Description: Poison and Ayame crash Balrog's hostage party in the Ballroom of Geese Tower - the latter quite literally. Things look dismal until another uninvited guest joins the fray, bringing the psycho count to two.
There was no party on the agenda for today. Neither was there a risk of Geese Howard's VIP guests being trapped in the Ballroom of his tower...much to Shadaloo's disappointment.
Balrog fixed that.
Invited to Balrog's party were all manners of guests from various floors, sheparded inside by rifle-toting commandos regardless of race, gender, or grevious injury. The room itself is surpisingly intact, the tables having only been shifted around to form makeshift hostage pens along the edges of the room. More commandos patrol the walls, their presence discouraging any organized resistance on the part of the "guests".
"Hm hmm...hm hmmmm hmm hmmmmmm..." o/~
The center of the room bears special mention. Here stand a few exceptionally pretty women, singled out from their pens and escorted to center stage. Surrounded by their own personal guards, here they pay private audience to the Master of the Ball, a serpentine tatoo'd Shadaloo Elite who is rarely caught unprepared for a Masquerade. Here he dances - yes, dances, flawlessly to the graceful serenade of the room's loudspeakers - along with a doe-eyed secretary who had the misfortune of not escaping fast enough. Her crimson tresses dance through the air as she's limply swung on the madman's arm, fear of stirring him from his blissful reverie the only thing keeping her muscles from locking in sheer terror.
Some hostages stare at the ground. Others look on as Balrog circles the room with his chosen consort. Few can deny the twisted surrealness of the situation.
COMBATSYS: Ayame has joined the fight here on the right meter side.
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Balrog 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Ayame
COMBATSYS: Poison has joined the fight here on the right meter side.
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Balrog 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Poison
> //////////////////////////////]
|-------\-------\0 Ayame
Geese Tower was a 50+ floor disaster zone. Shadaloo and NESTS troops poured in by the dozens, taking each floor by storm. The troops themselves brought superior numbers and advanced fire power. They were lead by some of Shadaloo's elite, including the Killer Bee, Cammy, and the menace occupying the extravagant ballroom floor presently. Making it even worse - several of Geese Howard's enemies were taking the opportunity to storm into the tower right alongside the invasion force in a strange display of cooperation. For this brief moment, everyone was here for one of two purposes: Protect the King of Southtown or take him down.
Well, there is a third class of people squarely in the 'Trying to get the hell out of here' camp. Human resources, various business executives of Howard Enterprises many different industries, and one Syndicate Scout eager to get the heck out of dodge: Ayame. Forced to navivate up through the tower as the bottom floors became quite inhospitable to anyone tagged as a Syndicate henchman/woman, moving up through the tower was merely a stall tactic. Surely no helicopter was waiting for her on the roof, and if there was no getting down past the locked down floors, it begged the question as to how to even try to vacate the building at all. Dodging rifles, baton weilding Shadaloo thugs, and other menaces, the teen bandit worked her way up floor after the floor, until making it at last to the floor beneath this one.
'Situation in the Ballroom. Check it out.' came the request over her ear com. "Right," mused Ayame. "So figure out a way to skip past floor thirty all together..."
It seemed like an okay plan and one that was working well enough. A maintenance access into the building's wall allowed her to work her way up from floor 29... squeeze through a narrow space up past floor 30... until her plan hit a snare. Floor 31, in the area right over the Ballroom, was in the middle of being refurbished before the siege on Southtown began.
Fate would have her foot coming down on an unfinished part of the new floor. An unfinished part that had her dropping five feet to the ballroom's wood panneled ceiling. A drop that would give her enough momentum to fall right through the surface not intended to support the weight of a person. With a crash of splintering wood and debris scattering across the dance room floor, Ayame plops right down onto one of the tables forming the 'hostage pens' with a thud. "...ugh."
Dazed, the girl rolls off to land seated on the floor, plaster from the floor above raining down around her in fine white dust. A glance to her right, then to her left, then straight forward to spot the Spainard himself clues her in to the severity of the situation at a glance. Her right hand goes to her right ear to turn on the com unit wedged there, "...uh... operations... how many can you spare for floor 30?"
The reply comes back curtly and simply, audible to her ear only: 'Just one.'
Smiling weakly, the strawberry-blond waves her hand back and forth, "Ahhh... nice party you got here. Didn't mean to crash it. I'll, ah, just be on my way..." she explains, pushing herself up to standing amid the pile of broken ceiling pieces.
Poison Kiss is beginning to question the logic of her go-to scheme foundation when Ayame makes her entrance. 'Infiltrate and take care of Balrog,' they said. So Poison did what she normally does when it's time to infiltrate something: she got herself captured. Wandering around one of the access stairwells in a ballgown that's as gaudy a shade of pink as her hair, Poison was quickly spotted by Shadaloo soldiers and thrown into the masked Grand Master's breeding pens.
Some time passed.
And now, as Ayame crashes in and tries to crash her way back out, Poison decides it's time to make her move -- since Balrog really is a great dancer, and honestly, she's been having trouble keeping up for the past few minutes of their tango.
"--about time! GET HIM, AYAME!" Poison shrieks, ripping away from the Spaniard, hiking up her gown a notch to avoid tripping over it.
Okay, that whole 'the only thing keeping her muscles from locking in sheer terror' part? That may or may not have been some creative license in Balrog's imagination. One thing at a time, however.
For awhile now, Balrog has been enjoying himself. Lord Vega didn't say *anything* about what he was to do while waiting for further instructions, so naturally it was up to him to improvise. And oh, did he improvise! He was ensuring that he and these wonderful ladies had the grandest of times while waiting for business in the rest of the tower to settle, conveniently outside the path of any hoodlums foolish enough to interfere in the master's plans.
Then the ceiling crashed. The rest all happens at once.
As if Ayame's interruption weren't a grevious enough sin, she just so happens to go crashing through one of the wires of the speaker system, causing half the room to suddenly go quiet.
Not quite finished with her inadvertent mood-killing, the table she lands on crashes flat to the ground, and no sooner does she roll to her feet than the captives immediately flood past her and make for the door. The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire can be heard as commandos swing to bear down on the door, a few of the "guests" falling to their ends, but failing to impede the rest from making their escape.
...Finally, Balrog's partner decides that she's had enough of dancing and that the interloping Ayame is her ticket out. It's extremely difficult to perceive the eye-twitch behind the mask, but the Spaniard's brow is definitely having a go at it, and violently so.
"Now, now...it's very rude to *cut in* uninvited..." Beginning to cross the distance with a few calm steps, the man abruptly springs forward, claw swinging in a jagged arc toward Ayame's thrice-damned ribcage. His foot, should he be so lucky, will firmly stomp down on the skirt of his fleeing consort in an attempt to bar her escape. "Why don't you two just stick around for awhile, hmm?"
COMBATSYS: Ayame blocks Balrog's Flying Barcelona Attack.
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Balrog 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 Poison
> //////////////////////////// ]
|=------\-------\0 Ayame
It was bad enough Geese Tower just happened to be invaded in the very moment she dropped by to deliver some intel reports she had picked up in her scouting about town. It was only made worse as she inadvertently crashed the macabre party of one of the most deadly men on the planet. The speakers hum with an ear splitting noise for a second before cutting out and suddenly the captured 'party-goers' are bolting for the limited escape options, leaving Ayame and her surprise help left in the room with Balrog of all people.
"This is not my day," she mutters to herself admid the commotion caused by the stampede for the door and subsequent gunfire. Poison breaks awaythe nimble killer invoking Ayame's name as if the cowardly scout was supposed to be helping her deal with the guy or something equally ludicrous. "Me? But I-"
He's approaching and Ayame's eyes shift to focus intensely on the most obvious threat in the room. Her left arm shakes a little as it slips down to a pouch affixed to one of her belts, fishing out a six inch long metal tube. A flick of her thumb across the middle and a small spark of chi to initiate a chain reaction has the tube expanding rapidly into a six foot long metal shaft made of shining titanium.
