Description: Brought to you by the new SCION automobile. Yamazaki in a bulldozer against two adorable schoolgirls. It writes itself. It was all going textbook perfect, too, until Kula called Yamazaki out. After the building falls and a previously JUSTIFIED Athena tends to Kula's wounds both mental and physical, somewhere in the pile of rubble, a buried mercenary....enjoys their tender moment furiously.
Perhaps the SNF officials, after having to endure way too many temperamental fighters and temper tantrums, just snapped and turned sadistic... because none of them opted to disclose just who it was would be the 'stress tester' they'd talked about in the fight card. Thusly oblivious, Athena caught a flight to Metro and proceeded ever closer towards inevitable traumatization: only aware that her opponent was to be Kula Diamond, and curious as to the truth of the other girl's reputation.
It's been the first sanctioned fight for Athena in nearly months, the girl having opted to spend some time away from the fighting circles in production on another album. She figured she'd just push out this last CD to get her manager off her back, thereby giving herself some breathing room to focus on her more important goals. While Athena loved to sing, music was not the main drive she felt her life to center around.
What's truly important is being able to protect people. And with the recent ill feelings lurking like a dense fog around Southtown, her readiness will become even more important. The malaise got so thick even the polluted air of Metro is like a breath of fresh air.
Punctual as always, Athena steps out towards the designated construction site curiously at five minutes to match start, completing the last of her methodical warm-ups and intently regarding the terrain. Flexing her hands once or twice to loosen them up, she pulls her gloves a little tighter, sighs out a patient breath, and glances across the gathered crowds with a smile and wave for all those who came out to watch this afternoon.
Her attention diverts back. Straightening up and assuming a prepared stance, she looks around for her opponent (and also, a bit uneasily, for anything that might qualify as the stress tester). She'd like to get a quick 'read' of the girl before all the fighting starts.
The partially constructed building leaves it easy to move around out of sight. Half painted walls, beams and pillers lining the makeshift halls in progress, and scaffolding holding up temporary barricades to simulate where future rooms will be. Exposed wiring and the smell of sawdust, solder, and strong paint fills the air along with no small amount of dust. To the long haired NESTS operative that steps into view, the entire site looks like an elaborate training ground.
Kula Diamond looks every bit as young as advertised but she might come across even younger still. A certain amount of innate, passive curiosity at everything coupled with a rather patient demeanor, the leather-clad girl makes only a cursory glance over Athena at first sight before she goes back to looking around the ground level floor.
A pile of dusty cement powder is toed, scraping a little of it across the floor, as she paces around waiting for the match. The empty barrel of a cement mixer gets inspected next as she goes so far as to stick her head into it, gloved hands clasped behind her back. Pulling her head back out, she sneezes once, finger going to her nose. Okay, too much dust for one used to the exceptionally clean, sanitary halls of NESTS!
Eventually she works her way back around to where Athena is, crimson eyes coming to rest on the other girl. There isn't much for her to make of her opponent. Her profile indicated she's quite able, quite fast, and quite the singer. Exposing Kula to popular culture hasn't been a very high priority to her handlers, however, so she'll simply have to take the profile's word for it. "I hope it passes the stress test." she muses out loud, eying one of the supper beams nearby. Otherwise they're going to have a mountain of steel, cement, and wood falling on them!
She takes in a soft breath then exhales, arms resting at her sides. As she remains still, a strange phenomenon of gently drifting snow flakes begins to form immediately around her, the air chilling noticeably. She seems to bear Athena no malice, regarding her with almost a bit /too/ much detatchment, as if she isn't really thinking about her at all like a normal opponent would.
"Ah," Athena replies, her eyes crinkling a bit in a warm, welcoming sort of look, "that would depend upon what the stress test -is-, I think. There are some things no building can withstand." Little does she know.
The young singer watches Kula carefully as the girl steps ever closer. She watches with an equal care and curiosity as the experiment unfolds her chi, her violet eyes unfocusing slightly as if she sees things which appear in an entirely different spectrum inaccessible to normal sight. For a few moments, her gaze remains distant as it travels unseen pathways... and then she focuses again upon Kula.
"...You're quite a bit younger than you look, aren't you?" Athena smiles, a bit wistfully, as she asks that question Kula's no doubt heard many times before. But 'young,' in this instance, is probably just a euphemism for the fragmented, empty shell which Athena sensed beyond the exterior of a young teen. "I would call it a pity... but I suppose I can't say anything about starting young. I've heard you have quite the talent, anyway." She wonders how it came about-- the mind she sees looks haphazard, its stitchings barely holding it pieced together.
"Now... shall we begin?" the young woman eventually prompts politely, sinking into her characteristic stance. Her violet eyes, still layered with that oddly-knowing look wise beyond its eighteen years, continue to consider Kula carefully, before the girl abruptly pushes into a quick onrush and vaults into the air. For a moment, nothing happens-- and then her lithe frame wreathes in psychic flames. Twisting swiftly, Athena angles into a downwards lunge, seeking to slam right into the other girl.
COMBATSYS: Athena has started a fight here.
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Athena 0/-------/------=|
COMBATSYS: Kula has joined the fight here on the left meter side.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Athena
COMBATSYS: Kula dodges Athena's Phoenix Arrow.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Athena
As Athena declares Kula to be even younger than she appears, the frosty blue-haired gives her a bit of a sharp look back. That she must know something she's not supposed to is immediately clear, because really, as-is, she already looks young enough to call into question the CHILD LABOR LAWS of this crazy world. The only way someone would call her even younger was if they knew the truth. She tenses up, her mouth a straight line, yellow leather creaking as she clenches then unclenches her hands. It wouldn't take an empath to tell that she's immediately on the defensive now.
Her normal lazy, relaxed stance shifts as she turns so that her left shoulder faces Athena, her arms still at her sides, though her feet a little bit apart. She's suddenly taking this match more seriously than she typically does when it comes to the 'weekly' training she keeps getting put through. "You shouldn't know that." she states, her tone cold, not at all liking the way the violet haired girl seems privy to the secret behind the facade. When asked if it's time to begin, she replies with a very sightly nod. She thinks she is, at least.
The sentiment is put to the test as Athena takes to the air, leaping up into a swift arc before descending at a sharp angle directly for her. Raising one arm, she looks about to simply brace herself against the impact, albeit without the kind of counterforce that would really be necessary. But as flames flare to life around the other teen, Kula's eyes widen slightly and she spins to the side at the last moment, letting Athena slide past without hitting her. Frowning slightly - not at what she sensed but rather what she /didn't/.
