent.
His call is siren clear.
He needs no words.
Every stroke he will make is enough to exponud the strength of his ideal.
Kula means to kill him using her strength alone.
But he means to end her with the legacy entrusted to him.
He is eager to see what the outcome will be.
COMBATSYS: Kula blocks Seishirou's Calculated Tactics.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
Ask most people what they fear more - fire or ice - and the answers will be predictable. Fire burns, moves; flames consume, char, scorch. It refuses to be enslaved, only borrowed, capable of turning against its creators without warning, without cause. Used with purpose, it can be devestating, provoking a primal, instinctual fear in all who draw too close to the danger therein.
Ice? Ice just sits there. Waiting, melting, harmless. It doesn't leap out of rings of stone to conflagrate tent or brush. It doesn't spring to life from misplaced sparks only to roar over a mountainside. It lacks the essense of being a living entity necessary to provoke much fear in most. But what is easily forgotten is that ice... ice is patient, deliberate. Deathly cold, it can kill just as readily as fire. It's easy to forget that it too can burn, and that while its method of consuming anything in its path is less dramatic, it is no less fatal. It is silent, its effects slow to be realized until it is too late, the damage done. The frigid peaks of the world are littered with the bones of those who underestimated the lethality of that oft misunderstood element.
The sparkling glove of ice fails to meet its mark. A minor setback, an irrelevant inconvenience. She has yet to begin expending any real effort. She wanted to see him move. Not just step along the alley-thin street. But really move. As if his life, his legacy dependend upon it.
The assailant offered no name, as nigh laughably easy to predict as it might be. Whoever chose her moniker for life wasn't terribly creative. But it was better than being identified as a number, or worse yet, simple punctuation. Perhaps she will share it with him before he dies. She has no other pithy message prepared; her missive evidenced by every move she makes.
The flame tongued blade aims to slash into her side, the angle difficult to defend against due to her leaning into that early strike. But the challenge is met, the girl's left right hand tucking in quickly, palm opening toward her left, and in that swift gesture, the ice that formed for a brief moment that guantlet becomes something else entire. A barrier, manifesting mere centimeters ahead of the sword meant for her, absorbs the worst of the intended strike, consuming the momentum of the steel, steaming into obscurring mist against the flames.
The sword will come to a stop early, burried in that rectangular shield of frozen water, its sharp edge pressing into the sleeve of her left arm without even the strength to slash through the protective leather. Only then does she look to the side, retaliating without hesitation. The motion seems awkward at first, her left arm staying in place, bracing the sharp edge against it. It is her right hand that moves next, her body twisting to the left to give it added range.
Her yellow-gloved hand reaches literally /through/ the ice at her side. What proved a barrier to the Ryouhara's sword is naught but water before her touch. Fingers outstretched threaten to take hold of his neck with surprising force. And that shield of solid water that she reaches through - that sprouts a spike that threatens to lance directly into the shinobi as the deceptively innocent looking child seeks to hold him in place with that hold. To put an end to his nimble mobility, she need but hold him still for a moment...
COMBATSYS: Seishirou fails to counter Medium Throw from Kula with Ryuuouin EX.
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Kula 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Seishirou
He twists once.
He flexes twice.
His fires swirl. They lick against the crystalline surface, violent attentions harsh and vivid as the force of his spirit orbitting that blade rails against being tamed. In any fashion. Unfortunately, though his blade is sharp, it is no Senchakiri--it is held fast in the crystal surface, even if for but a moment. But a moment is all he'd need...
Quickly his eyes roll over the shimmering wall, following the fracture lines caused by his blade. He didn't manage to penetrate the leather protective layer. It proved to him nothing, but if he can follow the spectral geometry of the ice layer... chi worked in different ways than normal matter. He would have to find the right point for his jutsu...
