Description: A little under six months ago, Ayame's life took a drastic shift for the worse. Or so it would seem at first. Exhibiting odd behavior, appearing slower than usual to figure out what others were talking about, and maybe even acting less aggressive... there is a reason for this. And so the story begins.
Ask Ayame what her dreams in life are and she'd answer in a heartbeat that she is, without a doubt, going to be rich and famous. Nearly every action she has taken, every choice made has been with that in mind, even if at a glance it would be hard to tell. Looking out for herself above all else, trying to cheat, connive, steal her way into prosperity by any means necessary, she has managed to burn nearly every bridge, spurn nearly every legitimate opportunity to get anywhere in life, and to this day remains living in the same horrible dive she has for the last couple of years.
The apartment building is in one of the roughtest of rough neighborhoods. Too far away from Gedo High itself to benefit from the Diago-inspired vigilantism of the students there, the dilapidated building looks like it was built decrepit the day it was 'new'. Grey brick walls, covered with mildew and moss, conceal behind them dank hallways with only a fraction of the light bulbs functional.
The windows that lead into the rooms are so encrusted with grime that barely any light even manages pry its way into the hovels that are supposed to pass as 'studio apartments'. Trash and debris litter not just the outside of the building, but the inside as well, with wrappers, soda cans, and beer bottles strewn throughout the hallways lit by the few flickering bulbs that still function. The building looks like it merits a big yellow sign pasted to the door declaring it condemned pending demolition, but for some reason no one has ever come to tear it down.
Frei had reminded Ayame of the old saying: 'Wherever you go, there you are.' It was supposed to be something about acceptance, perhaps, about making due with what you got and being happy with it. About belonging no where and anywhere at once. She wasn't sure. And she wasn't inclined to apply pithy maxims to the hellhole she called home. Not that she minded it much anymore. A couple years of getting by here has made her somewhat used to the dingy structure.
But it didn't matter. She wasn't going to be living there for much longer, she told herself as she walked up the steps to the front door of the building, kicking aside newspapers and empty food containers as she went. She had finally done it. The act that was going to make her wealthy. At last her dreams were going to come true. She would have more money than she had ever seen in one place in all her life. It had taken the last few months to pull it off - stealing from her previous employer, the Capital Seven Casino as the public front went. Blackjack as the name behind the scenes.
Her tenure amongst the mercenary faction came to an end the day she helped a bunch of High School aged kids through the underground labyrinth to destroy her boss and rescue their friends. With the casino closed pending investigations, she had hung around for a while. Lifted a lot of valuables from the building over the course of a few days, but her eyes were on a bigger fish. Blackjack's bank accounts. With Elle having vanished without a peep and Marise probably dead for all she knew, it was just a matter of time. She was there when the security for the casino was designed. Few knew it better than the technically inclined girl... It took some time to hack the systems, forge the right signitures, and impersonate an executive or two. But she had at last done it. She had successfully stolen multiple millions of dollars from the recently unfrozen accounts of the Capital Seven.
As she walks down the hall toward her room, her brown eyes focus on the paper in her hand. Enscribed on its surface is the very Swiss bank account she had moved the money to. Only she had access, only she knew what it was. "Hn..." the girl mused, standing outside the door to her hovel of a studio apartment. With her other hand, she unlocks the door before her foot comes up to kick it open, having grown used to the way it always sticks. Not as if the noise was going to disturb anyone. Half the time she suspected her neighbors were actually dead or dying, what with the way she rarely heard any movement at all within the building.
The door opens into a small room barely large enough to house the bed against one wall and a small desk, a very modified laptop sitting atop it. Breathing in deeply, the girl ignores the scent of decay and aging that wafts throughout the room. Her right hand descends, sliding the paper in her hand into a shreader kept right next to her desk. The motor whirs up and begins to consume the sheet, convering it to so much confetti. The banker had told her keep the account number safe. If she lost it, there would be no way to retrieve it. As far as she was concerned, it /was/ safe. She had a photographic memory. She would be able to recite those numbers for the rest of her life without even needing to give it much thought. A life filled with riches and fame. Well. Riches at least. One out of two wasn't so bad. Ready to flop backward onto her bed and bask in her brilliance, she pauses upon realizing she's left the door open. Close the door. Then bask.
If you were to ask Saint the same question, he too would answer in a heartbeat, though his answer would be very different. Whereas Ayame wanted riches and fame, Saint desired to find love, true love, within the world. Many would hear this and feel, perhaps, a wash of emotion, like when someone truly and honestly answers their greatest wish is for world peace. The emotion it hard to define, a sort of uplifting, humbling emotion that makes one contemplate re-evaluating their lives and their priorities. They would think Saint an honest man, a romantic, and likely feel that the priest was truly good.
And then Saint would begin talking about his definition of love. Perhaps the person would simply feel a bit of disappointment to hear Saint equates showing one you love them by inflicting pain on them. The person would likely label him a sadist or a masochist or both. But then Saint would go on. That people of this world do not know what love truly is. They fear pain and they fear death, so they distance themselves from it by turning to the opposite spectrum: to pleasure and its infliction on others, both physical and emotional. Do they not see, Saint would say, that God's example is the one to follow? Why did He inflict pain on Job, but for love? Why did He let His own son have pain inflicted on him, but to teach about the truth of love?
Slowly, they would understand. Slowly, it would dawn on them that Saint was insane. A mad, confused individual.
But worst of all, they would feel a sinking horror when he told them that he, at this very moment, was in love.
Several Saturdays ago, he had been tasked by the Saturday Night Fight officials to fight a young girl in a cathedral. There, he had found someone who might understand. Who inflicted pain on herself - largely emotional, true - but one who might understand. The seed was there, Saint merely had to tend to it, like a loving gardener, to awaken the girl to the truth. Even if she did not love him in return, this would be fine, if regretable; his goal was simply to make her -understand-.
It had taken him some time to find her again. He'd watched every single Saturday Night Fight she'd participated in, every single televised match she participated in, and even had, eventually, tracked down where she lived. Normally, one doesn't need to go to these lengths to court a girl, but Saint held no malice for hiding from him. They were all scared at first, after all. And indeed, as the priest in his clean clothes and his 'rich' bearing steps into the dirty, grimey, dilapidated home, he can partially already see why. If the girl did not understand... why live in such a place as this?