Combat algorithms wrestle with a deeply rooted paranoia for the type of energy she fears Athena weilds as she steps back in to try and attack quickly as the idol lands. Her right foot leads with a swift, lateral kick, shades of white hinting of the nearly translucent blades of steel-like ice that seem to manifest along the sole of her boot. Snapping her foot down, she follows up, turning into a second kick with her left, every bit as dangerous as her first!
Let's rewind.
When the SNF officials were arranging the fights this week, they were going about it the normal way. You know. Find what fights seem to be the most intereesting for the gathered viewers, then install them into premises, making the appropriate phonecalls. Or, rather, that was what was supposed to happen.
At least until Yamazaki busted into the office yelling about wanting to fight the blueberry.
Well, three hours later, the whole mess was sorted out. It was determined that Yamazaki could not in fact tear Diamond a new ass as he requested (there was some concern that Diamond simply drew more viewers than Yamazaki, the budget was low, and that if he put Diamond out of the running for a few weeks it could be disastrous for SNF memorabilia sales). However, Yamazaki brought up the very important counterpoint that he could crush the organizer's head like a grape at any time and throw the juice at the memorabilia sale stands.
So they came to a compromise.
A secondary diesel engine kicks online.
He hums. "'Zaki the Builder.."
Hydraulic pumps rock slowly to life, lifting the S-U style curved combination blade a little higher. Remember kids. When in transit, it's better to drive with the shovel blade slightly elevated off the ground so you don't tear pieces out of the rock.
"Can we fix it," he mumbles.
Not that it matters. Yamazaki's been driving with the shank rippers (!!) down all day (!?) and has already torn up most of the surrounding street. He rolls onto the construction site via a well-dozed path of destruction from the street, carrying a furiously honking automobile (is that a SCION TC<tm>?!) on his raised blade, his treads chewing up the dirt as it crawlers over towards a pile of (yes it is!!) SCION TC<tm>s, before dropping the SCION TC<tm!!> on the pile.
He apparently forgot what he was singing, because he's cackling like a madman now.
You know how many of these he's found just driving around this match alone?
They're like bees.
Oh jesus. He sees them. "HEY, BLUEBERRY!!"
He's pushing the entire stack of cars after the two and then--WHIZZ BANG POW--he takes out a girder on his way over. (So. Since when did they start mounting hoists and wrecking balls on the back of bulldozers?) He's just kind of building up steam, lowering the shovel to push a giant ball (a caramari if you will) of SCION TC<tm>s and destruction towards Diamond. He pulls down his custom hardhat (it has "NO OVERALLS, NO PROBLEM" printed on it) "Don't think I forgot about your ass!!!"
Oh yeah.
Get a load of his custom license plate:
[ SDOMAZO ]
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki has joined the fight here in the center.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
Athena argh sorry parent aggro
COMBATSYS: Athena dodges Kula's Medium Kick.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
Athena just looks at Kula, meeting the other girl's sharp look with a near-beatific serenity. There is nothing offensive or obtrusive about the way Athena declares what she does-- she simply states it as a fact. It's a delivery likely to unnerve the other girl, due to the absolute surety. "I shouldn't," she replies, very quietly, her violet eyes kind, "but I do."
She isn't sure what to make of Kula at all. Her empathy registers little more than a hum of suspicion, annoyance, exasperation, and a hint of fear once Athena's psionic attack goes blazing right past her. As Athena spins around in the wake of her whiff, twisting back to face Kula, she looks at the girl's aura again. And she sees that same fragmented, haphazard construction. There is something machinelike about the way her life force is knitted together, disparate parts woven into a whole... and yet, there is a spark of individuality beneath. A breath of true, unsynthesized life.
The girl looks like a construct. Like the things Athena has seen Vega discharge into the world, the fabricated 'dolls' that are little more than a synthetic will sewn up into a recipient body. And Athena has to feel a pang of pity, to wonder who it was did such a thing-- who it was that made such an incomplete person, and willfully keeps her incomplete.
With characteristic agility, she vaults again, clearing Kula's attempted attack and all its bladed deadliness by inches. Twisting midair, she transforms the motion into a sharp kick swung towards Kula's shoulder. Her lips don't move, the girl never speaking aloud, but her eyes on Kula's seem to establish a link over which a sudden mental voice flows. 'I know that you were made,' she whispers, her 'voice' drenched in regret. 'What I don't know is why--'
Of couse, it's about that time that Yamazaki makes his grand entrance, which distracts Athena just... a little bit. Her eyes flick away, that odd and undesirable connection breaking, and the girl's expression transforms into a classic look of undistilled 'oh shit.' Yeah, she knows who it is. Yeah, she's sane enough to be reasonably disturbed by the fact HE'S THE STRESS TEST.
COMBATSYS: Kula dodges Yamazaki's Large Flipped Object.
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Kula 0/-------/-------|=------\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Athena successfully hits Kula with Light Kick.
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Kula 0/-------/-----==|=------\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
Kula's day isn't getting any better as the clock ticks by. Having Athena slip out of the way of her two kicks isn't too troublesome. She expected a little of that, after her combat algorithms picked up a few parameters from the idol fighter's opening speed. Her left foot snaps down, the sound of crushed ice signifying the blades on her boots crumbling beneath her weight now that she doesn't need them anymore, and then she prepares to strike again, or possibly defend, ready to adjust to the give and take of the fight.
Dust starts to fall from the incomplete floor above. Loose boards begin to rattle, a distant rumble growing closer. Her brow furrows just slightly as she risks taking her eyes off of her opponent for a fleeting moment. It proves to be the right call, for it leaves her staring right at the combination of madman and destructive machinery suddenly rolling into the match. She isn't even really sure if he IS the Chaos Agent. For all she knows, Yamazaki has just pulled up in a bulldozer, with personalized plates, just to ruin her day. "I haven't forgotten about you either," the girl replies tersely, struggling to maintain her calm.
Wreckage goes flying, her jaw tightening as she ducks down into a sliding along the floor, taking her just under the tumbling mess of crushed cars and other debris. Whipping up to her feet with a quick handplant, the agile girl turns back on Athena, forced to split her attention suddenly. It takes a moment just to spot her as she's gone airborn, and by the time she does, there isn't time to stop that quick kick to her shoulder, the force sending her sliding back a short distance.
Crimson eyes glance back toward Yamazaki, the girl suddenly remembering promises of a 'Stress Test'. Well, she's stressed all right. The name calling doesn't get to her. She's trained better than that, capable of shrugging off most verbal distractions without being slowed down in the slightest. But the pure menace that the man represents, on the other hand, is troubling. A trouble not helped as someone starts speaking directly into her mind.
Whipping back on Athena, hands clenched, she glares with silent frustration. She has a better idea how the girl knows what she isn't supposed to now, that mental link more than enough of an explanation as to what is going on here. But she can only think of one way of stopping it and that's by hitting her. With some distance between herself and the bulldozing psychopath, she calculates that she has a few seconds of reprieve before she needs to deal with him. "Stop that." she utters, her tone icy as she leans in, right fist swinging with a hook, a block of ice adding a potent amount of weight to the strike.