It's just in time as Balrog is already trying to show her the price of cutting in by, well, cutting in with a long, sharp metal claw. It's a methd of attack Ayame could appreciate better if she wasn't in danger of /dying/ from it. The metal staff spins into the path of the strikes, sending sparks flying from the first two deflections, her arms straining to contend with his strength each time. The third deflect is a closer call, as his weapon slides past, catching her on the arm and leaving parallel scratch marks from a shallow gash across her bare bicep.
Like it or not, she seems to be in it now, the girl realizes, caught narrowly defending herself from the Shadaloo lieutenant. "Che," the girl grunts, her feet finding traction after being nearly knocked back by the force behind each claw swing. A step forward into a whirlwinding spin with her staff appears to be the nature of her retaliation, however, aiming to clip the man on his clawed arm and also a glancing blow for the side of his head, "Are you sure you shouldn't be paying more attention to your lovely companion?" she notes, hoping Poison is less inclined to just bolt for the door than /she/ is.
Poison thought about it. I mean, c'mon.
But no, the Acting Shogun of Mad Gear ('acting' because she doesn't have her master's and thus doesn't meet the prereqs for being hired to the position full time) doesn't leave Ayame in the lurch. She moves to grab the long, hard, stiff thing hidden under her dress -- and once she's retrieved her switchblade from her garter, she brushes her hair back, feeling a bit naked without her officer's cap.
As Balrog attacks Ayame and Ayame returns fire, Poison overhears her ally's question: "Hey! Screw you, whose side are you on?!" she snipes back, flicking open the knife and throwing it toward the tall Spaniard's back -- aiming for somewhere between the shoulder blades, with double XP if she hits him in the hair.
COMBATSYS: Poison successfully hits Balrog with Knife Throw.
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Balrog 0/-------/-----==|-------\-------\0 Poison
> //////////////////////////// ]
|=------\-------\0 Ayame
COMBATSYS: Ayame successfully hits Balrog with Random Strike.
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Balrog 0/-------/---====|-------\-------\0 Poison
> //////////////////////////// ]
|=------\-------\0 Ayame
"She and I can have that conversation when the naughty children have been shown the door..."
Well, fancy the odds! The Master of the Ball was playing more on intimidation than ferocity, not even seriously considering this a battle of any sorts...when he suddenly finds himself confronted with a staff concealed staff and a dagger in the back. He makes as if to nimbly dance to the side and pays the price - Ayame's staff bouncing off both an incredibly solid forearm and the side of the predator's mask in turn, while his estranged dance partner's knife finds its way home right beside the shoulder blade, wedging itself in firmly but barely seeming to phase them. Amused (and smarting), the gymnast throws his weight to the side and cartwheels out of harm's way, kicking off the ground at the last moment so that he hands on a table with crossed arms. One hand absently curves upward, to rub at the edge of the mask where the staff managed to land the glancing blow.
"Interesting...assassins trying to take out the assassin. A pity they did not send better."
Commandos across the room all gape in astonishment as two blows are landed on their commander. Guns are raised, a hail of bullets whizzing past the two assailants harmlessly. This is met with an angry hiss from their leader, his head swinging from side to side. "You idiots! Just because they're below my calibre doesn't mean that you're above theirs...OBSERVE!"
Once more the assassin lunges, but this time it isn't immediately towards his victims. He's taking them seriously now. Latching onto an overhead chandelier, the man hangs on for only the briefest of moments before releasing. Sailing overhead, he lands behind the girl with the staff once more. Bad enough that she crash the party, she actually took a shot at his face - a sin far more criminal than any comitted thus far. It's only natural that he not be satisfied yet. Should she not be quick enough on her feet, she will find herself grabbed by the waist and flung up into the air...only for a cackling madman to follow, yanking her out of the air and hurling her mercilessly into one of the tables joining the already flattened one.
COMBATSYS: Balrog successfully hits Ayame with Stardust Drop.
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Balrog 0/-------/-======|-------\-------\0 Poison
> ////////////////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
Hey, random, unplanned teamwork really turned out for the best! At least, that's how it seemed, as both of their entirely uncoordinated attacks manage to catch the swiftest of the swift with quick hits in return. It was the way her staff bounced off his forearm that confirmed for Ayame the type of problem she was going up again. Of course she'd read the Syndicate files on Balrog and it is her word-perfect recollection of those files that secretly fills her with dread even in the attempt to fend him off.
The ninja slips away some distance, no longer trapped between the two of them, keeping the two Syndicate enforcers from bouncing him back and forth between them. Ayame spits to the side, wiping her mouth with her right hand, her left hand keeping a firm grip on her staff as she glances toward Posion, "Hey now, don't take it hard, I was just trying to keep him distracted some, right?" she offers hopefully. She can't really deal with the woman should she decide to abandon her to to the menace from Spain.
She doesn't really get another word off before bullets go flying, forcing her into a leap forward, a tumble, and an aerial carwheel before coming to a spinning landing off to the side. The Shadaloo in charge calls off the gunfire though, giving her time to prepare... only, she's already lost track of him in the storm of bullets. He's every bit as fast as the profiles said to expect... unfortunately.
"Grck!" The teen fighter is snagged around the waist from behind and hurled up into an uncontrolled trajectory, free arm flailing, legs kicking, as she attempts to spin her staff around and find leverage with which to regain control of the descent. No such luck - the sound of his laughter comes too late for her to evade him with any degree of effectiveness, and in the next instant, Ayame is crashing down against a table, crushing the legs out from under it as she comes to a painful sliding stop at the edge of it.
It is with a pained wince that she pushes herself up, her left hand having barely kept a hold of her staff throughout the trainwreck of a landing. "Not actually in the assassin business like yourself," she admits, shifting into a crouch then standing up, testing her back as she straightens out. "But I like your style. The claw thing. Bloody." She manages a grin. Her footing regained, her right hand slips to her belt, drawing a butterfly knife into the open.
Flicking the weapon open with a twist of her wrist, Ayame bolts forward again. Staff in her left, knife in her right, the longer polearm is used as a feint in order to try and cage Balrog's options, to keep him from being able to manuever quite as readily, all so that she can get in close enough to carve a violent slash with her right hand and follow it up with a solid kick with her left foot to push him back away hopefully faster than he can retaliate!
Poison is always thankful for the little things in life -- things like how Balrog has focused mostly on Ayame so far, since she knows she's hamstrung by her attire. Brawling is nice, but having lots of dress to grab onto isn't really a strategic advantage. And her knife is gone, unless she hops onto Balrog to rip it out. Such is life.
Still, one's got to make the best of things. And that's what Poison does, although she realizes as soon as she does it that it's not 'making the best of things' so much as 'recklessly throwing herself into harm's way.' As Ayame kicks at Balrog to try and push him back, Poison employs a strategy familiar to grade-schoolers the world over and attempts to charge low, from behind -- with a shoulder tackle directed toward the back of the ninja's knee.
COMBATSYS: Balrog blocks Ayame's Assault and Battery.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/=======|-------\-------\0 Poison
> ///////////////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
COMBATSYS: Balrog dodges Poison's Combo Attack.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/=======|-------\-------\0 Poison
> ///////////////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
Balrog has a much easier landing than his victim, touching down lightly on his toes and smoothly rising while maintaining a line of sight. The stern-faced soliders continue to look on, ready to assist should their commander but speak a word...a fact that three hostages use to their advantage, abruptly tipping over one of the tables and making a break for the door as well. Rifles turn, more gunfire rips apart the wooden panneling surrounding the door, another civillian drops. The two others escape, albeit wounded. "Keep watch on the guests, not me!", the masked man yells to his minions.
The younger girl would indeed seem to be full of pluck, commenting on his choice of weapon while simultaneously bringing one of her own to bear. The flick of her wrist doesn't go unnoticed, and neither does the subtle implication of the previous statement. The ninja exposes his shoulder to the staff, earning a solid rap while the girl's knife is caught between two prongs of his claw. Try as she might, Ayame's onslaught can only do so much when caught as thus, their arms snaking back and forth in wide arcs as they attempt to draw the blood of the other.