Unfortunately, he is at a tactical disadvantage when the young girl's hand plunges through the layer and gets a grip on his neck. "Ghl--"
His hand raises... but an instant later, her chi lances into and through him. Unlike Kula, he had no leathers to shield him, his outfit composed of now bloodstained silks and drills. He had to rely on other methods. He lands, some ways away, holding a hand over his midsection, where the lance ripped into him. Blood flows freely, the chill knives of frostbite clinging to the edges of his wound and biting deeply.
Che.
A defensive type. But the bite of that chi is still a formidable offense. Too many more of those and he wouldn't be able to make as neat a landing. His limbs shifting as he sways to a slow stand, his finger twitches.
With the chi still swirling violently against it, his blade remains embedded in her crystal.
It was difficult to hold him, but she had him just long enough. Long enough to provide that sharp reminder that was deadly as fire is, it has never reached out and pierced flesh unaided. Nor does it create as solid a barrier as its frozen counterpart. The young assassin turns slowly toward Seishirou, that crystaline defense of hers sustained a moment longer until she finally releases it, allowing the shield to collapse into countless, quickly melting shards that rain down to the ground along with that captured blade. Her right foot sweeps, the intent to send the fallen sword skipping off to the side, out of the way.
She steps forward then, walking slowly, her insulated boots crunching against the cobble stones and dirt that pretend to form stable ground. Kula is seemingly as patient as the ice she wields; very deliberate at the moment. She has yet to lean heavily upon the incredible speed she is capable of, but that doesn't mean it isn't there, just waiting to be utilized.
It's her right hand that's lifted slowly, held to her mouth, palm up, fingers toward Seishirou. Another step forward as a breath is taken in. A shimmer passes over her, another surge of white energy coursing over her body, rising up from her feet up through her arms. And in that moment she exhales a swift, but controlled breath.
The air blasting toward the young man is far from harmless. It surges out over the distance, leaving swirling dust in its wake. It carries enough force to potentially knock a grown man off his feet. But it isn't in simple force that the real danger lies. But rather the field of crystaline shards carried by that burst, that sudden current. Sharp rings of ice and a wall of piercing needles, each one a diamond seeking to imbed itself in her target.
If caught within the deadly assault, he will find himself contending with freezing wind tearing at his flesh like sandpaper and razors. Even still, Kula lowers her now ice-crusted hand, small shards cracking loose and falling to the ground, continuing to approach the terrorist step by step.
COMBATSYS: Kula successfully hits Seishirou with Diamond Breath.
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Kula 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Seishirou
Ryouhara was slippery, but in the wake of Kula's advantage here, he is not at his best. They sent someone more than capable of taking him even at his strongest. As he draws to full height, the knuckles of his left are the only things visible from the drape of his haori as he reaches to his side, his right arm obscure beneath the white swell. He tucks back a fold of the overcoat to reveal the satchel at his side. A few tucked kunai there at his sash.
And the scabbard of another blade.
His satchel is unzipped as Ryouhara minor calculation ninjutsu are mentally rolled through in his skull, figuring Kula's exact displacement and weight using the ambient heat in the air. The heat in the air is a furnace and not entirely natural--Shinrou Kiritsu was Seishirou's tool here. But it would seem that Kula has the knife. When she purses her lips, Seishirou's eyes widen. That's the purpose of that ice haze. The strong gale is beyond that of sheer lungpower, the white haori blasting back in his wake, the wake of that blue/white blast, slicing his body with freezing wind and, he knew instinctively, ice crystals smaller than the eye could see. It wasn't as strong as pure air techniques, but the frost that settles over his body is more than enough to make up for it. "Hngh--"
POW!!
A bomb explodes in the air, creating a curtain of darkness and catching the tail ends of that gale and batting them away. It is .... a black cloth that whirls in the air now, cast by Ryouhara's hand from some sphere from that satchel held. The cloth is dealt through with white strokes, some the aftereffects of ice, but others... strokes of paint. A grid, shot through with arcane script. The thin cloth spins in Ryouhara's grip, now openly bleeding upon it. This he flciks into the air on the tail end of that gale, sending the thing to fill with the rising warm air generated by his Shinrou Kiritsu, being propelled from below by the cold air of her Diamond Breath.