Slowly, he climbs the stairs. Slowly, he looks over the apartment, taking in every single detail he can. The saying 'One is judged by the company they keep.' can also be applied to one's home, and even how one presents themselves. Each flight of stairs only renewed his confidence. Each step built up his resolve.
Yes, Ayame was the girl for him, the girl who would understand.
And, just as the strawberry-blonde girl gets up to close it, does the priest's shadow darken her doorway.
A hand moves forward, just inside the door. It holds something, perhaps something she'd least expect: a very expensive, very pretty looking boquet of red roses. Wrapped in white, it is held by the black-gloved hand that leads up to the black-clothed arm, jutting from the dark shadow beyond the girl's door. "Hello, Ayame," a quiet Romanian-accented voice calls from the shadow beyond the roses. "I did not know what your favorite flower was, but I hope at least they're you color. Think of them as an apology for leaving so abruptly the other night... I believe I was just in the midst of something important, yes?"
"I wonder," Ayame muses, as she stretches her arms lazily out to her sides. "If it's stealing or embezzling... I never was technically fired." She taps her chin thoughtfully, deciding that she likes the ring of 'embezzlement' a lot more. And besides, she gets to steal all the time. Embezzling is a far more rare opportunity. "Embezzlement." she decides, hand reaching out toward her door, fingers gripping the edge of it as she gets ready to slam it shut with the force necessary to get it past its sticking point.
Her abode is humble, to say the least. Beyond the bed and small desk is a tiny nook of a kitchen and another door that is probably the batheroom. The place is tidy, if one doesn't mind the various weapons mounted to the wall at differing angles. A morning star, a large sword, a katana... Light is limited. A lamp in the corner isn't turned on, and her window is no better than most of the other ones, allowing only minimal sunlight in from outside.
But the door never gets closed, the girl freezing as a hand juts into view, uninvited and most definitely unexpected. It is her sharp memory that identifies that glove in an instant, soft, brown eyes tracing over it, her mind snapping to conclusions and firing off warning bells immediately. Her gaze follows the black sleeve covered arm into the shadows of the barely lit hallway outside.
Her mind is quick to identify, but her reaction comes a low slower, too caught off guard to react with the speedy reflexes she's notorious for. Should she panic? Maybe he just wants to deliver flowers and be on his way? Should she talk her way out of this? What does him knowing where she lives imply, though? It's not like she's in the phone book or anything. He had to have stalked her to find this place. That in and of itself sounds of alarms in the back of her consciousness.
She decides to play it smooth. "Yes, yes, thanks, they're lovely." Her left hand reaches for the bouquet, her right hand moving to apply pressure to the door once again. Not that she thinks simply shutting him out in the hall is the end all to this predictament, but it might buy her a few critical moments to collect her wits and figure out how to roll with this distressing development.
"You really shouldn't have!" she states, feigning like she's maybe a bit flattered in the very act of trying to slam the door shut, hoping to force his arm back out in the process.
The flowers are taken, and thankfully Saint doesn't do anything weird like grab her hand since it's so close to him. He simply passes off the flowers, as though he really had meant nothing more than just to deliver some flowers, perhaps in a sincere way of apology, drawing his hand back through the open doorway. After all, with the two fights he's participated in in SNF, they've purposely billed him as creepy. The entire fight in Alaska - a lovely thing, that was - was premised off his pechant for being a little creepy, a little unsettling. So perhaps he just had taken some extra time to track her down through whatever means he might have, just to apologize to her. When you put it that way, it's almost sweet, like he truly felt he might've gone a little far.
That is until his cane is pressed in between the door and the frame, keeping it from closing that last inch.
"My, my, I bring you flowers and I'm already being shoved out the door? May I not come in for a bit? I have much to discuss with you, after all," he says. There's a slight pause, as if he were considering something, and then there's an 'ah' noise from him. "Oh... oh, of course! Yes, yes, I understand now! You, the girl who lives her life by rejecting and hurting others, merely so that you can be sure they won't reject or hurt you first... you've never been confessed to before, have you? You do not know how to deal with someone who is neither hurt or rejected by you... but indeed, accepts you fully, as you are. How difficult it must be for you... to be so shy of this first encounter."
He pauses again, tilting his head to the side as he ponders more on what to do. He'd not thought on this, but it makes perfect sense, really. He'd already guessed at that particular aspect of Ayame's personality when they'd fought earlier, but now, seeing the place she lived, it made even more sense. She lived in these surroundings because if they were ugly, unattractive, cold and unforgiving, she would feel no attachment to them. Like people, this room was to be used, and then discarded when it no longer served its purpose... right? A note of true sadness enters his voice as he says, "My poor child." But he doesn't remove his cane from the door.
The door comes to a jarring stop. One that isn't simply it reaching its sticky point. No, there's definitely something in the way. It isn't too hard for Ayame to divine just what that something is either. The sound of wood colliding against the small cane pressed in its path at the last moment. Ayame's hand rests against the door, glancing down to look at the obstruction that has kept her from sealing the room from this undesired visitor for at least a moment.
He asks to be able to come in for a bit and her brow furrows. He really does sound genuinely nice enough. If she didn't know... if she hadn't /experienced/ what he is truly like, that harrowing glimpse into the mind of a disturbed individual, she might almost be fooled into thinking that a simple chat was all he came for. "Aaah, you've got me at a bad time," she speaks up, turning around to lean her back against the door for a moment, shoving the sole of her Doc Martin's shoe against the door to try and make it hard to push open.
But as he continues to surmise the reasons for her reluctance, the girl grimaces from the other side of the cheap wooden barrier. He is right on some things. His psychoanalysis, skewed as it may be by his own psychosis, is close enough in some ways that it pricks at her mind a little. She never has been confessed to by someone she didn't manipulate into the act. Sure she's used her allure, her natural cute appearance to exploit others, and at times, those schemes did result in a confession here or there. But that was different. She wanted things to go that way because she was trying to get something out of them.