The stalemate is finally broken with Poison's charge - which is met with the ease and grace that a matador only knows how. The man quickly darts to the side, three fingers lightly rapping the woman(???) on the back in passing. "Ole~!" Unfortunately, the shifting of position finally allows Ayame to draw her blade free and lance him across the side of the chest with a thin line of red. "Not bad...pardon, one moment."
Continuing to twirl out of the exchange, the deadly dervish seems to retreat again. This is rather deceptive, as his spiralling path moves to intersect with the redhead just as she's recovering her balance. "Ah, my apologies! I didn't mean for you to feel left out. Shall we?"
Of course, at this point Balrog would be an idiot if he assumed that Poison wasn't in this fight for real. All the more evident when his hand snaps out, attempting to grasp her by the wrist once more - should she not be able to wrench herself free, he would then lift the hand above her head to spin, spin, spin her in a pirouette~!
...Only to yank his arm away with a flick of the wrist, sending his dance partner twirling rather dangerously like a top in the direction of the wall.
Another exchange of spark-causing attacks, as Ayame's knife gets caught in the prongs of a claw the man uses with the ease as if it were merely an extention of his own hand. Not one to give up so easily, the girl tries to use the entangled weapons as an opportunity to swing her staff in, one-handed like, for another swift bash, but each time she thinks there's an opening, she finds her own attack vector cut off by the way Balrog weaves their linked weapons into the path with vexing precision.
She manages a grazing slash in the end when Poison forces him to deal with the charge from behind in the same patronizingly graceful manner of his. Kicking back a short distance, Ayame slides to a stop, flicking the knife to the side, sending a single droplet of blood to the floor before she flicks the weapon closed and re-sheaths it all in one smooth motion.
Her hand, now free, slips to her waist, clicking the buckle of one of her three belts only to tug it loose, uncoiling it into a short whip of three feet length. Hoping that the added range of the lashing weapon will help her cause, Ayame charges Balrog again. She can't help but wish she had a rapier on hand to go along with the matator themed exchange of attacks going on all of the sudden. She'll have to settle for a whip and staff, however, because it's with those two weapons that she whirls into her next attack, aiming to lash the end of it around Balrog's clawed hand right around the time he might be releasing Poison to get a closer look at the wall.
% A split second of contriction, balance wrecking, and at last a decisive swing with her staff for the back of his neck would finish Ayame's whirlwind combination!
COMBATSYS: Poison blocks Balrog's Medium Throw.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////////////////// ]
Balrog 1/-------/=======|===----\-------\0 Poison
> ///////////////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
Balrog grabs Poison by the wrist and spins her quite well -- when he finally hurls her away, he's spun her so well, in fact, that her dress comes ripping off in his hand, like Zorro would do if he couldn't be bothered to use his foil. Underneath, Poison wears her usual sort-of-maybe-half-a-wifebeater and impossibly short shorts. No one ever accused her of being dressed too tastefully, after all.
The pink-haired fighter spins and spins still, until she thrusts her arms out to avoid caroming off of a wall. It still hurts, sending a shockwave of force through her lithe suspension, but it's better than taking one to the head. Spinning around, Poison frowns, an angry glint in her eyes. "That's /no/ way to treat a /lady/!" she hisses.
And then, to prove what a lady she is, Poison rushes forward, reaching upward to try and grab Balrog by the ears and headbutt him directly in the mask.
COMBATSYS: Balrog endures Ayame's Random Combo.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////// ]
Balrog 1/-------/=======|==-----\-------\0 Poison
> ///////////////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
COMBATSYS: Balrog interrupts Headbutt from Poison with Hari Tsuki Rolling Barcelona.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 Poison
> ///////////////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
Ayame's technique would be quite effective at roping a bull. Unfortunately, she chose to rope the matador, which proves to have some immediate repercussions. Balrog's claw arm is roped just as he's left gawking at Poison's ghastly choice of personal attire. "/Lady/? A lady doesn't clad herself in such vulgar attire!" Indignant now, held by one arm while the bull toes the ground, his response is a low cackle, apparently not phased by his current predicament at all.
When Ayame yanks back on her whip, she was probably expecting some form of resistance on the ninja's part. Not so. Instead he leaps back into it, curling himself into a tight ball of muscle as he's propelled backward by their combined momentums. She still has an opportunity to whack him in passing, but clearly this didn't have the impact that she had aspired for.
The ball of ninja continues to fly backward until it touches the wall, unfurling so that he can brace himself against the wall with his free arm and both feet - and spring off again. Body now angled parallel to the ground, a collision of some sort between himself and Poison is inevitable, but perhaps not in the manner expected. Right as her forehead connects with his shoulder, both hands are wrapping around her head grip her back, feet in turn meeting on her shoulders so that he can spring off once more.
Only Ayame can truly appreciate the absurdity of the next maneuver. Leaping into the air above Poison once more, the ninja tugs *hard* at the whip around his arm, using the resistance to angle himself perpendicular to the ground while suspended in midair for one last, terrible moment.
The final motion is a single, powerful, downward blur. The entangled claw arm simply falls straight down, carving a horribly bloody wound into his former dance partner's back. Touching down in a crouch, the ninja wrenches his arm free of the whip, the same motion sending a spray of blood across the faces of the nearest captives.
Two of them faint. A third leaves a puddle on the ground that is best not inquired about. Front row seats, ladies and gents...!
She realizes even in the midst of Balrog's reaction that she's been outplayed by the nimble fighter. Blinking, the girl is left behind, her staff smack to his side a feeble attempt to misdirect his abuse of the momentum she helped him build. Stumbling forward, trying to regain control over her weapon, the strawberry blonde left to watch the pain train of attacks unleashed on her hapless cohort in desperate times. He does have a point about Poison's clothes though, she can't help but idly muse.
Another yank of the whip for the purposes of furthering his assault clue Ayame into the idea that shaking it loose or letting go of it it are probably a good idea before she gets pulled further into the whirlwind of claw slashes, stabs, and aerial acrobatics the likes of which she's never actually witnessed first hand before. Balrog saves her the trouble, freeing his arm suddenly as Ayame yanks back on the whip, cracking it at her side as she regains control over it.
Grunting, the girl casts the weapon side, chosing instead to take a two handed hold of her staff and angle it in front of her at a somewhat defensive position. She's going to need to improve her game to deal with this guy. Unfortunately, it might mean Poison is on her own for a moment as Ayame pauses to brace herself, taking in energy from the room around her.
The stress of the captives, fainted or otherwise, the scent of blood freshly splashed across the floor and drapes, the tension of the commandos, every bit as afraid of Balrog as she herself is, the fear almost palpable... All of that life is pulled from as Ayame gathers potential energy with the intent of putting it to use in more aggressive techniques that may very well be able to hold up against the likes of this foe.
Of course, focused as she is, she's unable to move from her spot of choice in the center of the room, surrounded by an aura of blues, violets, and reds that whip about her figure and tousle hair and loose bits of clothing. Teeth gritted, Ayame does her damndest to follow the Spanish ninja's impossibly fast motions around the room. She's going to have to be ready...
COMBATSYS: Ayame gathers her will.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 Poison
> ////////////////////// ]
|=======\=------\1 Ayame
Poison bleeds all over the place, like a professional. Balrog's claws rake down her back, digging deep grooves that many thousands of dollars will spackle up such that it's like they were never there. Now, right now, though, they're there, raw and in sanguinely living color. She lands on her elbows and knees, her body shaking, teeth gritted so hard her jaw aches.
"Nice... nice try," Poison coughs, forcing herself to get up, a splash of cooling crimson all around her on the floor, staining her high heels. "But the odds are still /against/ you!" Poison charges again, attempting to use some pro wrestling chicanery to grapple Balrog into a full nelson. "Get him get him get him get him!" she yells over at Ayame.
COMBATSYS: Balrog dodges Poison's Full Nelson.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 Poison
> ////////////////////// ]
|=======\=------\1 Ayame
Geese Tower has stood for years in Southtown as a testament to the man who runs this city. A spire that stretches beyond any other building in the city, it stands out as a symbol -- a veritable Tower of Babel for a man whose ego knows no bounds. Geese Howard is king.