"Not bad," he admits, a shiver canted in his voice, trails of blood weeping from every exposed bit of skin, despite his standing tall. The cloth, surprisingly unharmed by the knives of that gale, retreats, floating into the sky on those thermals as if a kite cut loose from its string.
The ninja knits his hands together as Kula's approach continues, rolling through gestures in an instant, too fast to see clearly. As she is slow and methodic, so is he, toiling hard with effort and work. He stokes the fire within him, calling upon it directly to create a 'field of ill effect.' Those embers, ash remnants of dust catching fire in the air, are no longer a chance occurance. They floating past, significant of the heat even the ice cold Kula might taste. A figment of Ryouhara's presence now. He focuses that energy inward towards him, breathing outward slowly. Though he may have been disarmed.. it means nothing to Seishirou. In an instant, another blade is drawn, shorter, but from his hip this time.
The blade in the distance... still smoulders.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou focuses on his next action.
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Kula 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Seishirou
Her searching eyes miss few if any details. Spotting the kunai, the blade behind the overcoat. He is far from disrarmed. An inconvenience. She doesn't like fighting for the sake of fighting. She cares nothing for the challenge, for the effort involved. If the targetted ninja will be easier to contend with by simply disarming him completely, then she will gladly attempt to do so. Anything to reduce her chances of getting cut, slashed, harmed. She barely understands the concept of honor in combat, Batsu being the first to even introduce her to the concept. Her NESTs handlers certainly didn't see why an engineered assassin should have need to know of honor.
Her pulse of ice laced wind catches Seishirou and in the next instant a flurry of activity gives her cause to pause, eyes flickering over the bomb for a moment before fixing back on him directly. She starts walking forward again, unswayed, undeterred as the black, replete with arcane script that defies her understanding, drifts up and back some distance. As she draws closer, she begins to sense the change coming over the environment around her. To feel heat above and beyond the scorching desert furnace fills her with a degree of concern. It combats her own field of everfrost, drawing small beads of perspiration on her brow as she raises her hand up to the level of her face, pushing on, forcing herself onward.
"The estimates concering your cunning were not exaggerated." she states, noticing that the radius at which the swirling crystals around her melt for having moved too far from her has shrunk some as she draws nearer, step by step. The amount of chi he is drawing into the air around the two of them is formidable. She's impressed. It's rare that she encounters this kind of resistance...
And then it comes, the blur of movement, the speed she had been holding back on brought to the forefront as those last few yards of distance Seishirou had procurred vanish in an instant as Kula is upon him again, meeting his preperation with a deceptive attack of her own. Her right hand, clenched tightly now, slams forward, aiming to crush into the wound she had made earlier with unrelenting force.
But the real danger is elsewhere, his opportunity to detect it in time brief should he fail to realize that there is nothing simple or straight forward about this attack in the slightest. Her left hand shifts, fingers gesturing at her side as she brings it forward, drawing into existence directly behind the shinobi a spire of ice, a rogue stalagmite, its sharp bit aimed for his back.
The next flick of her wrist brings it in, only a split second after the crushing right fist for his side, the length of it moving in a circular motion, aiming to paint his back with a harsh slash.
COMBATSYS: Kula successfully hits Seishirou with Behind Slash.
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Kula 0/-------/----===|=======\==-----\1 Seishirou
Ryouhara was juggling a lot of variables at once. His calculation ninjutsu, while useful for detecting and then keeping track of very large arrays of numbers in his mind, was probably some of the worst jutsu for maintaining in a combat situation. The intent was more for specific ninkou engineering, like Shiraha. The moments he takes to retain those jutsu is suffered by his defense, which he used a secondary medical ninjutsu to cover for. Four overall techniques were under Seishirou's control here--the fire blade which still smoulders, his internal calculations, Shinrou Kiritsu externally, and the internal effects of Shinrou Kiritsu, the font for that medical ninjutsu.
