Description: A long time ago.. "Once a fake, always a fake. Once a traitor, always a traitor. Keep her from me if you think it'll help. But you can't stop fate. Drawn together like that, she'll betray your trust. Just like she did me. And once I wring the answers from her... I think I'm going to do us both a favor and tear her limb from limb.. Because I'm the only one who can."
In their flight from Gedo, K' and Shurui had separated from one another. Shurui had turned back towards Hotaru's, striving for that one safe place left in a city gone to shit; K' had angled away towards the city limits, unwilling to be caught either by the NESTS pursuers Marise had sent after him, or by any of Geese's cronies who might recognize him and report his transgression to Howard.
Not that Geese would have the time to deal with a single upstart teenager at a time like this.
Nonetheless, better safe than sorry. It was a creed K' had taken a considerably long time to learn, and one he still had trouble applying in all but the most dire, personally important situations. The young man drops his pursuers with the consummate, crafty skill of a fox, and it's nighttime before he finally stops in the fringes of the forest ringing the city.
Breathing easily, his yellow eyes gleaming through the dusk as he glances over his shoulder, the young runaway watches behind him in that attitude for some time-- catlike in his unswaying, statuesque attention-- before he abruptly turns back forward again and begins to head for the edge of the forest. Once he's absolutely sure he's lost pursuit, he thinks, he'll return and continue his reconnaisance of just what is going on.
And then, the burning scent of cinders winds through the air.
Hardly detectable at first, possibly a vagary of some lonely camp fire in the distance, it's something easily enough discarded. By most. Of course, some of us aren't like most people. Some of us don't head towards safety. Some of us know a thing or two about something called 'heat.'
Some of us know you better than you'd like.
Most NESTS pursuits in the region were simple affairs of limited resources. Most of the Cartel's massive budget was canted towards just that one thing alone.
It takes a whole village to kill a dragon, after all.
He'd left immediately after healing up enough to do so, likely to Zero's infinite annoyance. But he left not without his customary retinue of men, not even entertaining the thought of a suitably vapid beauty to sate his erstwhile fancy. His mood wasn't so easily quenched, not by the mind nor by the flesh. He was out today for the sake of his blood. So be it may that it comes as no surprise or much, when K' turns at one point or another in his endless chase, /Krizalid is right there./
"Long time no see... 'Kay Dash.'"
He is as lucid as his countenance is dark. Hands in the pockets of a set of black twill cargo pants, he's not wearing the familiar coat of his NESTS trappings today. At least, not detectably. Who knows what those eyes of his can see right now? What he thinks. What he will say.
He let slip that word like the curse of a fond rival.
K' catches the first whiff of cinder on the slight breeze created by the turn of his head. All at once, he goes still. There's something in the air beyond just that hint of burning, something that resonates more deeply in the blood. It's an unclean feeling, a sensation of wrongness that tugs at the very fibers of his being. A feeling that seems to get right in between that which comprises his most fundamental building blocks. A feeling that stirs the Kusanagi fire in him to recognize a copy of itself nearby.
The runaway experiment doesn't even have to turn around to know Krizalid is right there.
"Not long enough," comes the terse reply. Tensely, his hands open and shut. His stance is already shifting defensively, years of habit reflecting the dislike between the two men. Still, he does not turn to face Krizalid-- perhaps an insult, perhaps an indication he does not trust himself to face his so-called 'better'-- instead content to remain standing as he is.
"I thought I'd have to dig you out," K' continues, conversationally. "You seem to have saved me some work."
He shifts, stepping forward. The silver chain hanging at his hip from his I.D. wallet jingles audibly. THe commander's mannerisms are like that of a cat, approaching slowly, but only as his whim strikes. There is no particular purpose to his stride, no importance, only a nascent grace that precludes most of the jangled automata they cut out of the sheet in the Cartel.
"You don't face me," he picks up on immediately.
"If I saved you so much work, little one, why won't you face me?"
Were K' facing him, he'd see him. Facing him today without that gaudy appliance of a coat he wears, only with the barest minimum of wired hardware. No trace of the glimmering battlesuit. A bared arm extends, with a hand sheathed not in talons but only a fingerless glove, whose leather creaks as he opens one darkened hand against K'.
"I thought it might be high time we had a chat."
Scarred eyes narrow whip-thin against the darkness.
"Or are you afraid to face yourself?"
He shifts, stepping forward. The silver chain hanging at his hip from his I.D. wallet jingles audibly. THe commander's mannerisms are like that of a cat, approaching slowly, but only as his whim strikes. There is no particular purpose to his stride, no importance, only a nascent grace that precludes most of the jangled automata they cut out of the sheet in the Cartel.
"You don't face me," he picks up on immediately.
"If I saved you so much work, little one, why won't you face me?"
Were K' facing him, he'd see him. Facing him today without that gaudy appliance of a coat he wears, only with the barest minimum of wired hardware. No trace of the glimmering battlesuit. A bared arm extends, with a hand sheathed not in talons but only a fingerless glove, whose leather creaks as he opens one darkened hand against K'.
"I thought it might be high time we had a chat."
Scarred eyes narrow whip-thin against the darkness.
"Or are you afraid to face yourself?"
K' exhales a silent breath that stirs the very tips of his bangs. He picks up on the metallic ring of the chain swinging from Krizalid's hip, and his own hip cants in an unconscious, matching way: his stance shifting from its tenseness to something more indolent, insolent, and relaxed. K''s head dips, a sardonic smirk edging along his mouth. He can hear, just from Krizalid's forward movements, that the other man isn't wearing that feather-riddled coat. Nor the over-elaborate battlesuit.
What does he mean by it, coming here so unequipped? Is this an insult?
Well. That 'little one' quip certainly is, even if Krizalid's lack of the suit isn't. K''s back visibly tenses again, his hands-- bare of anything but thin leather gloves, in a gesture oddly mirroring of Krizalid's absent battlesuit-- winding shut. "In good time," he eventually replies, his voice grating, a layer of dismissive insult to the response. As if to explain his odd, newfound temperance, he goes on to explain coolly, "I learned a couple things since I left."
His refusal to say Krizalid's name is obvious: a distinct hole punched through their tense interactions.
"Che..." K' finally glances over his shoulder, his yellow eyes settling on Krizalid's own. He's straightened slightly, his alert, aggressive stance no longer its customary slouch. "So what are you waiting for...?"
Could it be construed as an insult? Was it meant to be?
Yeah, right.
Who would Krizalid be if he were ever completely inocuous?
Whatever the real answer is, Krizalid seems uncaring to reveal it. In odd time to the cool response of K', Krizalid's voice shifts to a similar meter, as if K' were speaking into a voice recorder, playing back his responses, just ever so slightly altered in pitch. "You mean to tell me someone taught something like you patience?"
He snorts.
"Saa. You clones all lie like children.."
In a contrast to the suddenly alert posture of his opposite, Krizalid is still the languid careful observer he was only a moment prior, even as his heart begins to race. The dismissive catches his pause only a moment, eliciting only the faintest of responses; his eyes begin to drift across that tensing form. Though his right arm slithers to his side as if boneless, his left hand is still in its pocket as he takes another step. Two more and he begins to circle K' to the rhythm of the chain at his hip. Slow and methodical, a buzzard over the kill.