And his tower is his castle.
But there is something to be said about the Tower of Babel. Fights rage across every level of the tower, but as they do, there can be heard some distinct sounds: the sound of a low humming, growing louder and louder, the faint shaking of the tower's foundations. All faint, scarcely recognizable, really. All precursors -- heralds to something else.
The earth-shattering boom.
SOMETHING impacts the tower; an explosion is set off; /something/ to cause the entire structure to shake, /violently/, as if being wrent asunder by some unseen force. The ceilings clatter, crack, and rubble begins to fall... as that rumbling grows greater and greater. Something has just hit the tower, hard. And no matter what it may be, where it could be coming from...
.. everything is beginning to collapse. Quickly.
You know, Yamazaki is a fan of all the popular vices. Sex, drugs, smokes, booze, rock n' roll. But when the story of Geese's little obelisk ends, it touches on one of the mercenary's favorite vices of all; destruction. The Southtown stalker is taking a long drag off of someone's short cig when it all starts, the hard soled heel of his shoe exerting hundreds of pounds of pressure on some poor commando's head, the little scattered bits of the guy's radio piece scattered all over the hall he stands in. "So.." the mercenary continues, in a conversational tone.
"Kid's in the ballroom with a maniac?"
"y--yeah.." "Fuck. That minx is cheating on me. Who cheats on me? --WHO!?"
"GGNRKHGH!!" "Listen. John. John..." -- that's not his name, who cares what his name is, fucking lowbie -- "you're choking on your own neck. I can't hear you. I hate it when you mumble, John." "gnnhkkg--crack--WWWWWHHHH.." "JOHN! Stick with the program, I--"
KAWHOOM
Then the floor fucking goes diagonal on him.
Ryuji Yamazaki pauses, looking up without breaking step (much to John's displeasure), making a face as the floor starts to perceptibly sink. "....Looks like they're starting all kinds of parties without me." He shakes his head, taking down the Camel in one long drag before throwing the useless butt away, his words yielding a foul smoke seeping from his jaws, locked in a rictus grin. "Terrorists. No fucking class. Listen--that's my ride. I gotta go. Bye John."
"NNNNN!!!"
About thirty seconds later, there is an audible shriek as one of the escaping hostages runs just outside the ballroom, and gets something broken for his trouble before his ass sails right back in, limbs pinwheeling in the air before he lands on his ass in six different kinds of pain, his blood and most of his unconsciousness streaking out across the polished flooring in his skid landing. Just after that guy, Yamazaki steps in, six foot four of angry bastard whose fighting-gloved ham-fists sheathe one another. Under the intense pressure, his knuckles crack out an ominous bass that can be clearly heard even over the building falling apart.
"ALRIGHT," Yamazaki seethes at rage volumes that would wake Mothra, "which fucking taco eating willowy gigolo moustachio'd bastard been getting their greasy fucking sneak-behind-a-man's-back ninja hands all over _my woman?!_"
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki has joined the fight here in the center.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 Poison
> ////////////////////// ]
|=======\=------\1 Ayame
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 Poison
> ////////////////////// ]
|=======\=------\1 Ayame
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|---====
One moment, Poison is doing her best to make up with with her estranged Spaniard. Surely a hug from behind with cleavage pressed to his back can amend relations between the two! Whether or not it would have worked shall have to remain a mystery - because as the building lurches, Balrog wastes all of one second attempting to maintain balance on the lurching floor. Never bothering to rise from his crouch, he just flat out springs right outta there.
The rest of the room isn't so fortunate. Trained for ground warfare, not for crumbling buildings, Shadaloo agents go sprawling every which way as the building lurches. It's enough that the building itself was against them, but tables swiftly creak and slide away, bumping into agents who were already teetering on the edge of their balance. That's all it took. They're dead either way at this point - there's no sense in sticking around any longer. The screaming hostages begin climbing over each other in a mad attempt at surging out of the room through the chaos. Several make a valiant effort to screech to a halt upon witnessing Yamazaki's terrifying entrance, only to be overruled by majority vote as the the civilians behind them either shove, push aside, climb, and in some cases *run* over that first wave that showed signs of common sense. They have only seconds to take in the sight before them before the crazed Syndicate agent just, well, happens. On the bright side, the one thing they have working in their favor is numbers. Several no doubt fall to unspeakable fates as they swarm past the man, but the majority manage to make it out in the confusion. Those in the rear have the misfortune of being pinned between him and the disorganized gunfire of the Shadaloo goons.
Unfortunately for the commandos, they're more terrified of Lord Vega than they are of Yamazaki. Either that, or they just understand that they're fucked no matter what. Regardless, they just keep on shooting.
Balrog himself has abandoned all pretense of maintaining order within the room. Scaling the side of a curtain until he's at the level that once represented the ceiling, he gazes down upon the chaos and just...gives Yamazaki that *look*. He knows the one. That 'who the fuck are you?' look that trained professionals usually give him before having their lower jaw shoved down their throat. Sometimes with a stick of butter, for no discernable reason. He's gotta be long since used to it by now.
"I don't recall inviting *you* to this dance, cretin. You can have your choice of these tarts when our business is concluded!"
The tart that Balrog has his eye on in particular would be the one whose shoulders that all of his ire falls upon...the younger one. She may have an appreciation for his methods, but she is *still* the thing that started this whole mess. One moment, everything was going fine, then she fell through the ceiling and everything went to hell all at once. It doesn't really make any sense, but he's completely fine with putting all the blame on her. "KeeeeEEEEE..."
The ninja kicks off from the wall, arms extended directly above his head for the duration of the plunge from the corner of the room. Aiming for Ayame, he seeks to grab ahold of her head on the way down, and if successful flip her off of her feet moments before smashing her head into whatever ends up serving as the floor in the next few moments.
COMBATSYS: Jehuty has joined the fight here in the center.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 Poison
> ////////////////////// ]
|=======\=------\1 Ayame
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|---====
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty [W] 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Ayame fails to counter Izuna Drop from Balrog with Final Solstice.
~~ Alluring Hit! ~~
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/-======|=======\==-----\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|---====
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|-------
Energy builds quickly in the heated environment as Ayame draws heavily from the ambient chi alive admist the frantic action. Energy to be put to use when the moment is right - something to dish out a disabling enough hit to make a fast break for the exit. Maybe she'll give Poison a heads up when she makes her move if it won't impact her chance to escape by a measureable amount.
Calculating, she focuses on the insanely fast Shadaloo menace. With the energy building, her attention to detail is improved, as if time itself were slowing down. Her focus clear, her next move planned, Ayame grits her teeth, fingers slipping along her titanium polearm to get her hands into just the right position...
And then it all goes to hell. The detonation is nearly deafening and the sudden rumble on the floor even more so. On the ground level, it would be terrifying. Thirty floors up in a building that has another twenty-floors beyond that? It's practically paralyzing. Poison calls for Ayame to strike, but her attempts at keeping Balrog rooted leave her reaching for air as the impossibly swift foe escapes with his ninja-speed. "Che," the girl grunts, shifting her balance on the slowly tilting floor. Pieces of the ceiling rain down around her, begging the question of how long they have before the whole thing comes down.
Time to make a break for the door as Balrog executes his acrobatics, she muses, right before one of the escaping hostages comes /flying/ back in, a broken body that goes sliding along the floor. Okay, so maybe she doesn't want to take the path that leads straight to the human cuisinart or whatever it is that's out-
Yamazaki enters and Ayame pales. Her ears are ringing from the explosion, but even still she can hear him easily, his roar penetrating any temporary deafness with ease. "What... in the..." She must be paying off karma at a blazing rate with the way this mess is falling apart. Focus shattered, she tries to make the best of it, especially when it's becoming abundantly clear that in spite all wishes to the contrary, she seems to be the special tart of Balrog's eye right then and there. For a fleeting moment she hazards an idle thought for what he must be like behind that mask. Typically such things are to conceal something revoluting, but that doesn't fit his profile... which suggests that it's not that.