For most, trying to keep track even outside of combat would be impossible.
Unfortunately for Seishirou, against someone like Kula, it means trouble for him. Her lithe body crosses the distance quickly, and Seishirou's intervening blade can only block the fist that breaks for his weak point, his hand moving but being oddly far from the mark. It can be expected for a defensive opponent to be traiend to hammer the same place over and over again. Unfortunately, he was not aware he was facing also a trained prodigy, something he becomes aware of when he /hears/ the ice blade pierce him from behind. The pain only comes a moment later, something he struggles with at great cost, forcing his eyes wide and his body to freeze, both figuratively and literally.
Kula Diamond is someone beyond the norm, a prodigy of combat with effortless ability arguably beyond his own. That ability is not something Ryouhara can deny, and becomes aware of as the pristine blue crystal in his back becomes shot through with his blood, though the spire is rapidly losing ground in the heat of his internal chi flow. But.. she sweats.
"A shame," Ryouhara whispers bloodily, his sharp, critical eyes only inches from Diamond's. " I have no such estimates of your own," he admits. "If you had an ideal at all.. you would be suitable for my research group."
Someone who bleeds can be cut. Someone who perspires can be burned.
His free hand twitches. A razor-wire, finer than the eye can see, pulls taught. The fireblade, kicked to the side, is now under Seishirou's control, flying like a dagger behind Kula, aiming to pin her through the leg. In that same instant, Ryouhara strikes downward with his other blade, with the same aim, but reversed--trying to pin her through the other leg. Despite the situation, and what may happen next, Seishirou is already gone, his body flickering out of view like a television signal being adjusted. As if never there, he is standing some ways away, the only evidence of his presence being the damage he sustained. He is still nursing the frosted wound that now proves to be one of his most critical. His internal bleeding is massive. It will only get worse the longer Kula remains standing. He makes a handseal, triggering the flow of Shinrou Kiritsu.
His chi flows and ebbs like the river. On that current, the black flag he let fly has been dancing in the sky. Part of his distraction comes from the fact that he has been controlling its movements in the air by moving his chi, creating alternating expanses of cooler and warmer air. As the night comes, the contrast of the arcane texts on it are clear, for they are now glowing. Like a second moon rising, the cloth burns up there in the sky, leaving only the runes, translucent things floating on nothing. Ryouhara draws the chi he has already seeded the air with to that point, and adds more of his own. As a remote focus, the purpose of the circular pattern of the script becomes clear.
If it does not, the appearance of the center targetting reticule is crystal.
It happens too quickly. "Ninkou - Kazekatsu. Activate."
Whether Kula is successfully pinned at all is immaterial. Targetted exactly by Ryouhara's calculation ninjutsu, the bright red beam of hure /heat chi/ that radiates from the focus point in the air is centered on Kula's exact spatial coordinates at the exact moment of firing. The beam *cooks* the ground into glass. The radius heat in the region is sufficient enough to cause the actual detonation of the second blade, a bomb of intents all along.
The first blade is simply vaporized.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Kula with Level 5.
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Kula 0/-------/-======|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
With a closed fist she punches for his open wound. And with a flick of her left hand, she draws a secondary attack from a completely different angle to carve into the shinobi, aiming to distract his and disrupt his concentration, hoping to break down that field of heat so concentrated it distorts the world around them. She pulls back with her left hand, drawing that fierce ice wedge further into him even as it begins to melt and lose its form.
Their eyes lock briefly; his sharp, intense, capable of seeing so much; hers calm, patient, looking at him with the same curiosity a child might have for an insect she's bullying. He speaks of ideals again, and there is a flicker in her expression. An ideal. Is that something else normal people have? Is it the trait of an exceptional individual? Why doesn't she have one if they're such a big deal? She needs to draw back, refocus. She has pressured him, but to sustain it would be reckless.