"I'm gonna make this quick for you."
A beat passes; it's easy to believe he intends to attack at that exact moment.
"The truth is; I'm not here to kill you. Not yet; there's a feeling I wanted to discuss. With someone who might know what it's like being me. I had a suspicion. I wanted to see if I was right."
"A woman got between me and my target the other day...a woman who is very important to me. And I think you know who I'm talking about."
By this point, his voice is a low, deadly growl.
The mirrored tone is eerie. Momentarily, a flicker passes through K''s yellow eyes... a slight gleam that, if one looked closely enough, could be construed as both unsettled and repulsed. The impression is evanescent, soon replaced by a razor-edged sneering that looks far more at home on K''s cold features. "Yeah... someone taught me patience. Taught me this." His ungloved right hand lifts. "Taught me more than I ever learned in NESTS."
He doesn't go on to talk too much about who. His jaw winds shut on the tail of his words, his expression hardening into inscrutability.
K''s coldness doesn't last long, however. For all he's changed since Krizalid saw him last, some things are eternal. The barb narrows his eyes instantly, his teeth baring briefly in a snarl. "I'm -not- a clone," he insists, even though he doesn't know for sure, even though all he has to prove that statement are faded memories no real clone could have: memories, and the fact that Shurui's eyes tell him he has a blood twin.
His temper riled, Krizalid's circling implying imminent attack, K' is considerably less relaxed now. His hands coil restlessly, his stance turning constantly to keep himself facing Krizalid. The suggestion he might know what this feeling of Krizalid's is like-- might know what it's like being him-- gives him pause, however. His expression wars between disgust at the suggestion, and inevitable curiosity. A curiosity that is soon satisfied with possibly the last thing K' wanted to hear.
Terror, coupled with that familiar feeling of utter failure, clutches at the back of K''s mind. "Where is she now? What happened to her? If you've taken her--" His voice has sunk to a mirroring growl, his posture bristling with possessive threat.
Krizalid pauses, his slouch oddly characteristic as eyes just a little too sharp in attitude flick over the proud display, in a lazy half-lidded countenance. When that chilling edge of a sneer passes Krizalid, by fancy the clone shifts, revealing rows of enticed white teeth, twisting the scars at his cheeks. His eyes are quick; it takes him no time at all to pick up on the difference. "Nice," he comments darkly, and if even for a fleeting moment, he is genuinely impressed, sallowing eyes flashing in the light.
"Even Kula doesn't have that kind of control."
Moving with every intent of instilling that restless feeling deep in K', Krizalid's stride is shifting, his characteristically unnatural and fluid gait every bit the counterpart to the center of his circle. He faces him side-on, not giving K' the chance to really get a good look at him, the rattling of that chain for moments the only sound in the pregnant night.
"Pity you didn't stay longer. See. I learned a lot more than that."
His free hand crackles with electric impulse.
There is an audible snap, and that impulse rips through the earth, causing a miniscule rip there in the stone before dissipating. With the energy seems to follow Krizalid's patience.
"--you'll /what/, douchebag?"
Krizalid halts, slowly turning to face K', in his burgeoning threat. His eyes sink low, trailing up what he instinctively understands to be K's carotid artery. The thought is fleeting, like Krizalid's anger, especially where traitors are concerned. His voice rips at the air as so much ragged steel. "I'm the only one who can cook you. So don't think just because you got a thought in your head that it didn't start with me."
He raises that hand.
"Which is the point. You know what that woman means to us. --she's gone now," he mentions simply, wishing to do away with the pointless fear that just fucks with reason. But at the same time, he enjoys the imprecision of saying it to K'. From there, he can follow the thought and the feeling. In a long elaborate and heated breath, he slides his other free hand away into his other pocket. He doesn't need to really ask anything at this point; K's reaction betrays his circumstance.
"I didn't come out here to kill you."
That grin, again.
"I wanted to thank you."
Where once K' would have taken that bland, offhand little compliment as a simultaneous validation and humiliation, his expression clearly betraying the way it nicked at his deep-rooted insecurities, now he has at least enough presence of mind to restrain himself. Little is displayed save a mere prickling of the everpresent rage seated behind his eyes, which have already tightened around the edges.
His silence at the mention of Kula is eloquent. It cuts off any further discussion of the girl created solely out of K''s self-liberation.
Though his outward demeanor seems unusually calm, the way his eyes flick to follow Krizalid's little display is too fast to be anything but unimaginably restless: the little slip validating Krizalid's efforts. That the discussion has moved to his sister is clearly setting K' on edge, the latter's voice grating audibly like a sharpening blade as he finishes in answer, "--I'll kill you. She's not yours to take."
His eyes follow Krizalid's lifting hand. She's gone, he says. Even though K' knows Krizalid's only framing it like that to fuck with him, K' still can't help the frustrated rage that wells up in him at the imprecision of it. A canine bares itself with a sharp gleam, heat smoking about his lowered right hand as he snaps, "Fine. Be a coy bitch about it. I'm going to find her. So if you're done wasting my time..."
Krizalid thanks him. K' pauses visibly, his eyes narrowing. "For what? You're not going to get her back. I wouldn't allow it, even if she -wasn't- disgusted with the very idea of you..."
Krizalid just keeps squeezing.
It's something he'll never get tired of, trying to find that one little notch in K' that he can insert a knife into and twist until he hears him cry out. Making K' nervous, making him restless, was just the start of what he'd like to do to the little copycat.
All in due time.
Krizalid meets that bridled rage in his opposite with a cool everpresence that only seems to mask a bitter emptiness running hotter than forges. It's only natural. That fucking fire was a part of them both, wasn't it?
Krizalid pauses thoughtfully as K' finishes his line of thought, his insistence that Krizalid doesn't own everything about K'. It's taken with a grain of salt.
And then Krizalid pointfully ignores him.
"It's like this," he explains patiently, as if happy to do so. "Whether you wanted to or not, you brought that woman back to me. She ran from me, but she runs to you because, as pointless as you are, you /are/ me. Because you're here. She's here. Get it?"
All of it believed utterly.
"You can feel that we're drawn together by blood," he says, speaking of him and Whip. "You know that that's the only thing that's left for you right now. The only warmth you've ever really felt. That's what fate is."
He pauses again, as K' continues, his body stilled from that circle he completed only a moment or two ago. More chatter he has little interest in, more the insistence of a chick speaking to its father. Che. Something easily dismissed, and Krizalid takes in a heady breath, seeming to ready himself again until K' speaks just that last. Just that... last.
Though his satisfied pragmatic's smile never fades, his left eye tightens in a visible twitch.
".... I'll let you in on a little secret, Kay Dash."
Krizalid steps forward, closing the distance between the copy and himself with the amiable gait of a friend, a neighbor, a colleague. Winsome in its cattish appeal, it would almost be difficult to think it hostile. But his lazy glance never really drifts too far from K's neck..
"Once a fake, always a fake. Once a traitor, always a traitor. Keep her from me if you think it'll help. But you can't stop fate. Drawn together like that, she'll betray your trust. Just like she did me. And once I wring the answers from her... I think I'm going to do us both a favor and tear her limb from limb.."
"Because I'm the only one who can."
He really thinks he'd like to see him afraid..