Shaking her head, she tries to follow the blur of motion that is the clawed ninja. Her staff flares to life, a crimson energy coursing over its surface as she bends her knees a little, preparing to counterattack with vengeance. It's the cross-up that gets her, Balrog slipping in behind the girl's back and seizing her by the head even as she lunges. Up off her feet into a dizzying tour of the air, the girl is brought crashing back down hard into the slanting floor with enough force to practically leave her senseless.
Flattened, the bewildered, terrified teen rolls onto her side and then rolls again, coming up into a crouch, her staff gripped tightly at her side as she squints her eyes, attempting to clear the stars enough to identify the nearest possible escape route from this living hell!
Her attempt at extremely grindy full-body contact rebuffed, Poison slams into the floor, her arms closing around exactly nothing and her teeth making extremely uncomfortable contact with finely waxed hardwood. Her nose, too -- the product of thousands of dollars of research and development work, let alone careful and delicate surgery, is smashed into an awkward, crooked position, and blood squirts from both nostrils in thick volume. Poison lays there for a second, on her knees, ass in the air, hands gripping her head. When she looks up, casually holding the bridge of her nose with one hand so that she can crack her cartilage back into something resembling its proper place with the other, she looks absolutely pissed. The glare in her eyes is fierce -- the blood streaming down her lips, chin, and neck make her look like a psychotic whore cannibal.
"/That/," Poison says, voice degenerating into a throaty growl, the kind that speaks of gargling whiskey and razor blades, "was a /big/--"
Poison raises her fists. "--/fucking/--"
And then Yamazaki tears the roof off. As the blonde master of Sadomazo rips his way into the situation like a rabid coyote, Poison turns around, eyes wide, her angry face melting into a look of wonder as Ryuji Yamazaki looses himself on all involved. Ayame getting busted up barely registers to her. "...oh my god," she says, watching the rampage-in-progress, and pressing a palm against the front of her cutoffs, as if checking something, eyes not moving from Yamazaki: "You make me so fucking hhhwet."
COMBATSYS: Poison gains composure.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|---====
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Jehuty successfully hits Yamazaki with Medium Shot.
- Power hit! -
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ ||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 1|-------|=======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
"And _you!_" Yamazaki points at Ayame, "You've got some 'splainin to do!! Don't you dare move!"
He's heard just a little bit since he set foot in Geese Tower, and already he doesn't like what he's hearing. Having some skinny pantywaist give him that kind of 'butting in' look on /his/ turf from a curtain while he still runs things around here just makes him all flavors of angry. See, he knows that look. Yamazaki stalks forward, one hand stuffed into a warm pocket while the other's knuckles sway hypnotically far closer to the ground than you'd think someone with that kind of arm length could manage. He brushes past the oddly demonic-looking (might be the nose) Poison, as he looks up at the dirty Spaniard, past the Chinese buffet of office workers and sandwich meat. He probably will not hesitate to knock her aside if she gets too close. And he probably isn't even gonna look back if he knocks her on her ass. "Outta my way, candypants, the professor's here to teach class." He grins. "See, you don't--"
Then Balrog starts talking.
And Balrog starts flying.
Around, with what he clearly already announced was his.
".. What?"
Yamazaki's voice is an octave or two higher.
The ground is sinking, people are shooting at him. But what's mostly important is Balrog's face and how it doesn't have a crater in it yet belonging to Yamazaki. Of course, that sort of preoccupation does have consequences. As might be expected, the gangster is just gunned down in cold blood, Ryuji forced to haul back as he's riddled with bullet holes pretty much instantly. He doesn't fall down, not by a long shot, but he cuts kind of a goofy-looking figure as he skids and slips around in a pool of his own blood. A bull on ice, trying to stay upright. "agh--nn--ngh--" Yamazaki convulses, vomitting what can't be a healthy amount of blood by the time the bullet hail stops, the mercenary still huge even when doubled over in intense pain.
"Sh..shit..."
Looking over one low shoulder, Yamazaki's head makes a quarter turn until his ear is parallel with the ground, neck twisting until /everyone/ in the room can hear it crack, like a gunshot. Jaws streaked with bile and blood paint a wide rictus grin as he looks at the assembled group. His teeth squeal as he moves his jaws to say words.
"Like I was saying. This dance? Belongs to /me/."
Next instant; a commando goes sailing through a shattered window like an evicted cat, automatic machine gun fire going off the whole way down.
One gets kicked in the jaw and grabbed. Another gets his arm dislocated shortly before he's headlocked. Yamazaki isn't hardly interested in these powder puffs. "WE'RE GONNA PARTY ALRIGHT, BUT FIRST ME AND THE FRENCH FRY GET TO HAVE WORDS," the gangster roars, before bodily throwing one or two at Balrog. That guy likes the aerial acrobatics, but if Yamazaki's aim is right, he can probably bank a lowbie off the Spanish ninja in mid-air. Of course, that's kind of like skipping rocks off a puddle; won't do a whole lot on its own.
But god forbid if Yamazaki, arm crossing an unreal amount of space in an eyeblink, gets his claws on Balrog in the instant it takes the ninja to cut his way through his man.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Balrog with Yondan Drill.
[ \\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 1/--=====/=======|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|-------
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
Yamazaki's grip is like welded steel. When he gets ahold of you, it's easier to imagine cutting off an arm and running away instead of shaking him loose. In the end, Yamazaki snaps Balrog off his feet from halfway across the room--his hands are /that/ fast. "C'mere, you little squirt," he growls..
His grip itself can crush bone all on its lonesome, but what's probably worse is, Yamazaki's just trying to hold Balrog still. And, to stop him from getting any cheeky ideas about where to put that claw while he's trying to make his point, the back of Yamazaki's hand, charged with an odd purple force, is going to be put to good use in one bone-crunching backhand across the business side of Balrog's mask. He'll probably stomp him in the gut too, for good measure. Depends on what Balrog does; Yamazaki hasn't decided. He likes to play these things by ear..
It's alright if you're a little dazed.
Grown men have cried after being backhanded by Yamazaki.
"You don't have a choice in the matter, swizzle stick," Yamazaki snarls, just stepping across the dancefloor, most likely with Balrog's body in tow. One hand slides into a pocket neatly, even as rubble smashes a hole into the floor a few inches to his left. He can fight if he wants, but Yamazaki's probably going to get angry and hit him again if he interrupts his story. Or bend him in half. "Just so happens I did business with his chick named Mao.." Ayame might remember that Shihong recently had to move due to her old apartment building damn near burning to the ground. "And it was pretty damn good," he mentions simply. "So to do her a little solid, I decided to give her a gift of my appreciation. I know kids like you won't get it, that it ain't personal, and that it's business and all that.." Yamazaki mentions simply, before trying to just lob Balrog head over heels into the far wall like a ragdoll, leading outside. No, /outside/. As in, 'not in the building anymore' outside. He does this with enough force to crack the studs, and cause a minor collapse in the room just over. "So. The only thing you gotta know is this."
Yamazaki stifles a giggle, his whole body crackling with force.
"HAH--I catch any of you limp-dicked wannabe chodes sniffing around my pants again touching /my/ ladies, And PEOPLE ARE GONNA START CALLING YOU QUASIMODO!!!"
A freight train of force explodes from the man, his body elongating into one huge and powerful stroke as he slides out of his pocket with the grandfather of all gang punches. Force grinds out the heavy metal tune of a one man wrecking crew as it screws around his fist. Yamazaki doesn't quite just go for the punch. He tries to go /through/ Balrog with his fist. THis isn't any cool martial arts move. There's no swaying with a leaf on the wind, there's no dancing on the sun's rays. There's no flipping, no kiai, no secret step. There's just Yamazaki, his fist, his force, and whole lot of noise. He's torn people in half before.