His hand moves, but the significance thereof she realizes only too late as she takes a step backward. The shock of the first stab provokes a soft gasp, the breath escaping her mouth visible for a moment even in the living heat harrying her. The second stab is clean, pinning her other leg, her cry more audible. Blood, red as any human's, seeps from the wounds as the girl finds herself pinned like a moth beneath a magnifying glass. She reaches down, awkward in her movements now that her feet are immobilized, grasping for one blade in hopes of drawing it loose. But the ninja's thrust was sure, the weapon wedged firmly into the ground. She knows something is coming and there is that passing panic at being caught.
Innately sensitive to the gathering of chi, she knows it's coming without even looking up to gaze at runes that are meaningless to her eyes. What isn't meaningless is what comes next. The concentrated beam of heat blasting down toward her, Seishirou having taken on scorched earth tactics to rid himself of the young killer. He would see it, in an instant before the girl is potentially lost to that vaporizing assault. Both gloved hands raised, fingers splayed apart, a sheet of ice spread across the path of the descending blast.
Seconds later, the cobblestones and sand have become a radius of glass at ground zero. And just outside of that lies Kula, having landed on her side, her right leg gashed, the leather armor on it torn by the exploding blade. She is slow to move at first, hands shifting to apply pressure to the ground, her leather armor smoking in places. She rises, though, eyes opening slowly as she turns in a complete circle, seeking to verify the Ryouhara leader's precise position. Her movements are tender, her leg in pain.
And then she breaths, inhaling deeply. The remnants of ice in the ninja's wound melt away immediately, becoming mist. So too do the shards and crystals left scattered across the ground from the girl's previous attacks and defenses, losing their form, becoming fluid or vapor. And all of it finds itself drawn back toward the NESTs operative, to be inhaled with that slow, deep breath she takes.
The change that comes about is quite visible to anyone paying attention. The blood seeping from her stab wounds and scrapes solidifies, becoming frozen, stopping the bleeding short. The flury of crystals that had been absent since the beam of heat threatened to cook her alive begin to manifest once more, swirling about her form as the girl exhales just as slowly as she had inhaled. The injuries remain, but their serverity has diminished, her strength renewed.
Now the chase is rejoined, the battle goes on, the girl having new found cause to worry about what other insidious tactics the enemy may have at his disposal.
COMBATSYS: Kula gains composure.
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Kula 0/-------/---====|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
In a way, only one blade was lost without purpose. They were cheap things, and Seishirou was not known for the loving care of his weapons. Most were explosive in some way, a tactic he adopted after he noticed the foolish belief of others that somehow they could hope to use his own weapons better than he could. Literally, using his remote ninjutsu, most weapons could be detonated by him at whim. Since, he has seen an overall 40% decrease in the incidence of tactical idiocy amongst his opponents, and he was satisfied. The remaining percentage can simply be exploited by him.
In this instance, idiocy could not be exploited. However that does not mean his blade cannot be used in its secondary function when impaled in someone's leg.
The dawn of the second sun in the sky sees something of a renaissance hitch in the battle. The heat, used largely in that wrecking ball of a heatwave, is muted now, but so is the chill that fought it, drawn off by the young assassin. The warmth remains, but it is a standoffish thing. The balmy air is hardly inviting at all, the metallic industrial taste of steel and on the wind, the remnants of that blast. It is joined with the acrid scent of gunpowder, and the copperine taste of blood and charred flesh.
The few who witness the fight will be speaking about the scent itself for years thereafter.
In the silence that follows, the shinobi watches Kula, commenting no more than the subtle shift of his draping white haori. Wordless, he lifts that sleeve to his lips in a rough manner and coughs. It is a wet sound.
His eyes are cold.
Then, his body moves.