Even all of K''s newfound composure can't save him from Krizalid's methodical, skillful nettling. Krizalid was always the one who troubled K' most: his heckling constant, his station a reminder of K''s own failures, and his maliciousness towards his 'clone' seemingly without bounds. Growing up in Krizalid's shadow, K' swiftly learned to react to everything he says and does with defensiveness, with anger, and with fear. Even now, years later, it seems little has changed.
"I'm -not- you. And she's with me because of that." K' sounds confident, but there's a brittle quality to his bravado. Something seems strained about his voice. "I saw it the one time she ever really talked about you. She pities you, you sad fuck. She's afraid of you. Used to be scared of me just for looking like you..."
K' is visibly tense and on edge, his figure wound as tight as violin strings. It's as if it takes all that energy just for him to fight the insecurity welling up in him. The uncertain voice in him that wonders if Krizalid is right... if Whip is only with him because she's running from something else... if she'll somebody leave him just the same way she left Krizalid. "I'm her brother, her -real- brother," he insists, his voice steeling again as he states the one thing he has to believe as utter truth. "She came to me because of that. Because of it, she won't leave. You're just pissed cause you fucked up and lost her..."
He starts forwards, himself, to meet Krizalid. His demeanor blooms with threat, his hackles almost visibly rising as he postures like an animal. "She won't betray me," he repeats, hands tightening. "So you can keep your favor. Doesn't matter though, you won't get a chance to try it... I plan to kill you before then..."
"..Heh."
That left eye of his remains a tight slit, the black of his pupil stabbing out to focus on K' like nothing else. K' talks about him. That much annoys him, to an unreal extent that forces his heartbeat into a rising pound, the bitterness in his spirit aching just to reach out and clip K's voicebox. To have a newer, better version of K' made that isn't so obnoxious. Then he'd kill that too.
He'd like that.
Riled, Krizalid tilts his head curiously, the seeping draw of bitterness turning his tongue to acid. "So. Who do you think you are? You're /me/, you limp dick. Just a carbon copy, just a duplicate wannabe. No matter how much you stomp around throwing around lint, you aren't the real anything. Just an insolent clone. Just nothing. You think she doesn't know that?" He meets K's advance with another step of his own, rising out of his slouch like a cobra spreading its hood. With the danger between the two becoming obvious, it's a little more real now. A little more serious.
"Difference between me and you? I know better."
He cuts K' off at the pass by lifting a hand to him, one thumb held tight across his middle and index fingers, his arm bent at the elbow slightly. There's not enough force in his shoulder for it to he a hit, the angle dtoo strange, though for Krizalid it might not be. As if to stop K', he holds that hand right up in his face, hovering but not actually doing anything.
"So: Shut it."
His hand flickers with power. Then, if K' isn't faster than he is, he's going to flick him in the skull with two fingers, an explosion of light, fire, wind and pure force accompanying the act. K' will be on his ass seeing stars for more than enough time for Krizalid to just walk. away.
"Fucking fake.."
Vicious, malignant smirking starts to slice across K''s expression. He can smell the bitterness and hate coming off his 'brother' like a miasma, and the satisfaction of having stung Krizalid with his words is enough to override both his previous insecurity. The reprieve is short-lived; the subsequent insults Krizalid hurls cause that smirking to falter. It vanishes swiftly into the ugly look of rage that replaces it.
"You're fucking deluded. Still spouting that worthless propaganda shit... You think NESTS told you the truth when they said you were real? That they told any of us the truth? I've got memories. Memories that turned out true. I got a sister, a blood sister, a sister who's suffered for me--" his bare right hand tightens noticeably, "--and who I'll never let you near again. You ever thought about it? Maybe YOU'RE the fake--"
Krizalid's hand flickers into his face. Reacting on a hairtrigger, K' gets his own hand up defensively with a shielding flash of fire, instants before that flare of power explodes. Some of the force of it mitigated, K' manages to control his backwards stumble: but the intensity of the explosion temporarily blinds him, his stance momentarily broadcasting the full awkward uncertainty of loss of sight. His right hand still upraised, the young man growls out a sour note as he hears Krizalid simply walk away.
"She's MY twin, Krizalid. I have proof." He can't forget his scant memories, those faded things he'd sometimes thought were just NESTS plants up until they truly did lead him to a living, breathing sister. "What've YOU got? Nothing..."
Click.
A little bit aways now, Krizalid clips open a silver hard-cased cell phone, his elaborate features lit up by the backlit display as he dials a number that doesn't really exist. K's words stung, in ways he wouldn't ever bother to admit to anybody else. The idea that NESTS was lying to him, that the only thing he really has left can and would turn on him--is truth that the clone was determined not to realize.
"Proof...?"
Though aggravated, his voice is far off now. He staves off the thought that something else could exist, something that K' had that he didn't. He must mean those thoughts in his head. Krizalid knows this because it's just the kind of thinking he'd have if he were a good for nothing traitor. Even at a distance, it wouldn't be hard for K' to hear the enamel of his teeth squeal.
"I /told/ you already.."
He only spares K' the lightest of glances. "Those thoughts that felt so original in your head? The memories about the grass fields and that living, breathing sister of yours? The shit that you thought was just a NESTS plant?" He could recant with startling clarity, if he had to. But he doesn't bother. He just leans over, tapping his temple in a very obvious and juvenile sort of way.
"Where the fuck do you think they came from, genius?"
"See.." He takes another meandering step away, starting to feel a little better. The difference that he was intent on impressing upon K', was that there were people who abandoned their obligations, and there were people who stuck with them. And there were consequences for people who didn't measure up. "You'd better /hope/ for your sake that I'm real. It's the best you can ever hope for. Because you can't stop me."
"Because you're not even good enough to be my fake."
As if suffering a change of heart, he makes a point; he lifts the handset to his ear. "Jones. Pick me up at my nanite location, in five. Bring six units. I found that toy of ours skulking around in the forest. Yeah. I'll see you then." He snaps the phone shut. He doesn't say a whole lot else to K'.
Krizalid makes sure by the time it gets on there, it's a ' again
COMBATSYS: K' has started a fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Krizalid has joined the fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Krizalid
He's officially been here too long. Fear for his sister, and perhaps a slight hope Krizalid would give away what happened to her... both resulted in him staying his hand and lingering to listen a few minutes too many. But he's done listening now. He's done with this verbal sparring. The phone's out. He knows what Krizalid plans to do next. He could use the time to turn and run, to escape like a cringing coward... or--
"I won't LET YOU TAKE THEM." The temperature flares with his temper, the chill air warming. This, now, should be so much more familiar to Krizalid... the sudden, volatile rage that raises K''s voice in an attitude perhaps no less juvenile than Krizalid's taunting. These two brothers never could interact without using their claws on one another. "They're true. I know they are. You can't make me doubt them. You can't even -prove- NESTS made me..." The dare is clear.
His right hand shuts hard, as its owner thinks of the burn scars on his sister's own palm. Thoughts of those wounds return his confidence whenever it falters, whenever he wonders if she truly loves him, whenever he thinks she runs because he's not good enough or he's done something wrong. That old action still proves what words alone do not; Whip's devotion to him is written in scars on her own right hand. He won't let Krizalid shit on that.