This? This she doesn't want. She already figured out Saint's definition of love in their last lovely time spent together. And the prospect of him confessing to want to share that love with her is troubling, to say the least. He says he accepts her fully, that he understands her confidence issues, and Ayame's eyes widen a little as she glances around the room, trying to figure out how to solve this predictament.
"I'm not some poor child," Ayame snaps back through the door. "I don't want anything you're offering!" He'll feel the weight move away from the door, the girl getting nervous about leaving her back pressed against it, not having forgotten that his cane is far from benign in and of itself. A bit like him, really... harmless at first glance, though concealing hidden danger.
The roses are dropped on the desk as Ayame steps up onto her bed and lefts the katana from the wall shelf. Whirling around to face the doro, she's prepared to face this threatening brand of love, bracing herself like some kind of samurai ready to face a charging mounted soldier. Or just a really frightening clergyman. "Don't come in!" she warns, fingers tightening on the pommel of the finely crafted Japanese sword. "You'll regret it!"
The door isn't opened immediately upon feeling the weight from Ayame moving off it. Instead, like most doors with a stick, being set wrong in its frame, it begins to drift open all by itself, without any help from Saint. The cane drops down and settles onto the floor instead, able to be seen as the door swings wider, slowly revealing more and more of the priest. He wasn't wearing his coat today, the summer months being a little too heavy for it. Instead he merely wears his normal outfit: the black shirt with the white square at the collar, black dress slacks, gloves, dress shoes and even his derby. The only 'addition' that Ayame might notice is the fact that he already has his sword out, held now in his left hand. From the way he doesn't move at all as the door swings open, he very likely must've already had it out... and was planning on stabbing the girl through the door. Such a flatterer, he.
And now that the door is all the way open, he takes a step inside, his cane and sword held in either hand. His eyes glance about the dirty, dingy abode, and he makes a soft tsking noise, though not the reproachful tsk of a parent scolding their child for a messy room, but rather the pitying tsk of one who sees how bad things are and truly wishes they were better. "Amidst the dank and the dark you live. No friends, no family, no loved ones at all. You cannot know how much this hurts me, my dear child," he says. And then his eyes land on Ayame herself, holding up the katana. Undoubtedly it was real, not some cheap Chinatown knockoff. And it is because of that that he smiles, wide and honest. "Regret it? Ayame..."
Saint brings his sword up, his body shifting to that of a pale imitation of a fencer's. Though he lacks a formal style, the girl would already know that he isn't someone to be underestimated. Silver blade held out, level with the ground, pointing at the girl, he turns his body to be in line with his arm, the cane held loosely in the other hand, his feet spread. Then... then his eyes open, the reddish tinge to the irises giving them a sinister glow in the ill lighting of the room. His smile still remains, ever the same, but now that his eyes can be seen, it somehow is less friendly, less inviting, and more cruel.
"I love it, as I do you."
Slowly the door opens, with a slow, protesting creak of hinges gone neglected forever. It's not that Ayame wasn't more than capable of keeping up the place in that fashion, it's just that she didn't really make it a priority. Why fix a door when she can be busy hacking a corporate financing website or infiltrate an executive mailing list and get some juicy blackmail bait... Right now she's wishing she had replaced that old wooden, likely somewhat rotted board with a solid steel bunker hatch. Having a few inches of steel between her and Saint would be really comforting right about now!
Eyes fix on him as the door makes way for the clergyman, Ayame's hands tightening on her sword. She's not really a swordsmaster herself, but she's not half bad either. And the added range strikes her as a good idea compared to her shorter ranged knives. Saint. Is to be avoided. At all costs. Calmly, he walks into what had always been a small haven from the chaotic, dangerous world, violating her sanctuary with his presence, his pitying analysis of the place she calls home.
The girl's mouth tightens, watching him carefully from the perch that is her old mattress, turning just a little to keep the curved, sharp blade between her and Saint. No cheap knock off, this blade, it would have cost a lot of money if she obtained it legitimately. Of course she didn't. Somewhere out there, some sword collector is going to be crying if she goes and gets this thing dinged up.
"How can you say you love me? You don't even know anything about me, let alone what the hell love is! I heard about what you think love is last time. And while I'll admit to not being a fantastic counseler on the nature of true affection, I do know enough to say that pain and love have nothing to do with each other!" She raises her voice loud, hoping, perhaps, to bring attention to her room. A distraction at the door, perhaps, would be all she should need to slip away. The hallway remains perfectly still.
The strawberry blonde takes a step forward, the mattress creaking as it shifts to her weight, bringing the tip of the katana nearer to Saint's outstretched cane blade. "What makes you the expert, anyway? How would you know? Who gave you the right to define it?!" She lunges then, just enough to bring her sword within measured proximity to Saint's, swinging it sideways in an attempt to swipe his blade to the side, testing his defenses a little, perhaps, or just probing to see how he'll react. He's so calm, so composed, so... in love. Maybe there's a way to work that to her advantage.
"Must I know you in intimate detail to love you? There are things such as 'love at first sight' you know. Some find it in pure physical attractiveness. Others, emotional - the person of their affections is interesting, smart, funny, a pleasure to be with; you are being defensive because you are worried if you allow yourself to be loved, that love may disappear some day." Saint keeps his blade trained on Ayame as he makes his rebuttal to her argument, still keeping that oddly cold, oddly sinister gaze upon her. It was as though he had no concept his eyes were showing a completely different emotion from what the rest of him was. He might feel happy and jubilant, as though overtaken by love, and indeed his smile and posture all but shout that to the world... but for his eyes.
This emotion faulters momentarily as he's asked that question, however. How would he be the expert on love? He looks surprised at this question, maybe even stunned. It allows her to hit his sword, so distracted is he, and would even provide her with an opening to attack if he weren't also stepping back at that time, as if in denial of something. The calm and composure fades for a bit, and the blade lowers. "...You know, you are right, Ayame," he says, his voice quiet. "What -do- I know?" His blade lowers, and so does his cane.
And that's when he begins to remove his gloves.