"Aww, fuckin--"
Yamazaki leans forward in his seat, putting probably much more than the manufacturer's recommended amount of torquing force on the 'sideshift blade' lever while leaning on the gas. The machine turns slightly, churning dirt and gravel beneath his crawler. To him, Kula appeared to disappear underneath his caramari of SCION<tm>s Did he crush her already? Man!!!! He's gonna have to get out and dig her from the heap, he's not finished tearing her in half yet.
He squints.
Yamazaki focuses on Kula's mind quietly, not sure what to make of it. It was kind of like.. like a brick. A very dense brick. Failing to focus on that, he focuses on her ass instead. No, he doesn't have the faintest idea of what Athena's doing, nor is he particularly psychic trained. But he can smell people being overly zen from a mile away. And, more importantly, he can see Athena getting a piece of what was supposed to be his perfectly good crushed loli.
He's gonna drive this piece onto the SNF organizer's lawn when he's done. And then make him wish he did donuts.
But first to the business at hand.
Yamazaki's ball of crushed SCIONS careens into a pile of cement and girders, scattering it all over. He kind've forgot to hit the brakes after he turned, so focused on leaning out of the cage to get a better look at the two. Gh...--he slams back into the seat, furiously grinding teeth.
"Yeah, didn't forget about me, huh," the mercenary glowers, emptying the shovel's work-side hydraulic lift pump to lower it and engage the back end. Rippers sink into rock. The mini crane at the back of the bulldozer swings around, lobbing a pear shape in the vague direction of Athena's.. oh, /face/, possibly during am oment of maximum zen. "We'll see about that--" he angers even more loudly.
"Should've known better than to get out the way, then!! I'm gonna make creamsicles out of you muffins!!"
Yamazaki has a lot of angry sauce and angry onions on him today.
With a few of her teeth missing, maybe he can get the message across to Athena about his rules. Kain got all the action on Kula last time, and he's not going to put up with that shit again!!!
COMBATSYS: Athena dodges Yamazaki's Savage Balls.
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Kula 0/-------/-----==|=------\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Athena dodges Kula's Medium Punch.
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Kula 0/-------/-----==|=------\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
It's a relief, really, not to be hit by those blades. A relief to escape largely untouched, after she lands that hit on Kula. Landing lightly and skidding back a few paces of her own, she looks between Kula and Yamazaki. Her violet eyes are watchful, but also endlessly patient when the icy girl levels that glare upon her. Asked to stop, the singer's expression flickers momentarily from its eternal patience. For a moment, she looks searching. "...if that's what you want," she eventually agrees aloud, perhaps one of the first people to actually respect Kula's demands, before she's struck dead-on by the deadly strike Kula reels in at her chest.
...or is she?
The last afterimage of Athena warps and fades away from Kula's knuckles moments afterwards, falling apart like a sheet of water, a distinct twinge of power tangible in the air around them. A gleam from behind Kula reveals where it is the young psionic has teleported with seeming ease, and for a few moments Athena seems prepared to capitalize on her sudden advantage. But it's about that time Yamazaki decides to take issue with her.
She whips around as the enforcer suddenly rages at her 'hogging' his prey, eyes widening as that heavy crane comes swinging straight towards her. She flickers again, melting away, forced to give up her advantageous position in order to keep from being CRUSHED, and when she rematerializes, she might almost look unnerved. She'll have to keep an eye on him-- he's playing for keeps!! Not that this is a surprise from Yamazaki.
The expression is short-lived, particularly when her attention turns back to Kula. Her eyes soften again to see the caged, aimless look to the girl's aura. Still, this is a fight, not a psychologist's office-- Athena darts forward shortly thereafter, attempting to get in close enough to speak again. "You're not happy, are you? Not happy with this being it." Somehow, from Athena, it doesn't seem like a nosy or obtrusive question. Just a fact, spoken by a girl who wished it were not true.
Of course, Athena doesn't exactly give Kula a long time to think about it before she abruptly slams a palm forward towards Kula's center of mass. Should she get close enough, a sudden shot of psychic power attempts to seize the other girl like a magnet, the psi aiding the small girl in her bid to twist and fling Kula in a wide arc.
COMBATSYS: Kula blocks Athena's Super Psychic Throw.
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Kula 0/-------/----===|-------\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
With Yamazaki careening and crashing around with his bulldozer, Kula is given time to contend with Athena without the menacing distraction. Her hand swings, heavy ice adding weight to the threat of impact. But Athena isn't there and Kula's hand swings through the space once occupied by her. Whirling around, trying to make quick sense of what just happened, the girl's combat algorithms file away a new variable to deal with: teleportation. Extremely rare.
She holds her ground as the idol fighter avoids Yamazaki's random, savage... interference, still not sure what to do about him. Survival instincts suggest that there is nothing to be gained by staying in this fight at all. With one opponent toying around in her mind and the other seemingly salivating at the thought of tearing her to pieces all because of how a previous event like this transpired, there's practically nothing to be gained by sticking this out that could /possibly/ be worth this.
"You're never going to hit me with all that reckless flailing about," the girl speaks up, glancing toward Yamazaki along the length of her shoulder, her mouth tight-lipped, eyes narrowed. "Seems like you're the one that's forgotten. If you want to be a chaos agent, then fine, do it. But if you're here just to fight me, then I will deal with you first." She turns her attention back to Athena promptly, the violet haired girl having closed the distance between them so quickly in the meantime.
She's not talking in her head anymore, but not because Kula was able to do anything to force her, and that irritates the frosty haired fighter just about as much as the very act itself. "Why do you care?" she asks back, her voice tense, the girl on the verge of snapping out angrily. She steps back now that Athena is near, bracing herself, drawing her arms up to ward off an expected strike. It doesn't come, however, as her opponent tries to literally fling her around by her power alone.
Pulled off her feet, helpless to fight against that unfamiliar power at first, she's on a collision course with a nearby wall. She brings herself to a jarring stop, however, the moment her feet brush close enough to the unfinished ceiling for her to cement herself in place with boots of ice over her feet. Dangling for a moment, arms and hair hanging down beneath her head, the girl recovers herself quickly, deciding to attack back from that upside down position.
Gloved hand going to her mouth, she continues, "What would you do about it? Knowing everything you know is worthless if there's nothing changed by it." She inhales, exhales, sending her breath across her hand at the same time a flare of white energy courses over her glove. Toward the other girl is sent a gale-force burst of ice-laced wind with thousands of the devil's pitchforks - razor sharp needles intermixed with splashes of liquid-like frozen chi.