He's throwing himself at Krizalid in the next instant, intent on murder... or at least, a severe maiming. "I am /ten times the person you are/," the liberated experiment snarls, half to try to convince himself of it... even as he twists and throws a heavy snapkick for the other's mouth in an attempt to shut him up.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Krizalid with Minutes Spike.
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K' 0/-------/------=|==-----\-------\0 Krizalid
He's struck. Hard.
For a moment, Krizalid doesn't even know or understand what exactly happened. One minute he's on the phone with Jones, shutting it and getting ready to watch K' run off like the pussy he is--he needed for K' to go away, since he clearly wouldn't shut his mouth--and the next minute he's on the ground wondering what just happened. He idly works his jaw until it cracks.
He just got kicked in the mouth, didn't he?
The words slowly reach his comprehension.
See, Krizalid doesn't have anything to prove to him anything is real, except the exact same things K' has. THe difference is, Krizalid's story is a little further along, in his own mind; he was left. He was abandoned by his first friend. For someone like him, who wants to think that he belongs, that cares for his subordinates and his family as the only thing that ever really mattered to him... for that kind of trust to be betrayed?
It would never be okay.
And now the carbon copy seems to think the stolen goods are his.
"..."
His response is almost immediate. Krizalid is, in but instants, taller and longer than anyone ever thought he could ever be, the clone simply sliding his knees underneath his prone body and lofting into the air suddenly. Without his battlesuit, he works off of a minimum of data, nothing captured from K' but the sheer audacity of his words, the only thing Krizalid sees is a red haze around that kid's body.
He seems to stretch on forever in his leap for K's throat.
He'll knock that clone off his feet in an instant if K' doesn't understand what he's about to do, his body weight the exact measure of K's own, but backed up with hardware and a whole lot of momentum. He'll pin him in that instant. Sweat trailing from his brow, his body is hotter and better than K's ever was--as if Krizalid is just trying to sear off layers of K's flesh with just his proximity. Responding to that basest of desires, thin microwire pierce out from the ends of Krizalid's fingernails before the momentum even fully drains off, weeping blood on their ends as they punch through layers of skin and keratin and cuticle in the thousands, the wire connections that would create connectors to his battlesuit now themselves winding together. They tighten around his fingertips until he no longer has hands. Not in the traditional sense, anyway...
With newfound talons, he's going to tear K' a new ass.
He /shrieks/.
"YOU DON'T STOP ME FROM TAKING WHAT'S MINE!!"
He's going to tear K's ribs out one by one.
He's going to work his way up to the boy's throat.
And then he's going to tear that out too.
Tear out his eyes...
Tear off his face...
Everything that belongs to him, he's going to pull out of this miserable little clone.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Krizalid's Demon Landing.
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K' 0/-------/-----==|===----\-------\0 Krizalid
K' pushes away and lands smoothly out of his attack, skidding back loosely in a three-point stance. But for all his swift and easy recovery into an ideal position to strike again... the boy doesn't immediately press the advantage he has, instead simply staring as if stunned. In a way, he -is- surprised... a heady mixture of fear and exhilaration thrilling through him as he realizes he just hit Krizalid. Old programming isn't all that easy to shake, and from day one he was always taught to obey and defer...
He supposes it was Krizalid's threats against Whip that stirred him to overthrow those impulses. Besides... he's done with running from Krizalid... done hiding from the very idea of him.
From the way Krizalid -looks- when he finally reacts, finally comprehends, K' knows he's hit a nerve. At first, there's shock... surprise that he could affect the man he had feared and resented so long... and then, the sudden vicious realization that he truly now has something to -hurt- Krizalid with. Something he has that Krizalid doesn't. An advantage.
K''s gaze, when it focuses back on his 'brother,' now just looks hungry to cause more pain. To see Krizalid realize that he, the 'worthless clone,' has finally won in at least ONE thing. He wants Krizalid, now, to feel some measure of what he's always had to feel himself. But first, he's going to have to survive what it is he's sparked off in his so-called 'better.' And he almost doesn't make it.
K' barely gets his guard up before Krizalid, his hands twisting into those vicious talons midair, slams into him with crushing force. Knocked to his back, it's only his earlier preparation for the impact and his quick reflexes that save him from the bulk of the followup. K' twists violently free, throwing Krizalid off, rolling a few feet away before he finally manages to twist back to all fours. But K' doesn't stay still long; in seconds, he's launched from that crouch like a cat, lunging back at Krizalid's face with a sudden eruption of sacred fire. A blast of flames seeks to slam straight into Krizalid with concussive, blazing force, accompanied by the denial: "She's NOT YOURS!"
COMBATSYS: Krizalid fails to reflect Eins Trigger from K' with Typhon's Rage - Reflect.
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K' 0/-------/---====|======-\-------\0 Krizalid
He breathes outward.
Krizalid lost it there for a minute, and he paid for it dearly. That little clone was able to overcome him at his worst, when he didn't have his head or his battlesuit handy, but it didn't matter. For one, that would suggest that he needs any of that to crush the twerp. And that's sort of the thing that Krizalid didn't want going around at all. So in the end, Krizalid was a little loose. He could have pushed it a little harder, make those talons of his stick, but K' threw him off before he could really visualize it.
Really feel it.
So the brutal dance had continued, with Krizalid rolling to a stop and whipping up to his feet, his spine bending in strange and unnatural ways to bring him to his feet, his claws hung at his side, but no sooner did his eyes clear does he spot K' flooding in with his whirlwind of fire, and the deadly commander's eyes narrow. Insolent--
He matched him, motion for motion, with his own blast of charged wind to counter the fire, to break it and put it back in K's face where it belonged. But something went wrong, and the energy broke, his charged wind sliced through by K's fires, the initiative and stinging bite of that Kusanagi heat breaking through to the commander's body, blasting him back and drawing visible steam from his biceps as scorchmarks and sizzling blood cuts across them in irregular, jagged lines.
And now, he shifts, his limbs whining softly with the tension in his musculature. A deadly animal, just now awakening from its drunken stupor of hate.
For a moment, head bowed, it seems as if his lips are all that's visible.
"Not bad. For a clone..."
He adjusts the choker chain at his neck, until the silver crucifix hangs neatly at the dimple of darkened flesh in the center of his exposed collar. It seems contrary to those of NESTS... the Masters of Darkness. But it suits Krizalid jsut fine.
"...But you're overreaching."
Composing himself, he settles into the low slouch characteristic of his body's design analogues. His head lifts, but only just to glare at K' from just underneath the cut of his scarred brow. Tired of running?
Then come and die.
"Though it breaks my heart, Whip's gonna cry when she sees what I've done to you. If she ever does."
A mirroring exhale pushes past K''s teeth. It's clear in his narrowed eyes, in the snarl still fixed on his face, and in his vicious, unrelenting assaults. K' is angry, furious and fueled by his need to keep Krizalid's claws from ever touching Whip. While K''s anger is driven by the urge to protect and Krizalid's is driven by sheer destructive hate, nonetheless their ultimate goals are the same. They attack to kill, and to kill as fast as possible.
"You got slower, Krizalid," K' hisses past the first beginnings of a smirk. His eyes briefly flicker to that crucifix about Krizalid's throat as it gleams, the necklace so similar to his own: his expression sours at the similarity, his smirking going bitter like broken glass. "Or maybe I got better. So you tell me..." K''s right hand, still smoking with the remnants of fire, clutches shut. "You still wanna think I'm a clone... knowing you've been outstripped?"