This time there's no phone call to stop him. He pulls both black leather gloves off, slowly and gingerly, but eventually, they do come off... to reveal horror. The entirety of both hands have no 'real' skin. They are puffy and pink, as though they had been burned, dozens of times over, so that the dermis simply had no chance of coming back, leaving only scar tissue behind on the entirety of either hand. He has no finger nails, either, long since pulled off and the surrounding areas burnt to nothing. Each finger is shaped awkwardly, almost like claws, as if they'd been broken so many times they no longer could possibly regain their former state. And on his palms, both of them, are the definitive shapes of crucifixes burned into what can loosely be called 'flesh' by this point. It's a wonder he can even move them - he likely feels pain every time he does.
Saint is quiet for a bit as his hands are very likely stared at. He then speaks quietly, adding, "There is more like it across my entire body." Probably thankfully, he doesn't go into detail, or seem to want to show those marks off, either. Instead he takes ahold of his sword and cane again, lifting the blade up in front of himself, as if looking at him in the mirror surface of the sword. "Until now... the pain inflicted upon me has been by people who did not love me. Perhaps they were showing me love in their own way... but that is not true love. Love between friends, love between family... it is always less than the love we feel for that one, special person we hope to find in our lives." His eyes flick back up to Ayame, and he smiles, the cruel and vicious look somewhat fading from his eyes, at the corners. "But you know it, do you not? Come then. I will show you the sum total of the love I have been shown to date... and we shall begin a new chapter in the sharing of pain."
She actually stays in place as he speaks. When they last fought, she was trying to make sense of him like she would any other person, dismissing him at first as simply an odd religious fellow with some skewed views on life. It was only later that she began to understand the disturbed nature of the man called Saint. Now she's scrutinizing him for other reasons. His interests in her have taken a very personal turn and as such, understanding him even further has become a somewhat high priority item on her agenda. She had walked out of that cathedral never expecting to see him again. It seems she was wrong. She can't afford to be wrong twice with the man who bears the devil's eyes.
Her challenge to his qualifications seems to have provoked him a little, she realizes. But not in a way that seems to improve her lot any. The metal blades clang against each other and she's about to press the lunge, seeking to find an opening there but for him slipping back a little, forcing her to abandon her only slightly helpful perch on the mattress if she wants to pursue.
His hands go to the wrists. She could attack then, his guard diverted to the slow removal of those concealing black gloves. But she finds herself mesmorized by morbid curiosity. She had started to see a glimpse of what lies beneath, what secrets his gloves keep hidden, until mysterious the call cut their match short. This time there would be no timely interruption, no saved by the chime moment to stop him, and for all her mental acuity, she can't do anything more than simply gawk at the sight. It's a sight taken from a horror movie, where one can wave it off knowing it's just fancy special effects. Prosthetics, makeup, and post pass computer editing can do marvels to things as simple as human hands. But no such dismissal will work here, her attention fixated on those skeletal, disfigured digits. Her vivid imagination is almost a curse at times like this, as she immediately tries to imagine what it would take to get his hands in that condition. That was no mere single bad scrape with an errant fire. That damage... is from countless exposure to all manner of cellular and skeletal destruction. How he can even move his fingers at all literally defies comprehension for the girl.
He continues to speak, but she's slow to listen, mind reeling at the revelation she never would have wanted. Only her perfect memory allows her to rewind his words and play them back in her mind, discovering more about his dark obsession with her. Oh, lucky her. Feeling her hands dampen a little, perspiration brought about by nervousness, she takes in her breath. He's calling to her to strike, challenging her to attack. She has to get her head back on her shoulders. She needs to get back into her laid back, detatched, analystical mindset. She needs to get back in CONTROL. Easier said than done given the circumstances, but she gradually manages to pull herself together, her mouth closing, shifting into a glimmer of a smirk.
Her brown eyes, capable of looking so soft and gentle when she's trying to play the pity card or lure some unsuspecting fool into a trap, take on a harder edge. A cold, don't give a damn look. "If you want me to share some pain with you, you just needed to say so. But don't expect me to be interested in what you're peddling!"
She springs forward then, katana swung in an attempt to clash against his silvery blade in a manner that isn't exactly how a Katan is wont to be used. But it might due the trick. Her knee slams forward the instant her feet land on the ground, the girl now occupying a portion of that precious little floor space within the room, sharing it with this unwelcome, frightening visitor. Knowing that a simple knee strike isn't sufficient to do the job, she draws the sword back to her side, twisting its point forward, both hands gripping it tightly, and then *stabs* it out fiercely, threatening maybe to impale the red-eyed man against the wall should the weapon cut clean through. Hey, everyone has their own take on foreplay! She's
so not going to get her damage deposit back on this place at this rate...
COMBATSYS: Ayame has started a fight here.
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Ayame 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Saint has joined the fight here.
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Ayame 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Saint
COMBATSYS: Saint interrupts Fierce Strike from Ayame with Fierce Strike.
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Ayame 0/-------/---====|===----\-------\0 Saint
The problem with Ayame's plan likely lies in the simple fact that Saint is absolutely off his rocker. While she gives the smart aleck-y response to his call for them to display new highs of love and pain to one another, he's taking his challenge rather seriously. So when the girl steps off the bed, and then tries to hit him with her knee, he doesn't attempt to avoid it. Instead, the strike hits him, if only lightly, causing him to lean over some. It puts his footing off-balance for any kind of real defensive movement... but that's assuming he -wants- to defend himself against her attacks.
He doesn't.
When the katana slams forward in an attempt to stake him to the wall, he does what is likely least expected... by stepping into the blade. It pierces his side, illiciting a rather unpleasant sounding noise of pain as muscle and sinew is torn into, the blade clearing the other side of him, sending a light spray of blood onto the wall behind him... but the blade doesn't quite reach the wall itself, which leaves him free to move. Well, as free as one can move when they have a sword through their side. Still, it's free enough that the man takes another, somewhat staggered step forward, and lashes out with his own blade, a stab for a stab, aimed at precisely the same area he's been hit.
The blade sinks into her side as well, and as it does, it shines with a ghostly gray light, unnatural and most certainly /wrong/. For not only does his blade stab into the girl, but so does his psycho power follow suit, flooding down his hand, through the blade, and into her body. Flashes of memory, flickers of moments of pain, very much shorter, more insignificant than some of the other attacks he's dealt to Ayame, but still potent in its own way, fill the girl. This one a shock of electricity, this one knives being jabbed into him and twisted, the memories merely small vignettes compared to the stories he had to tell otherwise.