You see, Yamazaki is a man of principles.
Most chief amongst these principles is: everyone bleeds. That's his rule. No matter what. Everyone bleeds. Preferably, a lot. Kula bled for him too, but she drew a lot more of his blood--along with that bastard Heinlein--than he drew of anybody else's. For the kind of animal that he is... that sort of thing is an unforgivable failure.
Currently, he's looking for the CD player on this damned thing, jamming an old banged-up CD he got from inside his leather jacket with several flavors of abandon at the radio in futilitty. Cheap ass-soundsystem. Of course, the point is only driven home when Athena ghosts around the wrecking ball that had her face written all over it, and Kula sassing the enforcer in the background. He can barely hear her over the winding thrum of the machine underneath him, esconced in old cheap shop leather and steel. But the fact of the matter is, he doesn't need to tell what it is she says to read that expression off her face. The smell of defiance..
Lifting the shovel again, he elects not to actually turn the dozer so much as ride it right over the wreckage he just created, sending the wrecking ball wobbling sideways, not having a stable anchor anymore.
The mercenary falls back into his seat angrily, quieting down in response to Kula's calm matter of fact. What else could he say? Two drumsticks out here just not even thinking about who it is they're fucking with. Another one of those days, ah?
"Heheh.. oh, kids these days," the mercenary grouses, slipping the CD into his teeth as if it were a lit cigarette, pools of septic drool clouded red sliding across the iridescent surface as he drives off to the other end of the site, making a lazy and wide U-turn. But he doesn't quite enrage or froth like some classless two-bit thug Mad Gear picked out of the UFO catcher. No.. it's something that Athena might be able to feel.
His free hand pistons open, stretching out those cow-killed leather gloves of his.
"They just don't even know.."
Everyone bleeds.
Though nobody's going to really be close enough to tell, the silkscreen would be familiar on that CD. It's Athena's latest single--WHAM
To the dull meaty thump sound of fist beating flesh. His skull slings back in the cage, blood exploding from all sides of his forehead, skin splitting around his own fist as the mercenary slugs himself a good one, in an attempt to stir himself out of his stupor. Or at least, what he figures is one. When he gets like this, it's arguably worse than when he's crazy. See, right now, Yamazaki's not having fun. And that can have some kind of an effect on someone like him--WHAM
"Don't even know..."
Jaws tensing together, the plastic coating on the CD snaps like a gunshot after the second blow, Yamazaki folding the entire thing in half like a potato chip. One eye goes red from the pool of blood collecting in the socket. Blood drips on the controls. He's not even halfway started yet..
".. Guess I'm gonna have to show em what it's like to ride that train ..aheheh.."
Yamazaki will have to explain in terms that the whole class can understand.
Everyone bleeds!!!!!
WHAM.
--WHAM--
CRUNCH
SPRAY
THUMP..
WHAM....
(it goes on like that)
COMBATSYS: Kula successfully hits Athena with Diamond Breath.
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Kula 0/-------/---====|===----\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
Athena glances between Kula and Yamazaki again as the girl addresses the enforcer. It doesn't really take a psychic to know that there's something between the two. For the moment, however, her focus remains on Kula as she attempts to land a strike-- one which is circumvented in a decidedly unexpected way. Caught off guard, the girl has no time to try to form a defense before Kula retaliates in another unexpected manner.
The blast of ice catches Athena by surprise, slamming into her and knocking her back a short distance. It takes her a while to recover, the freezing cold as much a detriment as the vicious shards. "Knowledge is never worthless. Ignorance is what kills," the girl shiveringly replies presently, shaking off the onslaught of ice. Crystallized flakes tumble out of her long hair. "But you're right. In this case, knowing what I do is worthless to change anything."
Athena straightens up. Kula never disavowed her assertion she was unhappy with what she was: a construct, a thing. And it's because of that that the young singer insists, "Why? Because whatever I might know about you... I can't make you change. No one can." Her eyes soften visibly, Athena still looking on Kula with understanding despite the other girl's viciousness. "If you're unhappy, the change has to come from you."
She looks like she might have said more, but she freezes before the words can come out. That same unfocused look that heralded her reading of Kula earlier ghosts across her face, and within moments she whips her gaze around to fix in apprehension on Yamazaki. What she sees when she focuses on him dead-on, in person, seems to genuinely frighten her. His mind doesn't quite match his reputation. Everyone said he was a madman, a mindless animal... but though there's a taste of that, it's not quite what she feels working behind his bloodshot eyes. What she feels is a violent -deliberateness-. Reaching into his mind is like catching her hand in the gears and wheels of a massive, efficent grinder. His mind is a calculating engine, as freezing as Kula's ice, dedicated entirely on one thing and one thing only: drawing blood. Even if it's his own.
And he's certainly doing a lot of that now. The young psion, for the first time, lets a frown cross her face. And then, instead of attacking Kula again... Athena stands back. Her movements stilling, the young woman withdraws a little to simply watch the fight landscape. It's almost a tacit invitation for Kula to work out her 'differences' with Yamazaki, if that's what she really wants. But of course, Athena hopes the girl will listen to -her- words, as well.
COMBATSYS: Athena focuses on her next action.
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Kula 0/-------/---====|===----\-------\0 Athena
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Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki has left the fight here.
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Kula 0/-------/---====|===----\-------\0 Athena
The burst of freezing energy, frozen shrapnel, and all manner of unpleasantness manages to strike Athena. Kula draws her hand away from her mouth, fingers closing, the encrusted ice over her glove crumbling and falling to the floor beneath her as she continues to 'stand' upside down, feet rooted in those thick ice boots. Crimson eyes remain fixed on Athena, the girl's trait-like calm starting to settle back in now that the violet haired one isn't spouting off things she isn't supposed to know or going and talking in her head entirely uninvited.
She narrows her eyes when the girl seems not so much hurt as inspired to preach again, but she remains quiet, not interrupting. Especially since she seems to be admitting that she's right - that all her nosiness and butting into business that isn't hers is entirely useless. Kula likes to be right, especially about herself for a change! But her mouth curls into an upside down frown as Athena continues to speak. She says no one can make her change, but Kula isn't so convinced. There is at least one person in the world she's quite certain could enforce whatever will he wanted from her.
"If you can't change anything, then why do you talk about it." the girl asks back, her tone having become less hostile yet more cold at the same time. Athena's attention turns toward the match's resident monster - the title Chaos Agent has never been more appropriately designated. Kula doesn't follow suit, even when the sounds of bone crushing force reach the duo. It's as if she knows exactly what Yamazaki is doing without having to look. Instead she just stares at Athena silently, possibly digesting the girl's words, letting them sink in.