K' studies his counterpart closely. His yellow eyes fix on Krizalid's, following every last twitch and movement with acute and judgmental attention. A sneer starts to pattern itself across his face, though it's anyone's guess how much of K''s new, arrogant confidence is real, or merely a posturing, aggressive act... a tactical choice to incite his opponent to foolish risks.
"Looks like sticking with NESTS stunted you," K' continues solictiously, his eyes narrowing even further into deadly yellow gleams. "And you know... if you really wanted her to ever give you a second look again, I wouldn't suggest hurting me." K''s smirk widens infuriatingly, the expression attaining a truly malignant quality. It's a mercy Whip isn't present, else the sight would likely have driven her to instant rage. "She loves me."
COMBATSYS: K' focuses on his next action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/---====|======-\-------\0 Krizalid
"Well, aren't you a cocky beast."
Now composed from his brief lapse, Krizalid's gaze is beyond deadly now, the cold, controlled thing it has always been elevating Krizalid beyond the idea of a base animal, meeting K's cruel knit face with the kind of furious detachment that marked his composure throughout the time at NESTS when they all knew the facts of eachother. The meter doesn't shift when K' challenges his righteousness, puts to question his superiority.
"Shame to see being outside of NESTS didn't make you any smarter."
He chuckles, darkly.
"If you had anything close to the training I've had, you'd know that that wasn't even a taste of my full power. Get a couple hits in, and you think you got something over me?"
He leans back, hanging from his belt loop a viciously curved thumb, suited more for gouging eyes than complex gestures. "If you're really so confident you can take the original on.." With a mirror of that bitter rueful flash of canines, he stares at K' openly. With eyes that have been taught a lot more about fighters and their real natures than K's ever been, he's analyzing him with every flick of those darkened eyes.
"You won't even break a sweat..."
He doesn't need his battlesuit to sense even the slightest weakness.
The chain at his hip rattling a death toll, the deadly commander raises a leg into the air in an unnatural posture, rocking back on his shoe to keep his unreal balance, his knee twisting sideways as he begins to chuckle darkly. The bitter spite in his heart reaches a head. "So. Don't sweat. Cus if she loves you so much, then I'm just gonna have to hurt you twice as hard!!!"
His leg dropping like a scythe, he cuts a cataclysmic whirlwind of crushing force into the air, churning the earth beneath it and shrieking as the force of it rips even the rocks to shreds as it passes, cutting into the air and whirling towards K', boiling with the kind of crackling force that can only be described as pure unrelenting violence, unrelenting pain. It's kind of a gift.
The gift of spite.
COMBATSYS: K' overcomes Typhon's Rage - Strike from Krizalid with Air Trigger EX.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/---====|=====--\-------\0 Krizalid
Some of K''s confidence twitches when Krizalid mocks him. A spasm of anger threatens the attitude of cool lack of care that had heretofore held court on the young man's dark face. Never one to be able to hide his emotions where Krizalid was concerned, the fact that the NESTS commander managed to hit a nerve is painfully clear in the way a muscle flickers visibly in K''s tightening jaw. "Training... you think that's all there is to it?" he replies shortly. "It's living that's made me what I am now. Somebody that doesn't have to take your shit anymore."
K' knows what Krizalid plans to do the moment he assumes that balancing-act stance, and it's because of that knowledge he knows what he himself should do. Not wanting to be predictable, however, he opts to pick something-- a particular move-- that he had never employed while under the observations of NESTS. No, this little technique he took up long after he'd run away. Krizalid would recognize it easily. It's an imitation and adaptation of one of Kula Diamond's own moves.
K' springs backwards in one agile motion as Krizalid cuts that scything whirlwind of chi towards him, twisting slowly through the motions of a backflip with a sudden pulse of chi. Fire swarms to life around him, concentrating in particular around one ankle that trails a great crackling arc of flames as it cuts a semicircle through the air; once fully inverted, K' abruptly cracks into a resurgence of momentum, finishing his flip with a savage reorientation that slings his fire-sheathed leg in a swinging kick.
The kick is not meant to connect with anything. What it's meant to do is discharge all that built-up fire in a sudden raging gout of flames. The snarling fire surges forwards, crashing into Krizalid's slashing winds, and after a moment it subsumes them. The flames press on, reaching out in their attempt to rip Krizalid open.
"You better hope your help gets here fast, Krizalid," K' notes through the snarl of his own fire, his voice savage. "Cause original or not, I'm gonna fucking kill you..."
COMBATSYS: Krizalid fails to slow Air Trigger EX from K' with Typhon's Rage - Strike.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/--=====|======-\-------\0 Krizalid
Perhaps Krizalid notices a little too late. Maybe he got a little too angry, let himself slip just slightly. But when K' ruptures not just into, but through his wind with his cutting fire, again, Krizalid loses it. Watching K' rip into his dire killing wind with that arc of fire in what he thought was an unimitable display of control by their own Kula Diamond, he grits his teeth, a low snarl catching at the back of his throat.
The traitor seems to think he's people, now.
Krizalid's knee twists back the other way as the arcing flames breach through his wind, scattering it, and like a hammer, Krizalid drops his boot heavy on the fire wave, catching it like it were a blade of something material, holding the fires at bay with his high arced leg as if he weren't at all going to put up with anything K' thinks he's learned. He braces on the wave, staving off the force of it, the heat of it. Hands in pockets, he chews on a lip idly.
He kicks back, the force of wind giving the fire wave pause.
He bends his hip to release another blast of that wind, to bring back to bear all of the erratic forces at his command to beat back the flames, tear them to pieces, and show K' just who is real, and who is not. But his power, as vaunted and limitless as he thinks it may be, doesn't respond to him.
For an instant, he twitches, surprised.
"?!"
In the next instant, Krizalid is torn a vicious wound by the blast. It hardly knocks him down, but it does keep him off his already-compromised balance for just long enough to stumble clumsily, sending the experiment tumbling back amongst the lower cutting brush. Brush that's reduced to vapor in an instant as the experiment sweeps a hand wide, channeling just a taste of that Kusanagi fire in fast kindling anger.
"Che.." he mutters, the front of his black sleeveless shirt now ripped open with a long slash of fire.
"I should have known you'd start copying other people.."
What's going on?
Where is his strength?
The strength vaunted as the third most powerful in all of NESTS?
His frame crackles with suppressed force. His body is sore..
And he is getting a little winded.
In truth, even K' is not seriously convinced he might actually have become more powerful than his erstwhile 'brother.' Not any longer than the few moments in which the hope of it flashes wildly through his mind, every time he strikes a blow. The runaway was simply not raised in any sort of environment that would have bred ability to be readily confident in his own competence, power, or worth. The boy talks a lot of brash words, but when it comes to actual belief...? He'll need more than a few good hits in order to begin hoping he truly has surpassed one of his most hated rivals.
If he can hold his own against Krizalid... perhaps he could take Zero as well. Perhaps he could even finally match Kusanagi... the man he was originally meant to emulate perfectly...