Past the growling in pain, he begins to laugh some, an almost happy sound, if it weren't flecked with pain. "Ah... and you say you have no interest in this pain. Do you not see it? How one causes pain... simply to show their love?"
Failure to realize just how little the threat of injury could possibly phase a man such as him proves to be Ayame's critical mistake as she starts with her aggressive lunge into combat. Any normal person would be trying to avoid getting struck. Warned by the knee, or seeing enough of the incoming slash to know they should try to protect themselves before the vicious stab could be launched. Counting on any such sane reactions from Saint is a grave error, one that costs the girl dearly.
The slash he lays into her side provokes a cry of pain, a startled surprise at the contact with his silvery, razor sharp blade. It's a grevious strike in its own right, slashing through the side of her black blouse, tearing into her skin with the very pain she had intended to inflict upon him. But it's the energy coursing down his weapon, an extention of himself, a force-fed portion of his memories that does the real harm.
It overcomes her defenses against such attacks with ease, Ayame not having been prepared for the fierce nature of the memory onslaught. Time had dulled her recollection of just how painful dealing with Saint could be, but this opening exchange has provided a brutal refresher course. A jolt of energy, a twisted, jagged blade being stabbed somewhere sensitive, her expression is twisted, reflecting the pain experienced within.
Staggering back, only to drop into a seated position on her bed, it takes her a second to fight it off, but it feels like so much more time has passed. With a gasp, she forces his influence from her thoughts, shedding the wracking pain at last. She has been exposed to enough psychic based attacks to learn a few tricks for dealing with them, but Saint's brand is particularly savage even if not instantly debiliating as that born by some other people she's fought. She just needs to force his influence from her thoughts, she reminds herself, just like she managed when they last fought.
Releasing the katana completely, she rolls backward, hand reaching for another weapon of note. Something she's never used in a real fight, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have SOME idea of what to do with it!
Her right hand grips the handle, pulling the heavy morning star off of the mounted wall bracket. The weight of the old, spiked weapon is significant, as indicated by the way she drops the weighted end down against the mattres, the spikes sticking out of it puncturing the bed as it lands. Gritting her teeth, the girl draws it back up, teeth gritting as she strains to move it. "I'm not that special person," she snaps, paying no mind to the blood dripping from her side over her bedsheets. At this rate she just wants to get out of the apartment. With the money she has now, she need not ever return again...
"You're not even human, you devil." Perhaps those teachings from her childhood as a miko weren't so wrong after all. Lessons of evil spirits, demons... she had dismissed them all as fairy tales. It's hard to do that when you're staring one in the eyes. At last she swings with that heavy weapon, aiming to bash it into him with no regard for anything else that gets smashed in the process. If she can just hit HIM with the crushing force, it might buy her time to escape...
COMBATSYS: Saint endures Ayame's Assault and Battery.
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Ayame 0/-------/--=====|=======\-------\0 Saint
Saint doesn't seem to have any intention to press his attack as Ayame staggers backwards to flop onto the bed. While he's not in any particular hurry to rush this, this what he likely considers a date of sorts, he's in no better condition than Ayame. He might not react to getting hurt like most do, stepping into painful attacks and the like, but that still doesn't mean that his body doesn't -react- to pain the same way. Getting stabbed does all sorts of things to you, most notably making the muscles contract in odd ways as part of the body suddenly has a hole in it. Saint might like pain, or glorify it as 'true love' but the simple fact of the matter is, human bodies are not wired to feel pain as a good thing.
Thusly he staggers a bit to the side, the hand holding his cane coming up to press against the wound as the sword leaves his body. Blood smears his clothing on his right side, dripping down his black clothing from the most serious injury. Even so, as hurt as he is, he's still laughing a bit, a kind of wheezing chuckle of 'hehs' strung together in an almost nervous way. He staggers again, and then finally straightens, noting by now that the strawberry-blonde haired girl has changed up her weapon of choice to something a bit heavier... and now intends to simply strike him with it.
Again, he doesn't move. Why bother, when the whole point is to be filled with the pain Ayame wants to inflict on him?
The heavy steel and spiked ball impacts him dead on the chest, and his skinny frame is sent flying. His sword is knocked from his hand, imbeding itself into a wall next to the door, while he himself goes -through- the door and out into the hallway... or would've, if he hadn't been expecting the strike. As it is, his disfigured and now free left hand catches ahold of the edge of the door frame, and he manages to keep himself from flying any more out of the hallway, even if it pulls on his arm, painfully, nearly wrenching his arm into unpleasantness.
Using his grip, however, he wastes no time to haul himself back into the room, lunging forward with surprising speed to return the blow with his own, his cane lashing out in a wild sweep intent on slamming into Ayame. His arm pulls back, and again and again he rains down blows on her smaller form. "I am the -most- human I can be! I have experienced pains and tortures the rest of this world cannot know! God has chosen me to express his true teachings, how he TRULY expresses his love! And I shall show it to you, so you may understand, as well!" The cane blows, naturally, are not normal. Each rake of the cane brings with it vivid sensations of ripping, tearing... fish hooks, linking into the flesh and simply tearing outwards.
COMBATSYS: Ayame interrupts King in Yellow from Saint with Harvest's Reaper.
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Ayame 1/------=/=======|=======\======-\1 Saint
Knocking him clean into the hall would be a great thing. A fantastic thing. The girl would try to make a break for it then, risking close proximity for a fleeting moment for the chance to escape from the building and run forever more. She has money now, she need never return to this dive. The few token items of importance, the various weapons collected... are but trivial trinkets, easily replaced with the wealth waiting for her. Interest alone in the account she has stashed away, that only she knows of, could probably sustain a comfortable lifestyle, let alone the splurging she could engage in from time to time when something piqued her fancy. All she needed to do was get past the red-eyed psychopath and elude him.
Though she isn't banking entirely on that working out for her. The katana, the old morning star; both weapons were just stalling so that she could make it to her desk, drawing the draw at the side of it open. There is ONE item she is loath to leave behind. Anathema. Her trusty staff that has see her through think and thin. It was the only thing truly precious to her, and the one thing she would be making sure to not leave behind.