He'd make use of his other arm here, the other having served as the sheathe for a weapon ironically longer than the one at his hip. As he proceeds in motion towards Kula, she might believe herself to hear a muted /explosion/ underneath the nin's haori as he lands within her proximity. He whips out his left arm, and the sound of rattling steel fills the air. His hand halts the explosive unreeling of a small cannonball from his sleeve, by way of a short length of thin chain that tethers the thing to him.
Without eloquent postamble or truly any more tact than a train, if Kula doesn't stop him, he's going to introduce the girl's face to the scorched weight.
This close, his heat is still very much a vivid thing.
COMBATSYS: Kula interrupts Fierce Strike from Seishirou with Crow Bite.
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Kula 0/-------/=======|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
With the power to shape ice at whim, to conjure spikes of it in mid-air and send them on a piercing path toward her opponents, Kula has no interest in the weapons of her opponents except to disarm them, leave them helpless, make her job easier. But now she's learned a painful lesson. Even discarded blades can continue to be tools in the hands of this mysterious young man. The sharp pain in her legs, the seared hole in the back of her jacket serve as ongoing reminders.
Her aura of bitter cold is more concentrated now, the girl bringing it all back in, drawing heavily from the world around her. He would sense it, like a point blank shot to the face, that surge of power within her. But it would be too late to do anything about it, committed to imbedding that painful weight into her skull as he is.
As he leaps, she just stands there, eyes flickering over his form at the sound of the explosion, attempting to identify the imminent before it becomes too late. When she moves, however, it is as if a whole different creature, the speed, precision, and deadliness that comes next out of place in a girl so young. Both of her hands flare to life with spherical auras of frigid cold energy. Her left hand she waves in front of her, forming yet another barrier, intersecting the path of the cannon ball directed at her face. The weight, the power behind it is enough to smash through, but the momentum has been stolen and her face is no longer in the path. By the time the crystaline shards go flying, destroyed by the crushing weapon, she has already turned her left shoulder to meet it.
The aura on her right hand is not for defense, however, congealing, solidifying into a full arm lengthed guantlet of ice. Covered with jagged spikes, long, needle-sharp shards, and razor-like edges, it is with that translucent, steel-like weapon that she lays into him next. Her entire body unsprings with punishing force, her left shoulder rolling out of the impact from the weight, her right shoulder turning forward as she goes low and uncoils into an uppercut of devestating force.
Momentum and power is enough to carry the two into the air as Kula gracefully spirals out of the rising strike. Glass-like fragments, broken free by the forceful impact, rain down along the street in the wake of the attack. At the apex of the ascent the assassin is still close to him, having sustained her trajectory with instinctual precision, the very antithesis to his constantly active calculations. She fights with what comes naturally for her, unaware of the billions of lines of instructions encoded into her mind before she could speak her first word.
"Why is it called Crow Bite?" she had asked her handlers, curious as to why the punishing technique was given such a strange name.
"Crow is a Celtic omen of death and conflict, both of which you inflict upon the world." came the gloomy, ominous answer.
"But crows can't bite. They don't have any teeth." the child pointed out.
But here and now, her attack has teeth, the sharp edges lacerating and piercing, leaving countless keen edged shards in any wounds opened in the process. And at the height of their ascent, her body spins, sending more fragments spiraling away from her. Captured in a still frame, it would almost be beautiful, if one wasn't aware of the death the frozen image promised.
Her right leg strikes out, pressing into Seishirou with the force necessary to drive him against a sheet metal wall of the shacks, the bottom of her insulated shoe laden with icy spikes as she continues to fight with lethal intent the likes of which no one has seen in her occasional sanctioned appearances. Only then does she push off, allowing him to drop, dropping back from him, landing hard, a soft exhale of frozen breath, her ice-encased right hand slamming against the previously glassed over surface of the street.
At last she speaks, crimson tinted eyes fixed on Seishirou, the young man she is quite convinced will be dying soon. "Are you not a leader? Where are your people? What of your ideals? Are they not enough to draw others or are you really all alone? Will they even know what happened to you? That you pricked the side of a monster, and in doing so, sealed your destiny with blood?" She clenches her right hand and the sheath of blood tinged ice over her arm fractures, dropping to the ground, beginning to rapidly melt in the desert heat augmented by the shinobi's own presence.