Movement catches his eye. Those grandiose, hopeful thoughts fall away in the face of necessity. K' tenses as he watches Krizalid catch and vie with his flames, and for a moment the young man is painfully aware of his own precarious state. In midair like this, he wouldn't be able to defend himself well if Krizalid flings something back at him right now--
But ultimately, K' does make it back to earth unmolested: his fire having finally broken Krizalid's defenses in the last few moments. Touching down lightly, K' narrows eyes on Krizalid as the other dismissively sweeps off his injuries, his stumble, and the tangling brush around him. "She copied me first," K' replies coldly, but beyond that cutting remark he says little else. There is a wondering note to his appraising gaze now... a hint of uncertainty as to whether he's being fucked with.
The moment of hesitation doesn't last long. There's a chance Krizalid really is off his game... a chance he, K', might finally be able to beat him here. It's a chance K' cannot allow to be squandered, and in the spirit of that K' lunges forward again, clear killing intent written in the way he tries to get in murderously close. K''s right hand lifts, innocuous and loosely open; but inches away from Krizalid's chest, it slams shut and fires forward in a piercing strike. The attack travels only a minute distance, measured in mere centimeters... and yet, the force behind the understated attack is force enough to punch holes in concrete.
COMBATSYS: Krizalid blocks K''s One Inch.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/--=====|=======\-------\0 Krizalid
Krizalid says, "if only cus I liked the idea of Sei wandering around in a lime green pimpcoat"
Igniz says, "K'....."
Igniz says, "K'..... you're not alone"
Igniz says, "Krizalid.... likes men."
The length of time has seemed torturous for someone like him.
Without the everconstant crawl of data--essentially having to do it raw as it were--Krizalid seemed a little less pampered than usual. Though at home with those familiar instincts of his, it's strange, not quite knowing to the millisecond how long it would be until his support showed up.
Anxiety began a slow spike in the commander, keeping him on-edge, a white hot anger on the edge of everything he does, giving him pause. Making him question what NESTS really intended for him. If he is the original, he should have flattened the traitor already. Why is the original having any kind of trouble? Is it a plot? Is it from the fight with Billy? Is it Whip?
Ah, that's it.
The strength of the "One Inch" is that it cannot be easily defended, not with the cross knit block or any of the 100 Standard NESTS Fighting Method defenses. It was concentrated savagery over one inch, capable of breaking holes in concrete instantly and without delay. It's knocked out more than its fair share of unawares fighters. But that punch has weaknesses. It's read easily by someone who has been fed as much battle data as Krizalid, instinctively by the distinctive pause in the user's actions, detectable by watching their shoulder, instead of their fist. It's dealt with by exploiting distance. The one inch punch--is strongest in that one inch of distance. To guard it--Krizalid just has to take a step back.
The blow that can punch through concrete finds itself twisting into abdominal muscles easily concrete's rival or stronger. His frame rocks from the force. He slides back.
But it's not gonna floor him.
"Let's hope, for your sake..."
He is the original.
He rolls his shoulders slowly in their sockets, inducing an ominous crack from his normally boneless form, gone rigid in military discipline. He is the original.
Why should he even need his battlesuit?
"You learned to copy a little more."
Oddly mechanical thoughts boil up from the depths of his subconscious, NESTS conditioning wired into his very genes allowing him to guess the time passed based on an oddly eidetic memory; based off of what he remembered the shadows from the trees overhead being at the beginning. Time has dialated to a massive degree, but Krizalid knows, it's only been a few minutes. His neck turns in its socket.
Let his instinct flow.
Then his knuckles crack from the tightness of his fists, claws drawing blood through the leather covering his palms. Through all that anger, all that anxiety, a cold, detached focus still breathes. It's not something that can be undone with a few punches to the jaw. Though the fear of his power not reaching full force here--for whatever reason--plagues the damaged little commander... the fact that K' is a traitor right along with Whip drives him. That he might actually be beaten by his own copy is the worst kind of insult. Indignation. Bitterness. Anger.
They're all like drugs.
"Before my company arrives.. let's have some fun."
Listen up, all you...
COMBATSYS: Krizalid calculates his next move.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/--=====|=======\-------\0 Krizalid
Perhaps the original's having trouble... because the original isn't quite as original as he thinks he is.
That's what K' would say if he knew what was clutching at the back of Krizalid's mind right now. As it is, he can smell the faint doubt off the other man, can read something of his thoughts in the way he pauses. Those doubts are doubts that have plagued K' himself for so long that the young man-- normally terminally unperceptive in reading other people-- can detect Krizalid's mirroring mental faltering with a mere glance. He's seen that same hate and doubt in the mirror for the past few years.
He gets an up-close look at it when his strike fails to properly connect. Momentarily, in the instant between Krizalid's backstep and K''s own retreat, K''s expression coils in mingled recognition and aversion.
"I don't copy," K' replies sharply. His right arm starts to smoke with heat, fire crawling out from his skin like blood. "I adapt. Maybe it's something you should have learned to do..." K' rakes his gaze over Krizalid's tense form, disgust and dismissive scorn making that simple glance cut like jagged glass. "...instead of letting that suit do all your thinking for you. Bet you're wishing for it right now... that's why you can't even focus..."
With a blatant pointedness, K' shows Krizalid the control he attained once -he- stopped relying on NESTS toys. Fire ekes out of his arm bit by ordered bit, snaking around his wrist, burning with an abnormal languorousness that could only be achieved by force of will. Of course, it still takes him considerable effort and all his attention to exert this kind of command... but fucked if he'll let Krizalid know just how much it takes. His expression is kept easy... almost calm. Certainly a foreign look on features accustomed to falling into graven patterns of hate.
"You're behind, Krizalid. Even if you -were- the original, you're obsolete now. But why don't you make a last effort to catch up? You might do a little better..." K''s lifted right hand claws, fire dripping languidly between his shifting fingers in a clear display of control. "...and I might be less bored."
COMBATSYS: K' gathers his will.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
K' 1/-======/=======|=======\-------\0 Krizalid
"Silly clone."
K' riles all of his worst impulses--let it be known that between these two, there is in fact something to prove. He wants K' and Whip in the worst kinds of ways, his blood burning for K's pain as much as that old legacy resonates with it. But the subtle difference between the two, other than the fact that Krizalid is not scum and not a traitor, is that Krizalid can keep a band on his emotions. When he has to.
The shock of that friend's love has faded.
And now, this was about to get messy.
"You talk big. But do you really think it's gonna be that easy for you? Thinking you can just come in and fight me, get a few hits in, and make yourself King..? The fact that you have to start copying NESTS agents to even stand a chance at beating me.." -- that much he'll allow -- "..is showing where your mascara runs."
He grins, white in the growing dark.
"I've already done the calculations. You've already stayed here past the zero point. You can't Blackout fast enough to evade all of my units. And for what, genius? To see my blood..? To hope you can kill me?"
He snorts.
Though Krizalid is surely on the losing side, though anxiety floods him at every end, the difference between him, and even Zero, even Igniz, is he doesn't care. If K' thinks he's gonna go down that easy. "All because I came to thank you. All because I wanted to show you a little appreciation for what you're gonna allow me to do. You think beating me at half power gives you room to talk shit? At best, you're gonna beat me. You're gonna get caught. And then I get what I want /anyway/. That's been the difference between us."
"...I'm the original. And I'm the best."
His eyes widen, just a bit.
"You sling around words like 'obsolete.' And I can't help but think you've gotten a little big for your britches. I think it's time to show you what 'masters of the dark' really means."