She hadn't anticipated Saint returning to strike her so fast, or else she might have been able to make a much cleaner defense. But she'll make due. The girl's hand reaches to the drawer, withdrawing a six-inch long, titanium tube. She glances up as that cane comes lashing out toward her. It would be impossible to explain to someone just how horrifying a simple object as a cane could possibly be. Sure, some might point out, it could probably produce some nasty bruises. But compared to sword slashes, is it of any particular importance? Ayame sure thinks so.
He declares himself a human being, that weapon catching her on the side, the sensation of having her skin torn open by a raking metal hook, and Ayame yelps. She tries to draw back, but he catches her again with another painful lash. In her mind's eye she can see the bleeding, her flesh torn, her blood spilling forth, even if no such evidence exists in the real world. That's. IT. Gritting her teeth, she decides to give Saint the most brutal pain she can dish out in short order. She intends to ruin him. It's already clear to her that he's making little to no attempts to defend himself in this deadly game of show and tell. That being the case, her next attack simply needs to put him /down/.
There is the sound of a hydraulic hiss, that tube in her hand expanding out swiftly into a six foot long metal staff. In the cramped quarters, it's not the easiest weapon to put to use, but she has dealt with worse conditions before. Besides, by now she's not particularly concerned about collateral damage. She's going to go all out. The cane strikes her again, a third rip forcing a gasp from her lips. As if in response to the pain flooding her nerves, that staff in her hand flares to life with a violent, angry red aura, chi coursing over its surface, flaring out at the ends like the fires of her soul unleashed. In the dim lighting of the apartment, that staff is by far the brightest object, bathing the entire room in a forboding, deep red. "THIS," Ayame shouts through greeted teeth, swinging the low end of the staff from the level of the floor up into Saint's chest with rushing force. The red chi near the end of the weapon trails behind, looking almost like a reverse scythe blade. Which might explain the sound of flesh being slashed that accompanies her strike into his stomach.
"IS" she continues, drawing the weapon around for a second hit with the other end, leaping a little to cover the distance between them, aiming this time for the side of his face with another slicing, chi-blade and accompanying staff bash. "NOT" The girl lands, drawing the staff over her head, holding it with both hands, shifting her grip to give it just enough clearance beneath the roof of the studio apartment. She holds it there, her arms raised, brown eyes fixed in a glare, looking like a teenaged executioner in training, ready to drop the axe and end another life. "LOVE!!"
And then it descends, the staff brought down toward the top of his head with all the power she can muster. The weapon glances the ceiling on the way, ripping a path through the cheap plaster with trivial ease on its way down to its intended mark. And in that moment of final impact, all the chi churning over her staff collects into a single explosive discharge, shattering the glass window behind her in the aftermath of the blastwave.
Ayame stops then, drawing her staff back, holding it out to her side. The risidual chi broiling over its surface congeals, taking on almost liquid-like properties as it rolls down her staff to the lower end then simply drips; falling droplets of crimson victory that vanish just before they quite reach the floor. The remaining chi fades out, flickering like flames starved of their fuel, and then the room becomes dim once again, but for the light now pouring in from the shattered window behind the girl. Ayame exhales slowly, her hand going to rest against the points the cane struck, expecting it to come away bloody, only to fail to be surprised when it doesn't.
There's no time to dodge the strikes, for he's already in the midst of making his own. Breaking his attack off and trying to evade would just be pointless. So he continues his flashing out of the cane, sending his painful memories through them into the girl once, twice, and thrice. But no more. Accompanied by screams of scarlet rage and maybe just a bit of black fear, Ayame slashes into him multiple times... but from the way he'd been fighting, it's doubtful he'd even have elected to move out of the way of her attacks had he been able to make that choice. Even as he gets slashed, while his expression of one of pain, pure and utter pain, it's tinged with a kind of frantic glee, too. There's no /pleasure/ in getting hit for him, really. The pain is just that: pain. It's more what the pain represents to him. For all of Ayame's denouncing of her attacks not being 'love'... he still feels as though they are. She might as well not have said a thing.
The first strike of red-flared chi slices into his stomach, and not lightly either. There isn't even any sound of pain illicited from it, because the chi-scythe simply denies him even the breath to cry out. Instead, his response is purely physical, eyes widening in shock (and that slight mad look of joy, as well), his body bending at the waist as if he'd been punched, curling over the wound in pure defensive reflex, while blood sprays outwards from it, likely staining Ayame with a fair amount of it.
The second strike is made all the easier by him being bent over, and the red scythe blade finds his face easily, slicing it open just fractions of an inch from his eye. The sheer closeness of an attack so close to a sensitive organ like the eyes, despite the fact his are so narrow, forces him to find the breath enough to scream, and his head whips up from the strike, a massive gash in his cheek that simply sprays more blood, this time the scythe carrying it into a splatter onto the ceiling. His hand lets go of the cane in his right hand, simply so that he has both hands to cover his eye, he's that shocked by the pain.
He staggers away a bit, holding his eye almost in a panicked way, and thus he has no concept at all of the third strike coming straight for his head. The staff hits him, and while he might be knocked to the floor by it, he's knocked simply away by the explosion of the chi that follows suit, his thin, sickly frame no match for the blast. This time he DOES fly through the door, and impacts against the cheap wall of the hallway hard enough that it cracks and indents slightly. He then simply sinks down to the floor, onto his knees, and flops forward. Limp, and still.
Blood smears on the wall where he impacted, streaking downwards from his slide. Blood on the floor, the walls, and even Ayame from the first slice. Blood on the ceiling from the slice into his cheek. There was a great deal of blood here, and a great deal of carnage from the various weapons used to simply smash the place apart. Surely, after taking a katana to the side, a morning star to the chest, nearly wrenching his arm out of the socket in the process of recovering from that, and then the slashes, staff hits and final explosion of Ayame's staff, Saint was done for. Surely.
Then why was there laughter coming from his limp form on the floor?