"You are right." she finally speaks up, her statement punctuated not by a pause but by the sound of another blood inducing blow off to the side. "But there is one thing you have wrong." The temperature drops, brilliantly white energy coursing over her fingertips and forearms, drifting crystals of spontaneously generated ice falling toward the ground beneath her dangling hair. "Ignorance doesn't kill."
The boots crumple and Kula drops, completing a very quick, tight flip to land on her feet in a low crouch. Ice rains down from the ceiling where she was, spilling over the ground around her. Another sound of fist smacking flesh resonates throughout the incomplete building but the girl doesn't blink in the slightest. "I do." In a blink, she's no longer there. Lacking the teleporting abilities of her assigned opponent, the girl is still obscenely fast. But Athena need not fear just yet, for the girl speeds not toward her but the crazed man on the bulldozer.
In the wake of her motion rushes a storm of power. Ice debris left over from her previous attack chase after the girl as if drawn by magnetic power. But that's not all - her aura brings with it a blizzard's worth of additional frozen matter as the teenager leaps into the air, all that power trailing like a tidal wave of pending assault.
She springs for the seat cage, gloved hands literally going for the side of the man's head as she attempts to establish a hold on him. It need only last a split second - that contact before everything she has brought with her to destroy him would come into play. All that power washes over the girl in its momentum, attempting to crash into Yamazaki, attempting to cake over his form where he sits, attempting to seal those newly opened wounds with a shell of crystaline.
If she connects long enough to unleash all that power, the ice will build up with frightening speed, entombing the South Synd killer beneath a few feet of diamond-like matter, leaving him rooted to his seat. Perhaps for good, if Kula has her way - a frozen fixture left to thaw eventually.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki endures Yamazaki's We Can Fix It - Yes We Can!.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////////// ]
Kula 0/-------/---====|===----\-------\0 Athena
[ ||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|---====
COMBATSYS: Kula successfully hits Yamazaki with Ice Coffin.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////////// ]
Kula 0/-------/-======|===----\-------\0 Athena
[ |||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 1|------=|=======
Athena's got at least that much right. Behind the slavering maniacal rage that sprays froth and blood on the controls of his beloved bulldozer in equal measure, there is nothing but overwhelming cruelty, an overwhelming desire to kill that trumps everything else. It makes Yamazaki see red in the worst way..
Oh wait.
That's his blood, isn't it?
"Ghk," Yamazaki chokes out a little bit as he wipes away blood and sweat from his view, slicking the mess off a glove onto one side. His heartbeat racing, he glares at his fist, his bulldozer still rolling lazily towards the duo, shifting lazily as it crumples a scattered SCION<tm> in its wake. It seems to roll regardless of whether he's actually driving it or not in a somewhat apalling expression of construction safety.
Blood was all over that claw.
But it was his blood, hot and pumping as it was.
She kills?
He thinks he can do a little better.
"Yeah...." Yamazaki murmurs. "That's my shit.."
"COME ON!!!!"
Crossing preternatural space in instants, Yamazaki leaps forward out of his rollcage holding one claw against the handbar. His heartbeat pounds like a kettle drum in his ears--and then hitches and slows. At the gentled touch to his temple, Yamazaki is frozen in a tomb of ice, outstretched arm locked in mid-slight, hand open and wide as if he's still thinking about tearing out Kula's eyes. He probably is.
His heartbeat slows to a standstill.
He can't hear anything. Can't smell anything. Can barely see. Can barely feel.
What a piss poor way to go...
...Nah, _fuck_ that.
A long crack shears the inner crystalline structures of the ice.
His heart beats.
Another crack, and his heart pounds.
His hand breaks free first, nerveless as the crimson lush drips from it. Then his skull. Then, thick chunks of ice exploding like feet-thick glass a moment later, Yamazaki explodes forward like a cannon out of his temporary prison, his body elongating in the feline nature as he twists in the air, large and dropping like a meteor.
A shadow falls over Kula.
And then -- Yamazaki.
"I DON'T THINK YOU HEARD ME!" the huge man roars sparkles (!?), all cabled sinew and stiff soggy leathers as he decends on Diamond. He's going to snatch the little kewpie doll. And then he's going to bite the everloving shit out of her. Even if he has to chew through a few feet of ice or whatever to do it.
See. He's gonna taste some good blood today!!
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Kula with ...!!.
- Power hit! -
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////////// ]
Kula 1/---====/=======|===----\-------\0 Athena
[ |||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|-----==
You'd think Yamazaki would stop at trying to tear Kula's throat out. That doesn't even begin to start Yamazaki's fabulous wonderful day. Kula's a little too tough to die because of that. Kula can't just be allowed to get away with that much, not after she stopped two of his Drills meant just for her. No. He's gonna do his damnedest to dislocate every limb in her body--and if she were any lesser, he'd probably end up tearing her limb from limb.
"You and that little bedpan headed Kusanagi, this little french pie right here--" he gestures, somewhere between Kula's left arm socket and right hip and probably more punching than anyone who hasn't accepted Jesus would be comfortable with yet. "All the same!!! Thinking that you're gonna kill me!!!" Yamazaki's hair shoots up straight like an alarmed cockatiel's or a shark's skin, the man frothing some more, "DARLIN YOU COULD PUT ME ON ICE ALL DAY!!!" Kula Diamond will never have children again, if Yamazaki's fist has anything to say about it, unloading into her stomach in a savage blur until he gets ahold of a handful of frosty blue hair, snatch her off her feet--
--and then swing her by a leg into the air until he axe kicks her right across the blade of his passing bulldozer.
"I've got the market cornered, Sweetness," he growls, all bile and dark amusement, dragging a tongue that seems about an inch or two too long across a dripping line of blood on his arm..
It seems an unnecessary vanity.
The mercenary's face is covered in gore already..
(SECRET YAMAZAKI OMAKE: Yama can roar sparkles because he just got done eating Athena's CD.)
While Kula had previously expressed a distaste for telepathic speech... that one statement of hers, in Athena's strict, uncompromising mind, excises all her right to be affronted. The young woman frowns as she's questioned, disapproval finally beginning to push out whatever kindness she might have shown the other girl.
Ignorance doesn't kill. SHE does, Kula claims. Something in Athena seems to snap at the words: foolishly arrogant, cliche, and avoidant of the issue as they are. The young woman, totally uncaring now if her psionic power troubles the other, barks straight into Kula's mind in retort, 'As I said. Ignorance kills. So do you. Makes you both one and the same, doesn't it. If you're so intent on claiming -you're- a killer, I suppose you can accept being ignorant too. Are you really so arrogant as to boast about the thing that makes you most pathetic?'