But chances are, the wall behind Balrog is gonna give and blow the spanish ninja into a stories-high freefall before Balrog /or/ Yamazaki goes.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki Toughs Out Balrog's Red Impact! =8D
[ \\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ ||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|-======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
Many would call Yamazaki insane - they would be right. But anyone who would call him *stupid* clearly haven't head the pleasure of being torn to pieces by the guy. Unorthadox? Sure, he just runs with whatever resources he has on hand at the time, often literally. It's still bloody effective - ALWAYS literally.
The ninja's reponse to being challenged in the midst of *his* party, having someone waltz in uninvited like *they* were the host who had organized this to begin with, tell him what he could or could not do with *his* guests...he was having none of that. Which one of these runts was that ugly mug ranting about? It was a coin flip. Clever as Ayame is, in both fighting and strategy, she's still a ways to go to end up on the radar of one of Shadaloo's Elite. Mad Gear is just someone else's bad joke, so of course he'd have no knowledge of who his inadvertent dance partner was for a time. That's just how it worked out. So, Balrog does what comes natural when some Bison-faced idiot barges in and tries to take charge. He ignores the hell out of them and hopes whatever jackassed thing he's doing at the time just keeps pissing them off, because it's funny to watch a baboon dance an throw poo while screeching loudly out of the same mouth that was just snacking on that poo.
It's a long, long fall, especially with the room diagonal as it is. Once Ayame hesitates for that split second, he slips right in, twirling her around in place and staring her dead in the eyes as he uses her small, childish frame as the trampoline to break his fall. The force of the impact is crushing, and all he does for his trouble is gracefully backflip right off of her, landing on his feet.
Things have been busy heating up while the ninja was busy. While Balrog is impresssed with the damage that the soldiers under his command have managed to deliver in such a short period of time - no doubt a feat accomplished with them being caught between the wrathful triumverate that comprise the wills of Lord Vega, Balrog, and Yamazaki - but their glory is very short lived. Their numbers are swiftly cut down in the moments that follow, and Balrog has just enough time to muse that it looks like he landed on the screaming monkey button after all...when his own soldiers start flying at him.
Of course Balrog cartwheels away from that stuff. He's no lowbie. There's no way in hell that you're going to hit him with *his own* lowbies either. What he does *not* count on, is the unreal speed in which the monkey just blurs toward him at maniac speed. He sees it coming. His eyes narrow, he even smirks between the mask. He lowers his--damn it, you're here too fucking early!!
Balrog tries to bolt right the hell out of that. But this isn't the same as fighting against the tautness of Ayame's whip. Yamazaki is crazier than Ahab, and he very well *could* hold a thrashing whale in place if he damn well didn't say it could go home yet. If Ayame holding down Balrog was like playing with a fish...the grip of the Syndicate agent is a *harpoon*, no amount of thrashing around is going to get Balrog loose. One, two denting cracks into Balrog's mask, and that fight in the fish settles down for a moment.
It's uncharacteristically nice of Yamazaki to take the time out at this point to explain his place in things. To put things in perspective, let the Shadaloo Elite know the why of it all. All the more shame that he's too rattled by these blows to really absorb it all.
When Balrog is regaining his senses, he's in midair. The air is whistling. The air should not be whistling by you when you're still indoors. He has enough time to recognize that a) the logistics of air whistling while he is indoors is soon to be moot, b) because he is about to collide with a wall at high speed, and c) that ugly mug is cruising right towards him, to see him out of the Tower all proper-like.
He tries again. Throwing his weight diagonal, the Spaniard manages to right himself in mid-air so that his back is to the wall, hands behind his head, legs and elbows extended in
He tries again. Throwing his weight diagonal, the Spaniard manages to right himself in mid-air so that his back is to the wall, hands behind his head, legs and elbows extended in both directions to expand the area of his concussive profile. It goes a great way toward reducing the force of the impact, even with the wall bucking behind him for the trouble. Now, there's still a problem here. There's a train coming. Its name is Yamazaki. Its destination? Outside, and nobody installed *brakes* on this guy.
In the end, Balrog doesn't try to throw himself out of the way. He just lifts a hand to grip his ruined mask, and yanks. It's more than a simple tug because the cracked, caved in shards of its surface have practically become an external carapace imbedded in his skull. He has to *pull* that ruined mess out of his face and throw it to the side, just in time for Yamazaki's pain train to arrive. Something's not right though. His eyes are wide. His bloodied face is grinning wide, the walls echoing with maddening laughter just before the wall on that side of the room just EXPLODES.
The psychopaths have left the building at long last.
Or have they?
Just when anyone left in the room is starting to feel safe, a window shatters. Inexplicably, it's one *higher* than the level at which the two exited, and Balrog is on top. A few bleeding gashes seem to have been added to Yamazaki's extemeties in the intervening moment, but those really aren't worth mentioning in the wake of the sheer anhilliative onslaught that just transpired here a moment ago.
Balrog's not done yet.
Having delivered his aerial package to the room, the ninja kicks off of the agent and catches himself on a wall for a split second. He lunges past Yamazaki and repeats the process. And then repeats it again. A few stray pieces of falling debris explode into powder as the act continues, seemingly beneath Balrog's notice.
The room is filled with delerious cackling once more as the ninja continues to blur past the falling Syndicate agent, and it swiftly becomes apparent that each one of these lunges is being accompanied by a trail of red. Fast forward ten seconds. The air explodes in a crimson blossom of gore, one madman falling in either direction and landing on the floor. Chest stained crimson from both of their respective bloods, matted blonde hair falling to either side of his face in wild curls, the Shadaloo assassin crouches low on all fours, breath rasping from his mouth as he catches his breath. A great deal more than half-dead, the man still manages to grin, lifting his claw to wordlessly draw his tongue across the prongs in preparation for whatever comes next.
The crumpled teen unfolds slowly from the point of impact Balrog left her. Vision blurred, head and back hurting something fierce, she rests her right hand against her temple as she squints across the room. There's voices of screaming pain, a monsterous yelling, Yamazaki pointing her out as needing to explain something when all told, she's just as terrified of him as she is of the homicidal clawed ninja she and Poison have been stuck in this room with.
"Nrgh." she winces, shaking her head. Something about a dance. Something about a party. The sound of snaping bones and broken spines. The strawberry-blonde is in some kind of horror slasher movie and right now she isn't exactly sure which side of the Freddy vs Jason encounter she wants to come out on top. Glass shatters, the building is tipping, the entire mess threatens to come crashing down around her and all she wants to do is escape.
An odd look is cast Poison's way as the pink-haired one makes some kind of sound suggesting she finds the Syndicate monster to be attractive. "And I thought I had strange tastes," she mutters, rolling into her knees, getting a hold of her staff, and pushing back up to her feet. Her eyes make out the blurred form of Ryuuji as he explains why he's come to be here and what, in his twisted, crazed mind, this has to do with Shihong Mao and whatever transpired between them. The Chinese woman was forever silent on the cause of the apartment fire that forced the two of them to relocated. But Ayame's getting a sense of what Yamazaki exated from her for this 'protection' racket of his. What a mad, mad world. Her complexion pales slightly.
Then - for a moment - silence. A glance across the tilting room reveals the windows shattered and the streaks of blood along the floor suggest that's the direction the two madmen departed.
It's a thirty foot fall to the street below. A free fall may very well do them both in. "Good riddance." Back on her feet, one arm out to her side for the sake of balance on the increasingly unsteady surface, she glances toward the double doors leading further back into the building. What do when a skyscraper is collapsing all around you, she wonders. It's kind of a new experience and not one she's prepared a plan for.
The two killers explode back in through another window with even more velocity than they departed, sending glass flying in across the floor before it's violently sucked back out by the rush of air eager to escape the tall building. With no copy of '5 ways to survive a collapsing skyscraper' on hand, and no where to go, the girl is rooted where she stands, eyes, widened by the seemingly unavoidable prospect of death, landing on Balrog. Unmasked, she can see his eyes at last and that's perhaps the worst sight of all.