It starts low at first, barely audible. Then it slowly rises up, a giddy sort of laughter, one of /happiness/. Slowly, a disfigured hand moves, and he presses his palm down onto the paper thin carpeting of the hallway. Then the other hand moves, echoing the first. He pushes himself up slowly, body raising from the ground. Blood simply -flows- from him, and it's almost a surreal thing to think so much blood could be inside his frail body. As he lifts himself up, it simply flows out his stomach wound, and as he lifts his face - his derby notably missing from his head - the deep gouge in his cheek is simply spilling blood over his cheek and throat, masking the pale skin in deep scarlet. He gets a foot under him, then another, and he slowly s
It starts low at first, barely audible. Then it slowly rises up, a giddy sort of laughter, one of /happiness/. Slowly, a disfigured hand moves, and he presses his palm down onto the paper thin carpeting of the hallway. Then the other hand moves, echoing the first. He pushes himself up slowly, body raising from the ground. Blood simply -flows- from him, and it's almost a surreal thing to think so much blood could be inside his frail body. As he lifts himself up, it simply flows out his stomach wound, and as he lifts his face - his derby notably missing from his head - the deep gouge in his cheek is simply spilling blood over his cheek and throat, masking the pale skin in deep scarlet. He gets a foot under him, then another, and he slowly stands up, a hand pressing to his stomach as he does, groaning in obvious pain from the effort. "Not... love?" He asks. "Then what, pray tell, is it?"
He takes a step forward, nearly tripping himself as his foot settles into the pool of blood that had managed to collect under him while he was on the floor. "My mother attempted to kill me when I was but six. And every day thereafter, she had to be held back from me, lest she would kill me."
Another step closer.
"I was sent away after my father found out what she was doing. There, the other children battered me, burned me, scarred me, and did everything in their power to inflict their pain upon my body."
Another step. He was now inside the room.
"Then, when I was sixteen, I was placed in a swamp, left for mosquitos to peck to death. The dean of my school found me, said he wanted to help me... and then when he touched my hand, he branded me a demon, just like you, and tried to burn me alive, saying God's love would save me."
Another step.
"I got it, then. I understood why God permitted me to suffer. He wanted me to realize it... what His love meant. Job. The Great Flood. Sodom, Gamorrah. Original Sin. Jesus... God is full of infliction of pain onto others. For what? Because that... that is his love."
Another step. Saint looks directly up at Ayame now, with only one eye open. "I see... that it might be useless to explain to you. Words alone simply cannot suffice. I nearly died, so that I might understand. I suppose you shall need to do the same." His eye closes, and then his hands both raise up, clasping together in front of him as though he were praying. There's a moment of silence, and then his voice begins again, this time taking in a melody.
"Amazing Grace... how sweet the sound... that saved... a wretch... like me!"
His hands part, and he keeps singing. He reaches for her. It doesn't seem like an attack... he simply is going to touch her, at the sides of her head, with his hands.
I once... was lost..."
COMBATSYS: Saint successfully hits Ayame with Wake the Sleeping God EX.
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Ayame 1/-======/=======|=------\-------\0 Saint
His hands are bloody. They touch either side of her head, smearing his own blood onto the sides of her face. Likely being touched with his hands is creepy enough to shock anyone, but that isn't the shock that should worry most.
"But now... I see." He finishes the song.
Ayame's world is enveloped in light.
Images flood into her through his hands. These are stronger, much more potent, much more -real- as if she were experiencing them herself. Like they were not fake, implanted memories, but rather her own. Every instance of pain Saint has ever experienced, from the first time his mother tried to kill him, to being burned alive in front of an auditorium of priests who were all dead sure he was a demon, to even more recent memories of his fights with a large Englishman with an oar, two girls in a pitch black Alaskan forest, a young girl at Gedo high, the Demon outside Ayame's own home, and both times he'd fought Ayame herself. Every. Single. Pain. They wrack her body, flitting from one to the next in a rapid, nauseating, sick slideshow of utter torture and pain.
It lasts mere seconds, but it will feel as though an eternity.
Eventually, Saint's hands are pulled away from Ayame. Not because he feels the need to remove them, but because his own body is wracked with pain as the psycho power chaotically writhes inside of him. Normal people can control their chi, control the energy that makes up their lives. Even people who have too much of the energy can make sure it doesn't kill them.
Saint isn't normal. He has no idea how to make it NOT kill him.
Making choked, hollow gurgling noises, the priest flops backwards onto the ground, and simply convulses for several moments, like he were experiencing an epilectic seizure. Eventually it fades, and he lies there, rasping breath in wheezing, coughing, pain-wracked gulps. And once he gets his breath back...?
He laughs.
The savage combination delivered, Ayame stands up straight, allowing the rest of the chi to bleed out of her weapon. A press of a hidden button in a location only she knows has the staff collapsing back down to its far more portable size. It's served her well in bashing and slashing the hell out of this monster of a man and now she's going to go and buy some fortress of a home in which she'll never be hassled by him again. On that point she is quite decided. "Hmph," she grunts. Why did this last minute headache have to wander into her life, into her line of fire? Well, if he wanted to feel some pain, she sure as hell delivered on her part.
But then it occurs to her. That sound echoing from the man she just felled isn't one of a demon defeated. Not yet. The girl freezes, brown eyes shifting to focus on him, eying him like a viper ready to strike if she turns her back or simply gets too close. She dished out a savage beating and he responds with jubilant giddiness? Bleeding out over the floor, he might very well die soon if he doesn't get help. And right now, there's not a chance in hell she's going to get him that help.
And then he rises, haltingly at first, but steadily at last. And then he begins to speak, and Ayame scowls, tensing up. "Look, I'm not really drawn in by the whole zombie routine. You're in sad shape, and if you keep this up, I'm going to put you in worse shape. You don't have anything on me. I've barely started on you and you're a wreck. Keep it up and you're going to make me kill you." Her hand drops to her belt, tracing lightly over the sheath hidden there, keeping one of her butterfly knives tucked away, as if preparing to make good on her threat.
He speaks of his mother as he steps closer, nearly taken back to the floor by his own slippery blood, and she falls quiet. There's no comparison between his childhood and hers. She never really considered her parents bad people. Just unprepared to handle a child as free willed as she, and perhaps mislead by the religion that clouded their minds. But his wretched life actually makes her pause, hands tightening a little.