She does nothing. It's not in her to attack someone from behind while they're engaging another person, even outraged as she might now be. But that doesn't stop her words from barbing into Kula's thoughts. Her initial suspicions of Kula confirmed by that cold declaration of her murderousness, Athena now has few compunctions with twisting into the girl's mind and finding more and more wrong beneath the surface. 'And are you HAPPY to kill?' Her voice tears through with the resonance and volume of a shout, despite not coming from a throat. 'HAPPY to be what you are?'
It's so rare Athena loses her temper. But if Kula had known the violet-haired girl just a little better, she'd have known not to boast about her murderousness in front of her. 'All the power I have... is the power to show you what I see. And what I see is a kid's mind. No experiences, no wisdom, no comprehension of humanity... but a whole lot of ignorance. Cowardly-- and yet not beyond salvaging. Just afraid of stepping outside the safety that comes of being inhuman.'
Athena clenches her hands, gritting her teeth, trying to hold her outburst in-- but too outraged to really put forth that much effort. 'Don't pretend to me that there are no people who have overcome the situation that you are in.' She knows they exist. How could they not?
She goes silent, then, as Yamazaki attacks. Even knowing the man's nature as she does, seeing it in action stuns her for a few moments. '...Now you see what it is you are on par with. What you are the same as,' Athena finally says, very tersely, before she abruptly steps forward-- TOWARDS the horrific scene. Even angry as she is, she can't let this happen without doing something. With a huff of effort, the young woman snaps her hands up, trailing white psionic power, before she presses them forwards to discharge a sudden bolt of Psycho Power directly towards Yamazaki with blasting force.
With that grip, the girl grounds herself with Yamazaki for a fleeting moment, her hands becoming the conduit by which all that power can be focused, by which it can be brought to bear against the murderer. The ice crystalizes - a flash freeze, fluid-like chi that would make liquid nitrogen feel like taking a bath in a hot spa by comparison, floods the space around Yamazaki, acting as the congealing point for that block to form - that tomb in which she would be content to leave him. The people she's killed before - they were never any threat to her, nor did she even know them. Their names forgotten, their faces never known. But this man - her assassin's instinct resonates with his murderous intent. She can taste the killer in him; it's every bit a part of her. It's what she is. And unlike the others she had gotten rid of in the past, he was so very much a threat to her life. She would remember his name, his twisted visage forever. But it wouldn't matter. Because he would be dead.
She stares at him through the ice. Three feet thick, the molecular bonds rival that of diamond with her formidable chi backing it all up. Crimson eyes gaze upon her latest victim with the morbid yet somehow innocent curiosity of a child that had just killed a moth. Her hand extends, resting gloved finger tips against the surface of the frozen matter, two feet from his outstretched hand, frozen in place. She watches the vapor rise up off the newly made tomb as the air around it remains super-cooled beyond that of an artic freeze.
It isn't gory. It isn't bloody. No entrails, no broken limbs. Just a life snuffed out. Brutally cold, efficient, dispassionate. Suffocation. Hell of a way to go by all accounts. She wouldn't know. She doesn't care. There. Now she can get back to fighting that annoying mind reader. She's had enough of her 'helpful input' for the day.
Or so she thought. The voice is there again, speaking into her mind. Stiffly, Kula turns toward Athena, eyes narrowed, the fissure forming in the surface of her work of art going unnoticed.
'Makes you one and the same.'
Her mind isn't silent, though her lips remain pressed tightly together. Her mind is scattered, a whirlwind of reactions beneath the impassive shell anyone can see on the outside. <You speak as if you know so much. You call me ignorant, yet know nothing of me.>
'Are you really so arrogant as to boast about the thing that makes you the most pathetic?'
<It is what I am. I am a scorpion. You see something else, and it makes you react the way you do. But you don't even see the truth. You don't see the machine staring back at you. There is nothing pathetic about a machine. It is simply what it is. There is nothing to judge.>
The ice behind her explodes and the girl turns, seeing only the empty shell where a man had been encased, the sides of it crumbling as its center of mass has suddenly vanished. She notices the shadow too late. The ramifications of this oversight become abundantly clear when a set of teeth bite right through the thick, armored leather collar at her neck like tissue paper, a spray of blood splashing across the slowly collapsing monument of ice at her side.
'And are you HAPPY to kill? HAPPY to be what you are?'
<It doesn't matter if I'm happy or not. It doesn't change anything. I serve my purpose. I get to be happy sometimes. Better than some have it.>
An audible crack announces her forearm giving way, her elbow twisted in a direction it shouldn't go.
'And what I see is a kid's mind.'
<And if I could see your mind, I would see something entirely different. You were not made in a lab. You were not crafted to be a killer. You have money, fame, friends, fortune. And you judge me from your castle on high. Life must be wonderful there, that castle on the clouds. It must be easy to preach when no one has a choice but to listen to you. That must make you happy.>
With all the piston-like force of a tractor engine, Yamazaki's fist crushes the girl's stomach, bruising and smashing organs, her combat routines at a loss to even keep track of the mounting damage. What they do conclude is that in no uncertain terms she very well may be in a terminal siutation. She might die at his hands. The hands of a killer.
'Just afraid of stepping outside the safety that comes of being human.'
<If I am human, then the pain I feel is real; the loneliness not simply a misfiring of some part of my brain but the truth. If I am human, then I have a heart; and hearts can bleed, hurt, and die. I would rather be a thing than to feel that pain.>
She begins to collapse but it is only a devil's vain hope that he has finished as he grips her hair and tears her off her feet, taking several long strands in the process. She doesn't even notice when he shifts his hold to her ankle, and the crushing impact that breaks her over the blade of the bulldozer goes unregarded but for the registering of more broken ribs in her left side as she folds to the ground, a shattered, bleeding pile.
'Don't pretend to me that there are no people who have overcome the situation that you are in.'
<It's different. There were people for him. He has a sister. A friend. Alone, it is impossible. It doesn't matter. I am going to die. I wish I could have...changed. But no one cares for a scorpion.>
'...Now you see what it is you are on par with. What you are the same as.'
<A monster, like him. I've killed before, and I deserve to die just like he does. If he walks away from this fight he will kill again but the blood of his victims that fills the gutters will never pour into your white castle, will it. You'll never have to dirty your hands as us murderers deal with each other in the streets below. At least you'll be happy. That seems to matter a lot to you. You're nice... maybe with your life I would have been too... It's nice that you care. I'm sorry, I- ... Run.>
Her mind's voice cuts out, replaced by something else. Something frigid, cold, almost robotic. And it doesn't want to talk. The broken girl stirs, slowly at first. A broken arm moving then stopping after its futile effort. Her other hand planting in a pool of blood that freezes at the contact, as more spills from her neck. Her legs move. A cracking pop signals her thigh bone snapping back into place where it belongs before she shuffles up. Her motions limp, lifeless, forced, driven by an engineered desire to survive on an instinctual level, a body on autopilot.