Scratch that, the way he licks his claws is. "I really need to meet better guys." Spinning her staff under one arm, she snaps her whip up from the ground as it slides by and cracks it out for newly exposed water pipes to buy herself a moment's reprieve of struggling to regain traction. It's not the greatest place to be in the world, but if everyone else is still scrambling for a foothold, it puts her quite a ways better off!
COMBATSYS: Ayame calculates her next move.
[ \\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ ||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|-======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
Poison steps back, leaning against one of the warped and crumpled chain-link fences, debris from the stampede of fleeing beauties from Balrog's holding pens. She puts one foot up, knee bent, and folds her arms. Her nose's bleeding has slowed, if not stopped, but she doesn't seem to care; the Mad Gear vixen is no doubt used to coping with injuries like these, considering how often she pisses off Haggar. "/KILL HIM, YAMAZAKI!/" she cheers from the sidelines.
COMBATSYS: Poison takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ ||||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|-======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
Yeah, there really isn't a lot of ground that's remaining stable for long. Not that it matters for people like Yamazaki and Balrog. Balrog, because he doesn't /use/ the ground. Yamazaki, because a freight train that's run vastly out of control is still a freight train. Yamazaki would have stopped at the edge of the ballroom after he blew the wall out. He really would have, but not only does he kinda not want to, but with the ground as thick with beaten up lowbie blood as it is, there's really no choice. Yamazaki sails out into the abyss with Balrog pinioned on the end of his fist, his legs windmilling into the air slowly, "AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEEEEAAAHHHHH...."
*POW* "UNGH!"
Then shrieking, cackling, Balrog sails back into a higher window, with Yamazaki all slashed up like he got in a fight with a lion, hitting the ground with a crunch of floorboards, the massive man goes rolling to a stop, quickly rolling to his feet and looking around angrily, only catching vague glimpses of howling ninja leaping past. Which way's he coming from? He'll just grab him again--NGH--
Fifteen seconds of being cored like an apple later, Yamazaki explodes into a blossom of red--how much blood does he even have?--and honestly, for any other person, that would really had been the story of them. Show up, mouth off a little, get damn near cut in half for your trouble.
"Ghhehn-hgh...."
It's hard to even really tell that the berserker even could bend that way. Right now, his back is bent into a crescent, his boots still planted as squarely as they can be on the wobbling ground, his eyes rolled back into his head as his skull hits the bloodied floorboards behind him. His spine the bridge over a river of crimson, his back can't help but crack audibly as the stalker straightens out, what's left of his shirt fully ruined in the butcher's shop that he's become in a startlingly small amount of time. But he's still standing. In his own blood. Standing, and breathing.
And disconcertingly, as he's standing in his own blood, one might notice that his blood has fallen in /perfect/ katakana patterns on the floor: SA DO MA ZO.
Yamazaki hoots loudly, pointing behind him. "I'm impressed," he growls.
"Do you know how fucked up you got to be to have people cheering for /me?/"
He giggles for exactly three seconds before his expression darkens.
Swaying in the crumbling room like a rabid bull, Yamazaki's voice remains even as he continues. "Course, I was gonna get ahold of the kewpie a little earlier," Yamazaki admits, "but that time in the pen was kinda fun." At this point, while he's talking with Balrog conversationally, he's more or less talking for Ayame's benefit, too. The little jumping bean tamale only needs to worry about one thing: Yamazaki whips a hand out, and a massive switchblade opens with an audible -snikt-, held in his meaty claw. And from that point forward, all he can smell is the blood that's going unspilt in Balrog's veins.
Kid likes to play with knives, huh?
"Hey, stretch." Yama grins, dirtily.
"C'mere."
And then Yamazaki hurtles forward, fully intending to cut Balrog's arm off.
With a knife that short, it's gonna be hard.
There might be some tearing involved.
COMBATSYS: Balrog dodges Yamazaki's Sabaki no Aikuchi.
[ \\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ |||||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|-======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
Yamazaki's observation is a poignant one. But see, here's the thing. Balrog's a little too far gone right now for that to mean much of anything to him. You don't shake a bottle of ginger ale and then tell it to stop spraying all over the place; likewise, you don't make Balrog bleed, from his face, and get anywhere by telling him which fruitcake patents he's infringing on. Not hearing it. Until you're dead. And even then there's probably a nice relaxing bath followed by a coo and coddling session with himself in front of the mirror before he's ready to face the world with a smile that isn't blood curdling again. "I want your face...for my wall. So that people can marvel at how ugly it is. Maybe it should go in a museum instead...MWEEEHEEHEEHEEHEE."
Meanwhile, the building really isn't faring all that much better. In a metaphor to Spaniard's sanity, the rest of the broken wall gives way as the structural supports on that side of the building decide that they never signed up for this stuff. What's more, it doesn't just stop with the wall - that entire side of the building begins to crumble away entirely. Buildings generally aren't supposed to *melt*, let alone awhile one is watching from inside. The waterfall of rubble is a sure sign that the rest of the building isn't going to hold for much longer.
Balrog seems completely fine with the prospect of playing chicken with a room full of people that are out for him. Death by crushing is so much more boring than a nice, bloody slashfest, and he'd be a poor Host if he wasn't seeing to the needs of his guests. Luckily for Ayame and Poison, they seem to be forgotten for the moment as the two murderous hit men continue to metaphorically circle. For all the annoyance that Ayame represents, there's one sin that she *didn't* commit...injuring his face. Yamazaki, on the other hand...? He doesn't have much luck getting a grip on that arm. On all fours as he is, it's a simple matter to backflip out of reach. He doesn't really anticipate that putting a stop to the guy's charge. In fact, the crazed Spaniard is rather looking forward to it. Hurling himself forward in a careening bodily canonball, the two forces will crash together; should Yamazaki let himself be bowled over as such, he'll need to be wary of one last parting shot as Balrog erupts from it with a face-seeking claw. May as well start the work somewhere, ya know?
It's really hard to quite figure out how she feels about this entire disaster playing out around her. Ayame has Balrog pissed off at her, Yamazaki fighting on her behalf AND pissed off at her, the building falling down completely and probably pissed off at her on some level or other, and a whole ton of flailing, dying, bloody commandos that at least probably aren't specifically pissed off at her.
In a perfect world, Yamazaki and Balrog would kill each other off. With Balrog it's because he's scary. With Yamazaki, it's because it's personal. He tried to crush her eye in with his thumb once. Then again, she did shoot his eye with a crossbow bolt. She'd be glad if the world was done with tbe both of them. Not that that would help her situation with the falling building in the /slightest/, but it would be one less problem on her endless list of travails.
She can't really gamble on that though. In the sum total of 'what is likely to get me killed vs just really f'd up', Balrog managing to kill Yamazaki off seems like the worst possible outcome. Then again, that depends on how bad Yamazaki wants to mess her up when this is all said and done! Tightening her grip on the whip keeping her from slipping and sliding around, Ayame focuses back on the two killers. It's a risk to try and skew a fight between monsters one way or another, but she is rather the opportunistic one after all.
First, help Yamazaki kill that speedy claw guy. Second, deal with imminent doom by falling building... She releases her hold on the whip, bolting over the distance between her and the demasked monster. With the tilting floor, it only helps to augment her speed, bringing her into striking range remarkably quickly. A spin into the air and a two-handed grip on her staff turns her into a helicoptering menace attempting to bash one end then the other of her staff squarely into the back of the Spainish ninja's head! Normally chatty, she attacks with what silence she can muster. For once, she knows for certain that giving him so much as a hint of her attack is all he needs to manuever away...
There is the matter of landing, of course. A matter she's trying to solve even as she takes to the air. Details to be worked out all in good time.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki Toughs Out Balrog's Rolling Crystal Flash! =8D
[ \\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\1 Poison
> //////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ ||||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 1|------=|=======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
"Nrgh," Yamazaki grunts, twirling his switchblade, forcing him to pitch forward somewhat inelegantly as Balrog skates the hell out of dodge easily. Yamazaki's heavy weight could very easily be imagined to be the cause of the shaking, but that's really just the building, or so we hope. The berserk mercenary, as might be expected, doesn't really stop in the inevitable clash of huge bodies. Someone like Ayame jumping in the middle is arguably more dangerous to her than it is to either of them, but Yamazaki isn't gonna argue if the waif wants in on his party. He doesn't really care who she hits. Either way, it's all gonna be fun. See--"Ugly?!"