He speaks of the abuse from other children his age. Another experience she knows nothing of. She was taught to fight, to defend herself from a young age by a father desperate to get her seemingly wandering mind to focus on anything at all. He enters the room grown several sizes too small already and Ayame takes a step back, retreating back over floorspace that barely exists, her back brushing against the wall behind her. Despised, reviled, branded a monster. Few ever condemned her, no matter how rotton, able to weave her way out of the worst of situations with emotional manipulation or twisting the pitty knife whenever it was convenient or necessary.
Gritting her teeth, her hands tighten, but she doesn't draw the knife. Not yet. Let him get in closer. "It's pointless to try showing me." she speaks up, her voice a whisper as he begins to sing. "Last time you tried I fought you off. And I will simply do so again. You can't beat my mind, my thoughts are mine to control, my memories, my will my weapons against that cursed touch of yours." She returns his look of twisted endearment with a glare.
Let him try. She is ready this time. Let him get in close, rendering himself vulnerable as he reaches out to touch her. She will fight him off, and in that instant finish this. She has never killed anyone before. Come close, yes, but never quite crossed that final line into damnation. But she has never had someone trying to share his love through the spread of pure agony before either. But she knows how to do it. She knows where the primary blood channels flow, knows how to open them and leave someone doomed to die as they hopelessly try to stem the blood flow that cannot be stopped. This close, he will have no hope of defending himself when she delivers the slashes she has already pictured in her mind.
His hands part and he reaches for the sides of her heads, and Ayame takes in a deep breath. Here it goes. His fingers touch her scalp and her hands move, drawing the thin, folded butterfly knives loose from their sheaths. There is that flicker in her gaze, that decision made, to end the life of a threat, and thus secure her own safety. She'll kill him to save herself, nothing else matters to the girl who has only looked out for one person all her life.
But at his touch, she freezes, his blood painting the sides of her head. And then everything goes white. This time the jolt of pain that surges into her is jarring, staggering, mind-splittingly agonizing. Memories of pain, shared by that psychic link formed between them, flash from one horrifying experience to another. His childhood, his maimed hands, his experiments into different means of experiencing that divine love he believes himself to have found. All of it flashes before her eyes, races through her nervous system, wracks her conscious mind. Fighting against it is proving futile, her senses overwhelmed, her thoughts failing to find a firm foundation as her ability to distinguish reality from the past that has been warps violently.
She can't take this. His touch will fry the very synapses of her nervous system. There was another that came close to doing just that very thing with a touch. Elfa was the name she claimed to have, capable of delivering mind scarring damage with a touch. But Ayame had known how to deal with that when the moment came, having mastered a very tricky act of shutting her brain off, triggering a kill switch in her thoughts that would force her into the sanctuary of unconsciousness where their invasive power could not haunt her any further.
A desperate option for a desperate situation, her mouth frozen in a silent scream as she pulls the proverbial plug to spare herself the mind scarring horror. Her hands open limply, the two knives, not even opened, clattering to the floor at her feet, and then the girl collapses, falling back against the wall, her legs buckling beneath her as she slips down to the floor, staring vacantly into the room as Saint convulses on the ground, his horrid, joyous laughter falling upon deaf ears as the young street rogue sits still.
Few would realize the REASON he wears gloves constantly, and uses weapons rather than just his fists like most fighters. People assume the gloves are for a neurosis, or maybe for style. Indeed, if they see his hands and don't know of his power, they would tsk and shake their heads, completely understanding that he'd want to keep such things hidden. Even if they know of his power, they wouldn't realize, that the more that is between his direct touch, the less energy that can spill out. Being touched by his hands directly is to feel the full, unfiltered torture that makes up his psycho power, the entity of pain that resides within him.
Ayame was arrogant to think she could drive it back, even if she could not have known Saint was deliberately filtering himself. And she had paid for it.
Had Ayame been able to fight off the psychic assault, she'd have been presented with a huge opening to end Saint's life, for whatever energy had flowed into her had to go through him first, as though the man felt every pain he inflicted upon others over again. He lies there, gasping for breath, for a full minute or two, and then eventually recovers enough of himself to slowly rise up again, his laughter dying out. Noticing Ayame's state, he seems to pause, admiring it. He'd done something like that only one other time, when his powers had fully manifested and he had been able to bring the same flurry of memories he'd just given to Ayame to an entire room full of priests. But he hadn't loved them... merely was being kind in returning the love they had so kindly shown him. She was alive, at least. Her breathing, however slight, told him that. Perhaps she would understand, now. Perhaps she would know precisely what love was meant to be, as God had meant it.
Saint leaves her alone for now, holding a hand over his stomach, his not-quite-wounded eye held closed. He was bleeding, a lot. And unless he got help, he was unlikely to survive the night... not that that thought, oddly, gave him any particular emotion. He would not mind dying of his wounds if those wounds were inflicted by Ayame, but he had no particular wish to die right at the moment, either. So with a conscious effort to steal himself against the pain simply moving brings, he retrieves his things: sword in the wall, cane under the girl's desk, gloves on the floor and his hat on top of the one lamp. He resheathes his sword into the cane, then settles his hat upon his head, and tugs his gloves back on. Each movement, while he does actually complete them, brings with it protesting noises of discomfort and pain. He had to leave, now.
But as he moves for the door, he glances back at Ayame, staring blankly at nothing, her mind obviously overwhelmed at the sensations brought to her. He could leave her here, and surely nothing bad would come of it. The police may arrive in a few minutes, or maybe they wouldn't. Eventually she would wake up - he supposed - and continue on with her life. But... admittedly, he had no idea what happened after he touched someone directly. He'd never stuck around to find out. And for all of his confessed love, wouldn't it be wrong to leave her here, if there was a chance of her dying? After a moment's thought, he shuffles over to her, and then with a GREAT deal of more pained grunts, he eventually will be able to lift the girl in a fireman's carry, over one shoulder. Fortunately she'll be too baked to feel any of the pain his hands on her might bring, and likely he'll be able to take her out of the apartment, downstairs, and out into the night.
Log created on 19:04:26 07/06/2008 by Ayame, and last modified on 03:48:17 01/04/2009.