She rises to standing, her one good hand going to her throat, resting there briefly, a shimmer of white freezing the horrific chewed wound closed. It will stop the bleeding for a little while. She glances at her dangling left arm, staring at the broken thing with almost silent indifference. Her right hand reaches over, clasping around it at the elbow, a cast of ice forming over the entirety of the limb as she drops it into a hypothermic state, deadening the nerves that would otherwise be begging her to scream in agony.
Even as she creates the improvised first aid, power builds up around her. Something has been unleashed, and it doesn't intend to go quietly. It starts as a small whirlwind of white, but rapidly builds, swelling into a cyclone that rips anything loose in the area into its endlessly circling pull. She lifts one arm - her good arm, slowly over her head. Her mind is silent, her eyes staring forward, unseeing, unfocused. The vortex of liquid chi, frozen matter, and anything not nailed down tight enough to avoid getting caught up in the advancing storm growing in volume, feeling the ground floor of the unfinished building with a deafening roar.
And then her arm drops to her side, hanging limply like it's ice-cast opposite on her left. And with that gesture, the entirety of that power is unleashed. An explosion, with Kula at ground zero, errupts. Tearing pillars off their foundations, blasting through the half-plastered ceiling overhead, inviting the building to possibly collapse and bring this entire affair to an end. Crystaline tears rest against her cheeks, frozen in place, a single word escaping her lips in the midst of the cacophany.
"Die."
The vapor of her breath hanging in the air as lingering mist.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki endures Athena's Psycho Shoot.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
Kula 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Athena
[ |||| ]
Yamazaki 1|-------|=======
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki fails to interrupt Freeze Execution from Kula with Yondan Drill.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
Kula 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Athena
[ ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|--=====
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
Kula 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Athena
Yamazaki laughs.
Yamazaki giggles.
Yamazaki cries.
Yamazaki moans.
Yamazaki howls.
There isn't even enough blood in all the world that'll stop him at this point. He's just going to beat that little powder puff til she's purple and blue...purple and bluer. Doesn't matter. The mercenary slaps a knee laughing uproariously as his bulldozer just kind of roves by and buries itself in the foundations of the building. He doesn't even stop laughing when the entire substructure begins to shake.
Not even when the strawberry superstar wings some -- some kinda shit at him that has some, some kind of measurable effect that makes him feel some kind of way. The kinda shit being that sparkly fruit rollup of energy that lands on him. The measurable effect being to explode him violently. And it makes him feel--
A /lot/.
"I FUCKING LOVE THIS SHIT!!!!"
Yamazaki almost explodes all over the ground there on the spot, not even beginning to think about stopping, his nerves alight with some kinda crazy. It almost rocks him off his feet, his body crackling with that psionic force. But it's an oddly serpentine move that rolls the huge killer back onto one boot, his back bent backwards at a 45 degree angle focused mostly at one point in his spine until he can see Kula and Athena without directly facing him.
He almost drowns in his own bodily fluids, that's how bad it is.
One hand drags on the earth behind him. The other is stuffed into his pocket.
"AhHEHEeeh..." Yamazaki moans loudly, his eyes bloodshot.
He isn't even stopping when the hurricane hits, causing his blood to freeze on his body.
"Guess..guess...gkkhnheh heh heh... I'll have to show you my sadomazo too.." he murmurs at Athena, leering at her upside down. But that cyclone of force is beginning to start carrying some of the lighter SCIONS (we think they made at least some of these with cardboard) "...But... still got some business--"
The dragging claw digs deep into the dirt.
He doesn't even stop when he has to anchor himself to keep from flying away in the storm. That's because he's got a specific kind of party in his mind. And it all--starts--with--
The mercenary yips and howls as he wriggles across the ground using that one claw, not even bothering to right himself until he's right on top of Kula, his arm becoming livid with force as he just /chews through/ layers of biting wind and ice with the sound of steel grinding on steel, his arm a whirl of power as he gets a little closer to Kula.. so close he can almost feel his fist sinking into her chest, chewing until it comes out the other end, a little cyclone of his own, right, tight into her--
Kula may notice that he got exactly 1 cm closer than he did last time, before he's just blown the fuck away into the sky, on curtains of blood, a howling rain. He goes through an airborne automobile, and finally just impacts the building in a blast of chi and force, knocking most of what used to be an entire floor down onto another level.
And another level.
And another..
The mercenary laughs his ass off the entire way down.
COMBATSYS: Athena fails to reflect Freeze Execution from Kula with Shield Psycho Reflector.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////// ]
Kula 0/-------/-------|=======\===----\1 Athena
Athena's loss of temper melts away instantly as she beholds the scene before her. In the wake of it all, the girl simply looks tired. There was never anything too permanent about her anger; rage was always quickly replaced with compassion in her mind. Besides, the mind she feels pressing back against her insistences is not one that will break easily before a mere lecture. No, Kula's mind is fixed. A place of endless frost, a wasteland flash-frozen into one emotion: despairing futility.
'I know enough. Enough to know there is a person beneath the machine. A girl with a potential I hate to see wasted. A girl who deserves all the same love I have. Who deserves happiness, the same as me. Who I would help step past her fears to find all those things, if she would just let me...'
Athena tries to press forward against the sudden surge of chi. Her right hand extends forwards, a glimmering shield of energy beginning to form, but it's too little and too late to fully stop the icestorm that blasts Yamazaki clear out of the fight. Ice crests over her shield, scoring deeply into her, the whipping energy scourging her nearly to the bone. Athena just smiles, even as her face begins to run with blood.
'You don't know what I've seen. You don't know what I've dealt with. What I have had to fight; what I have had to fear. I wasn't made. I wasn't born a killer. But I've seen my share of them. My life has its scars you cannot see. And that's what it's like for everyone. Nobody lives in the untouchable castles you imagine. Blood flows everywhere, Kula. It runs into every crack. It touches every life. Some of us simply choose not to be the ones who draw it.'
And though she's an eighteen year-old girl, a mere teenager, there is something ineffably mothering about Athena when she reaches forward-- already radiating a calming warmth-- and tries, very slowly, to place a hand on Kula's shoulder. To psionically soothe down the powerful self-preservation mechanisms at work in the girl's mind. To eventually convince Kula it is safe when she draws the other girl to her chest, and wraps her arms around the broken experiment.
'Life means bleeding, hurting, and dying. It doesn't matter what you are: a thing, or something else. No one can choose where they come from, or how much they start with. Some people start alone, like you. But that has never stopped them making lives for themselves. That has never stopped people from finding them worth loving.
'-Nothing- is predestined. And you are not alone. You have only to ask, and I -will- help you.'