Pain is oft a merciless thing.
Much like the Ryouhara clan itself, he relied on tactical ability. When all weaponry is lain to the side, when all defense is circumvented.. he is a soft, pliant thing against Kula's blades of ice. One would find it not hard to imagine Seishirou a worthless conject, a beetle in the face of NESTS. Hard to crush, but once his shell gives.. is there truly anything else? Faced with the prospect of real death, can Ryouhara's ideal even be of worth?
He recognizes her response much too late. It is an unnervingly beautiful thing, for such a young girl. Her lithe form impacts into his Dead Iron Sledge but the momentum is off, and deflected off her shoulder, his force diffused as a punishment for his direct attack, the only tactically appropriate response against her. The margin is small, something he notices clearly when her fang lays into him. The long thing impales him fully, rupturing and tearing open obscure numbers of his internal organs and then freezing them solid. She campaigns for his howl and his blood, and she gets a bargain for both, a lonely thing that splits the air as Seishirou is run through on the crow at multiple vectors.
Her momentum transfers to him cleanly, this much he is aware of, spikes embedding themselves in his chest. At that point, his body slams into--and goes through--the weak sheet metal shack, his body sliding against the sidewall before roughly impacting a supporting timber by proxy. From the sound and the pain, he briefly is convinced his spine snaps in that instant. In the next, instinctively he wonders how he can fix it. And the three instants thereafter, the entire two levelled shack comes down on the ninja. Shit--
He only survives by structural ingenuity alone.
It is some moments later the timber shifts against the makeshift pocket, and a line cuts itself across a panel, the poor rusted metal weeping red tears as it shears in half to reveal the ninja. He stands slowly, in a nest of rotted tin, vinyl, mortared in his own blood.
His body is numb...
But his eyes seem to carry that light to the end.
Despite the gelid blood that blooms in his haori in a new garden of flowerlike patterns, the shinobi seems more annoyed than anything else, as if going over some notion or another that's occurred to him. "You shouldn't concern yourself with pointless things like that," finally comes the response, labored with the bloodied haze of death. "Those that follow me are working for the ideal that I share with them..." he calls out across the hazy expanse. "For your performance, I'll share the meaning of that with you as well."
"As long as they work to fulfill the dream that I have, my life is immaterial. That is the meaning of an ideal." For perhaps the first time since they began the fight, that whip thin fanged smile agrees with Kula, no matter how his flashing whites are stained with red. "A bloody destiny does not concern me. That was my destiny before your group. And it will be my destiny after your group."
"...You'll understand one day, artificial life that you are."
Do you imagine the ninja engineer cannot tell? Someone whom has taken the cells of the cartel's creations and examined them for weeks at a time? It has been something he's been watching for closely from Kula, and it is no mistake that her calculative ability can exceed his own. Whether instinctive or methodical, Ryouhara's calculation and Diamond's are one in the same. Yet once and again, strength overpowers intelligence. The taste.. is a bitter one.
But it no longer concerns Ryouhara. He looks up and around. The tang of steel is still in the air. But the metallic taste is now more attributed to his blood than anything else. This is ideal. The vaporized remnants of his chi-imbued blade and his blood can intermix here to create the necessary medium. He looks back to Kula. He only needs enough chi to sear off her chi, to move without being tracked. Things will proceed exactly as Seishirou has planned. "In the end.."
He lifts a hand, his sleeve fluttering with the snap of the movement.
"Your mistake.. is thinking that I _need_ subordinates."
The margin between their abilities is small.
But whichever way, that small distance is a chasm.
He snaps his fingers.