Suddenly Krizalid is right there.
Moving faster than most people ever attribute to the ambling clone, he circles, his chains rattling only once to signify the motion. His body extends, whipping out one of those hard edged boots low in an anatomically improbable slip lunge to put his heel not into, but through K's instep. It'll break his balance, put him on the defensive, just long enough for Krizalid's spine to straighten, whipping his torso forward to follow his extended leg.
And then, in a white flash of talons, Krizalid is going to rake K' in the skull with those claws of his, setting his fingertips deep into his scalp as if trying to tear open the top of his head like a shattered lightbulb.
COMBATSYS: K' interrupts Strong Punch from Krizalid with Heaven Drive EX.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////// ]
K' 0/-------/-----==|=======\==-----\1 Krizalid
COMBATSYS: K' has left the fight here.
[ \\\\\\ <
Krizalid 1/-----==/=======|
COMBATSYS: Krizalid has ended the fight here.
"I didn't come here to -fight- you," K' is quick to correct. His yellow eyes gleam, savagery showing its sharp edge in his gaze. "I came here to kill you. And from the look of things... I won't have to -hope- for it." His gaze lingers on Krizalid's wounds, pointed and mocking. "If you're going to stop holding back, I'd suggest doing it now..." K' tilts his head, and then lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "Or maybe this really is all you got.
"So what else are you wrong about, Krizalid?" K' starts forward, closing the distance, seemingly drawn by that anxiety he can sense coiling just under the surface of their interactions. "Maybe you're wrong about whether I can escape, too. Maybe I -can- kill you and get away with it. You just can't. Be. Sure."
His forward progress arrests, however, when Krizalid talks again about 'thanking him.' Anger immediately slits his eyes, his previous composure scattering. "I'm not allowing you to do shit," he growls in reply, "and I didn't keep her safe for you. Not for you to get her back... not for you to kill her." K' coils noticeably, tensing to pounce. "But the details don't matter anyway. Because I'm going t--"
Krizalid is in his face.
K' only has instants to react, and that's -after- Krizalid has already crushed his balance with that direct and precise stomp. His words devolving down into a snarl of pain and fury, the experiment furiously trying to keep his feet, K' kindles his arm instantly to a blaze in response. Those talons are already raking forwards to rip the top of his head from his body when K', finally stabilized, does what he does best... and meets an attack with one of his own.
Flames howl audibly, tearing through the air with a snap of energy, as K' snaps his arm around in an uppercut with head-removing force. This is done once, and then twice, the second blazing uppercut angled to take Krizalid up into the air from the power of it... and then, at the top of their mutual ascent, K' twists in midair to slam a kick into Krizalid. To propel him back to earth.
The momentum shoves K' backwards in the air, and when the young man lands it's with a slight stumble from his fresh injury. For the time being, the exertion seems to have silenced K''s insolent tongue... at first, all he can do is pant in air and glare violently after his erstwhile brother.
How many minutes have passed? Can he finish Krizalid before the reinforcements arrive?
It's already begun, though.
You could hear the chopper from some ways away, approaching fast the two black forms, whirling like dueling spiders in the night. K' definitely has the edge, but Krizalid is not so egotistical as to not have had any plan for this. The clone had a point, a point that'll burn the commander for years yet. He got lax. Somewhere along the way, he got a little too loose in how he dealt with these traitors. The people who abandoned NESTS--abandoned /him/--are getting stronger. That much is fact. And K'.. he's never liked the idea that someone else has his blood, has his face. It got the point where even the mangled scars across his face didn't bother him. He was different.
He was more experienced.
He was better.
He's almost unsurprised at this point by the time K' responds to him in his same method, trying to simply overwhelm him with raw force, but if there's anything that commander has taken from this exchange, it's not gonna be about what K' brings, what those lips he'd so like to tear off says.
Krizalid... has done the math.
He's fast; he doesn't make it easy for K', but the outcome is still the same. K' pummels him handily, even though his NESTS standard works as well as could be expected. The lithe youth's body goes limp as if powerless to stop it, his body hoisted into the air on flaming blasts of pure force, energy that would have licked off his suit now bathing scarred muscle in scorched blasts, the flesh over his body opened anew and cauterized shut in the same brutal motion. He jerks, his vision flashing white with the force of the punishing uppercut. His HUD would be flashing a damage warning about now--
K's above him--
--and dropping him to the ground in a punishing axe kick. Krizalid's limbs splay outward like a ragdoll as white lines trail from him, condensed air swirls of steam as his skin heats, rips from pure air friction. A faint whistle is heard as his frame violently collides into the earth at full force, kicking up a plume of dust high enough to be diced to pieces by the chopper's rotors in its sudden and violent arrival, causing no end of chaos amongst the radio band broadcast from the chopper. [ This is air one! The commander is down! Send ranger units in for apprehension! ]
If K' won't run from him as he always has before--then it's gonna be his grave.
But Krizalid isn't done yet.
The gunship's spotlights cut through the haze of churned earth.
Though blood stains the grounds in great violent streaks like a murder scene, the commander.. isn't there.
"IT'S TOO LATE!!!" the unearthly shriek comes from above.
The helicopter lists dangerously as a /body/ hits it at full force, rocking the entire copter and sending it into a crazy tilt as within an instant, that same body kicks off--a tree snaps in half as a boot collides with, kicking off of that at the ground, a black streak outpacing the echo of its own voice. The whine of metal wires can be heard in the air. Wires. tendons. And muscle fibers.
The commander is behind you.
Now, every connecting wire for his battlesuit bursts from his nerve sheathes, sending electric impulses--shock and pain--into Krizalid. It's worth it, if he can pierce K' through every sister nerve. To anchor him in place.
Krizalid... had never had the idea of trying to kill K' in his mind. At some point during the fight.. he started toying with him. Watching his every move. Why do you think he had calmed down so much? Though he infuriatingly had unquestioningly defeated Krizalid in his sudden and surprising weakness here, it's still as he said. The bitter commander is still the original. Still the best. That much is going to be assured, no matter how much love is between this copy and his sister.
And for that.. Krizalid is just aiming to hurt him.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Krizalid's Desperate Overdrive.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////// ]
K' 0/-------/---====|-------\-------\0 Krizalid
"You're gonna do what?! FUCKING WHAT?!"
His arms seem to twist in their speed, seeming longer than they anatomically have any right to be, as be looks to just beat K'. Not to tear him open. To just /beat/ him, to carry him to the ground and erode his freshly pierced and bleeding flesh under thousands of punches, every charge of force channeled through his biceps in a massive cacophony of drums. Just trying to pound meat from every conceivable angle, even ones Krizalid shouldn't even be able to reach with his current body length.
He's that fast.
"I CAN'T HEAR YOU, KAY DASH! I CANNOT FUCKING HEAR YOU!!!"
He doesn't even stop. He's gonna continue to hit K', again and again, in the torso, in the legs, in the back, in the ass, in the knees, in the thighs, in the arms, in the wrists, in the face--especially in the face.
"MAYBE YOU'D BETTER START TO SCREAM!! MAYBE YOU'D BETTER START TO CRY!!!"
His creatine levels start to spike dangerously low.
His limbs are burning at every level.