As if to prove that point, Athena's energy begins-- slowly and carefully, as always-- to press inward. It brings with it a pleasant, soothing sensation: a sense of wholeness felt as much in the mind as in the body. A sense of unrestrained love floods through the connection as Athena works her healing energy into Kula, knitting the brutal damage caused by Yamazaki. The young singer openly shares all the love she's felt from her family and her friends, letting Kula directly experience that sensation within her own heart. Even if only for a few moments.
'I don't know if you will listen. I don't know if this will mean the deaths of even more people.' Athena leans a little sadly against Kula, still bleeding herself. The experiment might feel her hair weighing down with the blood she just drew. 'But even though I can't be sure what will happen, this time... I choose to do this anyway.'
She can feel it. This girl isn't entirely lost. Merely trapping herself into a corner; merely excusing her behavior out of fear of the unknown. 'Like anyone else, you deserve a chance.'
The silent yet verbose exchange ended, a switch flicked, and a horrific blizzard unleashed, all in the space of seconds. What few cameras weren't destroyed by Kula Diamond's ultimate counter measure have their lenses coated in thick, opaque ice. The tape recordings will show the brutal, possibly stomach churning assault Yamazaki carried out on the youngest combatant. They will show the girl getting back up, slowly, and then all is white. To their eyes.
To the trio present in the building surely not to last too much longer, an entire tapestry of events play out, hidden from the eyes of the world. A powerful blast of Athena's Psycho Power crashes into Yamazaki. But rather than slow him as one might expect... hope... pray... it only seems to invigorate him. With renewed fervor, driven on like a starving animal chasing wounded prey, he tears into that horrific storm of power. Anything to reach her, anything to break her further. There are limits that even engineered life can take. Eventually the labrats would have to give up, their billion dollar investment broken by a rabid Southtown dog. Back to the drawing board. Make the next one a bit less susceptible to having its body carved through by a drillbit of chi affixed to a human fist, perhaps.
But as he forces his way closer, the storm only builds. A cyclone of blinding, white energy churns, whipping around Kula as the girl stares back at the man, trying to force him away, trying to destroy him with all the power she can muster in her state. Her one good arm folds over herself, the girl hunching down, her feet lifting off the ground as she hovers at the eye of the storm, curled up, in a fetal position but for the frozen arm at her side. Every last shread of energy she can control is forced into the tornado, slowing Yamazaki's hand down, little... by little..., fighting against that hungry, grinding drill bit of blood-rending energy at the end of his hand.
He almost makes it this time before the storm carries the killer away like a tornado tossing cars, tractors, beams, and boards aside. Almost, but not quite. The attack doesn't end, however, nor is Yamazaki its only victim. If Athena had headed the warning, she almost definitely could have avoided the harm she incurs as she forces her way through it, using her own energy to muster a faint defense. Like an umbrella trying to keep a typhoon at bay, it helps her move forward, but sadly spares her little of the savage damage caused by the roaring cyclone.
She continues to speak, but unlike before, this time her words are met with the silence of a sealed tomb; emotions locked behind a frozen wall of fractured mental defenses. She isn't the target of the storm, but the closer she gets to the center of it, the worse it gets. Cold... bitter... lethal cold. That Athena makes it through at all is a testiment to her determination. Until at last she steps out of the storm and into the eye where the creator of that blizzard of desperation hovers, legs tucked up against her stomach, head lowered, seemingly oblivious to the world around her or even of the storm that rages on, practically beyond her control at this point.
Gritted teeth, frozen tears at her eyes, Kula Diamond continues to bleed power, as if she has lost the control to reign it in, as if it will rage through her until she runs out and expires, falling to the ground as a lifeless husk. There's no telling how long it would have gone on, how long she would have stayed that way, before the eighteen year old breaches the sanctuary in the middle, moving out of that swath of white energy encompassing the area.
Nothing seems to change then, either, until she reaches forward, her hand coming to rest on Kula's shoulder. The right person, in the right place, at the right time, to safe a life. Maybe it's fate or destiny. Maybe it's just coincidence. Only when Athena makes that contact and makes that effort to soothe the girl does the winter's tempest begin to subside. Slowly at first, barely noticeable, Kula begins to uncurl, her feet reaching back down to the ground beneath her, and the snowstorm emits the groan of a dying beast and at last collapses into a mountain of snow, ice, and debris.
Her feet touch the ground just as Athena pulls the child into a gentle, calming hug. The first such expression of concern the girl has ever felt. Her eyes are closed, fingers of her good hand clenched tightly. The blue in her hair bleeds out, leaving soaked auburn locks. The temperature around her loses its frigid edge, though remains cool as the remains of the snowstorm begin the slow process of melting.
For all her efforts, Athena continues to be met by nothing but silence, by a mind retreated to somewhere so deep in Kula's consciousness it can barely be felt. No response, except for the confused experiment clinging to her, resting in that embrace as if it alone held the power to fight back all her fears. A tremble courses through her. The expenditure of so much energy, the loss of so much blood, both from her neck, and internally, begins to catch up with her. The toll of this fight has been severe on the engineered creation. Her body is ice cold, as if Athena just pulled a drowing victim out of a frozen fishing hole. Her power to regulate that Kusanagi brand ice that flows through her veins pushed to its limits, she feels as if she will freeze to death if the internal bleeding doesn't kill her first.
It isn't until Athena extends more of her power that anything changes for the better. A sensation of feeling, but even beyond that, courses through the broken girl's body. Injuries of the physical sort are nudged back away from the terminal point. Injures of the mental sort take longer, however, and at first it seems that there is to be no headway made there. One can only hope for so much after all that's happened after all...
The sound of voices echoing outside the build herald Kula's flock of handlers in a hurry to come check on their project. They've been enroute since the moment the cameras went white. Not even the mauling by Yamazaki stirred them from their observational booth. The hell would they do against a rabid wolf capable of killing them all anyway? But when the cameras went white, they had to come and see what happened to their toy. The readings just before the cameras went were off the chart. They might be on the verge of a breakthrough here - if she survived.
Slowly, the girl's body warms to Athena's effort. Kula's hand unclenches then retightens, this time with her fingers digging into Athena's top as if she had no intention of ever letting go. Her eyes, now violet, stare to the side as she rests her head on the other girl, seeming to focus on nothing at all. "T-thank you," her frozen lips whisper. <...for a chance.> Her eyes close slowly, eyelids heavy, the fingers of her closed hand relaxing their grip slightly. "...for the feeling."
<I... I must have a heart, because right now it hurts so bad.>
She falls quiet, asleep in Athena's arms.
COMBATSYS: Kula has left the fight here.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Athena 1/----===/=======|
Log created on 19:53:32 01/04/2009 by Yamazaki, and last modified on 19:10:39 02/15/2009.