The pain is merciless. But as long as he can still move chi, the pain, the numbness and damage to his body is relatively insignificant in scope. It is an old techique of Seishirou's, refined to an almost insane extent, reverse engineered, forked into different techniques and improved until it was literally a godlike thing. The ability has been something that has come naturally for him since first leaving the academy. Since then, he's had much time to improve on the technique. In that instant, he uses the dregs of his chi left in the air and what is left of his own body's reserves and blood to create a 'pulse' in the air. For every piece of debris on the grounds, images--shadows of his own body, damaged as it is, flicker in the air. They are copies. Nigh instantly, Seishirou's chi disseminates among the duplicates as a necessity of their creation, dropping his own to near mundane levels.
Immediately after he snaps his fingers, Kula is swarmed by Ryouhara Copies. Some are intangible, some are not. All are limping and bleeding. Most cannot stand up to a stiff blow or two before dissipating. None have any real combat ability, and most will not survive the next minute or so. But they mill about in the crowded shantytown alleyway around a single young girl.
They all have the same, piercing eyes.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Kula with Kawarimi'.
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Kula 0/-------/-======|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
They would always remember it. The night it snowed in July. In Kabul, Afghanistan.
Slowly Kula rises from her crouch, having shed the dreadful guantlet of ice, stretching her fingers slowly. Of frightening note is how strong she still is. That deep reservoir of chi she wields may seem nigh endless. Still the crystals swirl about her, their pace quickened, as if reflecting the temperment of their agitated master. He hurt her bad enough to force her to pause. That wasn't supposed to happen. But now it's over. She can tell. She's stood over the dying bodies of plenty of foes in the past. She was sent out to kill before she had even seen her first birthday. She knows what it is like to force a man's body to the brink of the abyss, then simply stand back and let it fall into that depthless chasm of oblivion. Seishirou may need a little nudging to take that plunge, but he was close. Of that she was certain.
He cuts his way out of the ruin of the shack, the sheet metal falling to the street with a loud rattle. It is in that moment, when she sees his eyes, that she realizes that she's mistaken. Those eyes are very much alive. He speaks of those who follow, that share the ideal he bears, and she is quiet. If she wanted to hear what he had to say, this seems to be her chance, and she is in no hurry as she stands there patiently. What's the rush? Neither of them are going anywhere. Let him speak. She wants to know what he means by ideals. What makes them so special?
He pegs her as artificial and Kula blinks, her expression shifting in subtle ways, as if realizing that she's eaten something unpleasant. He knows. That secret that used to never bother her until she had started to explore the world at large. At first she thought her circumstances weren't too unusual. But time and time again, she found people with real relatives, real histories, and it has begun to gnaw on her, prompting her to try harder to present herself as real as anyone else. She can make choices, grasp freedom, have friends, learn things on her own... just like anyone else. That's what she wants. That he knows otherwise troubles her.
"Mistake?" And then where there was one, many spring into existence. Shadows, moving, driven by chi, dilluting and blending Seishirou's essence, his presence becoming untraceable amongst the many. She has never seen such a feat before. At first the girl can't help but think he's conjured up monsters somehow. That he's drawn upon dark arts to unleash an army of spirits upon her. Those red tinted eyes blink as Kula takes a step back, her right arm coming up defensively, mouth open in surprise.
A new surge of enegy swells up around her, a pillar of white, focused chi rising to enshroud her form. And then they are opon her. Powerful in numbers if not in individual potential, the girl is forced to defend herself. Swinging, slashing, unleashing wintery blasts of ice laced chi. The temperature around her drops, becoming colder than the Devil's heart, icy pitchforks raining from the sky as if the Heavens themselves were being brought down against the army of shadows surrounding the young girl.
And then she lets it all go, a final gigantic surge of bright white energy, seeding the night sky overhead. And for the next five minutes, snow fell like ash from post-apocalyptic skies.
Seishirou eluded the young assassin. But he should well know... this storm is anything but over.
Log created on 01:51:59 06/29/2008 by Kula, and last modified on 13:42:37 07/04/2008.