"BEG ME FOR THAT TONGUE OF YOURS, I'M ABOUT TO TEAR IT OUT!!!"
Erratic energy discharges start to rip through earth, wood and rock around him, as that Kusanagi blood starts to boil in Krizalid. The force of each blow is in itself enough to keep K' suspended at the periphery of the leash that Krizalid's imposed on him. The commander just fucking loses it on K's ass, looking to beat him so hard the nerve wires begin to rip violently out of K', barb by barb. Outranging his own capture protocol, Krizalid snaps through the wires in seconds after discharging god knows how much of a beating against K', but he's still not satisfied, stumbling forward groggily with white eyes, crackling darkness spreading off his talons, as he conjures a ball of dark-hot misery in one talon--
And slips forward, aiming to put it through K's chest.
Suddenly very... very lucid, Krizalid whispers, the dark timber of his voice slipping through a haze of the commander's own drunken agony. "Oho... a tough nut to crack."
His eyes half lid dangerously.
"You'd better hope you get away.."
This place is certainly going to be somebody's grave. But K' doesn't intend for it to be his own. Not when he's this close to finally putting Krizalid down. He certainly hears the chopper above them, and is cognizant of the imminent danger of capture that is inherent in the sound of beating blades and the distant crackle of the radio, but by now there is only one thing left on his mind.
He's gonna write NESTS a message of his superiority in Krizalid's blood.
With the death of their third-in-command, they'll know of the mistake they made in doing what they did to him. They'll know what an error it was to make him the creature he is now. Once he finishes this, K' thinks with near-maniacal fervor, they'll realize that if he could kill the purported third-strongest of NESTS... there's little to stop him from moving on up to the top two links in the chain of command.
Landing from his attack, K' starts forwards instantly towards where Krizalid's fallen, fully intending to finish what he started. He'll leave the body for the reinforcements to find. Let NESTS sweat a little, humiliated and furious, at the thought they might be brought low by the very boy they kicked away as a reject and a nothing. Let them see what happens when they fuck around with shit they don't understand--
K' pauses. Krizalid isn't there.
It's that howl that alerts him. The erstwhile experiment whirls around in time to catch those wires hooked straight into his most vital nerve centers. The shock jolts K', his jaws spasming together far too sharply to permit past either a cry or an answer to Krizalid's raving, and then in the next moment Krizalid is on him, looking to flay him to the bone with his bare hands.
K' lunges back before the assault, pulling violently away from the first few destructive blows even though the wires try their best to hold him in place. Some even tear out of his flesh. His arms lift, a meager defense against the assault... but nonetheless, one sufficient to protect his face from the bulk of Krizalid's ire.
"What I'm gonna do... is kill you..." K' grates through the endless assault, his defending arms still lifted before him as he soaks the brunt of that last crackling blast in a shielding flare of fire. And once that energy even -begins- to subside--
--K''s defense snaps down, the young man lunging forward in a sudden burst of momentum. "So I'm not the one who needs to be hoping!" he finishes, even as he tries to slam into Krizalid, to bodily strike him to the ground. If, for even an instant, he can get Krizalid off his balance-- or, even better, on his back in the dust-- his right hand is going to vise around his brother's throat. And it's going to start to crush shut.
COMBATSYS: Krizalid fails to interrupt Spot Pile from K' with Dead Fall.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ]
K' 0/-------/-======|===----\-------\0 Krizalid
COMBATSYS: Krizalid can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
K' 0/-------/-======|
What happened?
Krizalid's own neurosis is almost unbearable at this point. When he loses it, his rage is uninhibited, causing the commander to simply let loose on K' like nobody ever has before. The intent, obviously, was to show K' what real vengeance was made of, what a true superior life form could unload on some wannabe. But pummelling him as he does, Krizalid realizes-- he just isn't.
Doing.
Enough.
DAMAGE!
His fists discharging into K's guard in a crazy beat, Krizalid is more tired and angry when it's settled than vindicated, his cracking blast raking into K's fire wall and generating a massive blast of counterforce, driving him back and severing the last of the nerve wires that connected the two. Somewhere in his instinctive mind, an intellect fueled by years of studing the readouts his battlesuit had given him told him the burning in his muscles were torn muscle fibers from his overdrive method. That his creatine levels were critically low, and that his genetically enhanced metabolism was beginning to burn muscle mass to fuel the energy expenditure.
At some level of his mind, he understood that.
But right now, he doesn't /care/.
Krizalid just wants K' down. He wants it so bad that he even ignores his best and proper impulses when K' breaks through the stinking crackling ion wave generated by the meeting of their powers. He can only hear the insolent brat's insistence that somehow he's /better/, that he's /capable/ of killing him. Approaching K' like someone might a toy that just pinched them in a time of need, Krizalid moves, ignoring the white hot sensations in his limbs. Fucking nimrod--
Now fully snapped, the commander is on the ground with his lesser trying to strangle him to death.
No. This isn't how it ends.
Displaying the once-white fangs of a now thuroughly bloodied grin, Krizalid snickers darkly.
His words are fleeting, choked--the bitter last breath of spite.
"Should've quit while you were ahead.."
Losing consciousness, the commander, in his last moments, doesn't reach out to strangle K' in kind. He simply reaches up, his torn and bloodied talons opening, wires reconfiguring themselves to a barbed quality, rills of stainless slipping from the tops of those grisly things. To reach out those talons .. and to sink into either side of K's hips. Hooking them into tender flesh and bone. Krizalid's not gonna stop til he hits viscera. If K' doesn't get his mind in the moment fast, he's gonna have to disembowel himself to get Krizalid's limbs off of him.
No matter how vengeful and assured, Krizalid will pass out at that juncture.
K's won.
And he is going to kill Krizalid...
At just about the time a gabbled command in some off tongue is called in at the edge of the dark.
"commander!" "--strel /EETS/"
And about 10 assault rifles open fire, lighting up the night.
Blood beads off K''s dark skin, from where the wires ripped themselves free. It stains his clothing even darker than it already is. He holds his ground, his arms still halfway lifted into a wary defense, shaking slightly with mingled rage and exertion. But indeed, he looks far less broken and abused than Krizalid might prefer him to be... which is to say, he isn't yet snapped in half and dead.
No. He's far less dead than he should be. And he's now trying to make quite certain it is Krizalid who does not survive this evening... heedless of his 'elder's' warnings, laughter, and mockery. "This is for what was done to me," K' grates down at the brother he's trying to kill. "For what -you- did to me..."
His voice trails when Krizalid moves. Relucant to loose his hold, he doesn't move up until it's almost too late. Those talons have wormed themselves deep by the time the stutter of assault rifles cracks the night, and K' is -forced- to let go and tear himself away or else die right then and there to combined claws and bullet fire. As it is, Krizalid's talons nearly rip him wide open: he stumbles, spilling blood, and leaves a trail of it behind when he retreats.
Frustrated and furious, K' tries to return to finish the job on the unconscious commander, but cover fire deters him, as well as the sight of troops descending to back Krizalid up. Pacing an angry circle like a cat, K' eventually gives up and runs. The decision doesn't come a moment too soon: a few more seconds, and escape would have been entirely impossible.
Another time. He knows now, after all, it's not so impossible as he once thought.
Log created on 00:39:28 03/21/2009 by Krizalid, and last modified on 23:56:40 02/05/2011.