That... is a state of mind.
The building lists, and one could swear that Yamazaki is briefly running on the wall for the kind of tilt the floor gets as the building slowly descends into a freefall. Balrog rolling the whole way, one could imagine the mercenary simply being bowled over like a set of tenpins. It works sort of like that, in that Yamazaki is knocked spinning as Barlog cannonballs past, knocked onto one shoe, only regaining his balance when--
Balrog's claw goes into his head.
Well, more appropriately, somewhere between his face and his ear, ripping into the connective tissue that keeps Yamazaki's /jaw/ attached. And one could swear that Yamazaki leaned into it before that bloody thing landed. Have you ever seen someone with half a jaw grin?
Yeah--now you have.
The mercenary slavers, a light in his eyes that isn't caused by the reflection off Balrog's steel focusing on the man. "I think I /like/ you. Better hope I don't think about keeping you around." See, the prevailing logic is, it's gonna take Balrog about a second to pull his claw out of Yamazaki's head. And Yamazaki just doesn't die from weak things like a hole or two in the head. However, it's going to take Yamazaki half a second to catch Balrog's in the stomach with a full blown kick that raises Balrog a good six feet in the air impaled on the wrong end of Yamazaki's leg. And Yamazaki's willing to bet that stomping a bursting-thigh-muscle mudhole in Balrog that drives the ninja back down *through* the floor /is/ going to kill him.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Balrog with Yakiire.
[ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\1 Poison
> //////////// ]
|====---\-------\0 Ayame
[ |||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 1|----===|=======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
COMBATSYS: Ayame successfully hits Balrog with The Sunrise Of Broken Dreams.
[ < > /////////////////// ]
Balrog 1/-----==/=======|=======\-------\1 Poison
> //////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
[ |||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 1|----===|=======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
Balrog is a pretty solid ball of muscle for a ninja who bounces all over the place. Judging from the glint in his own eyes, he enjoys his work as well. Ugly, ugly, this man is ugly...this man struck his face out of spite for his own ugliness...ugliness killed that which he loved most...the ugly must die!! Oblivious to the state of the shifting building around him, the Spaniard's head is thrown back as his body unfurls, cackling with mad glee as he lashes out with his claw. The fact that Yamazaki leans into the attack goes unnoticed. He doesn't care. The scum can just sit there and leer at him all he wants, because even as one of the prongs catches in the sheer meat that is Yamazaki's *face*, a little stuck jaw bone isn't going to keep him down. No. Edging back and forth, Balrog is already at work trying to literally saw off the Syndicate agent's face so that he can make good on his earlier promise to take it home with him. Is...is...oh lordy, he *is*. He's actually HUMMING as he does it!
The ninja's reverie comes to an end when a rather solid smack in the head arrives. "Augh! I'll deal with you in--AUGH, stop tha-AUGH, THAT'S IT, I'M GOING TO KILL--" The sentence is abruptly cut off when Yamazaki's foot just flat out knocks the wind out of him. Pleasantly enough, that claw arm makes a rather valiant attempt to keep sawing even as he's being manhandled. It isn't until Yamazaki's stomping boot comes down on him that the weapon is finally torn free, leaving another ribbon of blood to go flying artfully through the air.
The floor underneath the three fighters begins to cave with the force of the repeated abuse, Balrog's face scrunched up in pain for a moment...before it abruptly lights up, that bloody countenance of his putting on one last grin to send his guests off with. "Oh, you'll be hearing from me again...I've still got to collect on that face...!" That grin suddenly twists even wider, eyes darting to Ayame. "...And YOU...are coming with me!"
No, he doesn't give a rat's ass about what Yamazaki's 'lessons' are, what his 'intent' is...this meddling tramp ruined everything...and didn't even stay out of things when offered a reprieve! What's the best, SWEETEST poison he can serve these two?
Stomp, stomp, stomp. Balrog's lower half vanishes beneath the crumbling floor. His final act of spite is a final, desparate attempt to grab the younger girl by the legs and SLAM her into the ground next to him and finish the job Yamazaki started, sundering the floor and dragging her to Hell with him.
Don't worry, Ayame. If you're lucky, the building will ensure that you have company. Assuming you're taking the Shadaloo express down with him.
COMBATSYS: Balrog can no longer fight.
> /////////////////// ]
|=======\-------\1 Poison
> //////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
[ |||||||||||| ]
Yamazaki 1|----===|=======
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki interrupts Hari Tsuki Rolling Izuna Drop from Balrog with Guillotine.
> /////////////////// ]
|=======\-------\1 Poison
> //////////// ]
|=====--\-------\0 Ayame
[ ||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|---====
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
... At least, that's the plan until Yamazaki grabs Balrog by the head.
All in all, the gruesome brawler is a horrific sight--a full 20% of his face has been just about ripped off his skull to the point where you can see the white around his terrible slack-jawed grin -- and it's not his teeth. Bulletholes and long gouges that have ripped his expensive Italian body shirt to shreds. All thanks to the efforts of Balrog's humming work, and the only reason it wasn't done is courtesy of the comical scene before them. The kewpie's knock to the dome and Yamazaki's size -- what shoe size is he again? He'll have to check.
Right now, he's busy.
It's said that even if the shinigami themselves came out of Hell for Yamazaki, Yamazaki would drag them up and enslave them. It's said, because Yamazaki said it at one point, and made someone else say it for posterity. This isn't really any much different; Yamazaki dragging Balrog out of the ground like that, with a purposeful cut to his wild eyebrows to match the murderous glint in his eyes. At least, that's the plan until Yamazaki's weight plus Balrog's stacks on the ground beneath them. It will never really be known what exactly drives the maniac to willfully get in the way of the deadlock that takes Yamazaki down through the sundered floor with him, leaving a massive gaping chasm where they two used to be. Still. There is one thing that's clear.
Yamazaki won't be ignored, and isn't above denying Balrog his piteous vengeance to prove the point, too.
"Fucking nut," the brawler growls professionally, bile acidifying every word.
It's bad when Yamazaki refers to you as a nut.
"--You got a bigger and nastier dance partner today," Yamazaki points out helpfully, even as the level below them begins to collapse too. He could say something cool. Something modern, something that points out the futility of the situation, something that proves himself to be the alpha male. But really, practically speaking, he won't get to finish the thought.
This shit is falling apart.
And he's got a job to do.
Yamazaki isn't much one for wasting time.
Not while trying to drag every inch of Balrog's body across the collapsing, fractured ground, howling laughing as even the floor beneath the gaping chasm begins to fall away. He'll use his bare hands if he needs to, bodyslam Balrog through this interior wall if he needs to, it doesn't even matter... it takes more than collapsing buildings to stop RYuji Yamazaki... not even if that building's Geese Tower.
The rumble of a falling skyscraper is near deafening. Only the howls, the blood curdling laughs, the growls of wild beasts in combat can be heard above the constantly escalating din as plaster, wood, and steel collapse down all around the room. Ayame can barely think straight - or, rather, she's probably already lost her mind to panic and terror, she muses with ironic rationality, given how she's deliberately throwing herself into the air and trying to clobber the back of the head of a man who would casually disembowel her so much as utter a single word in her direction again.
Be it insanity, desperation, or having lost her mind of anything better to do, she throws herself into the attack, holding nothing back, the timing coinciding with Yamazaki's strike more a matter of frantic happenchance than any deliberate planning. The staff connects and Ayame lets the weapon rebound back, absorbing the counter-force of the impact rather than allow herself to be spun about out of control. She slides to a stop, unable to tell if she's standing on the floor, some wall, or what used to be the ceiling, as the world all around her rolls along completely beyond the control of anyone in the once grand dance hall.
Without her whip, Ayame has no more tools with which to gain traction. Even her staff is more hinderance than aid, and it is with that in mind that she flips it closed, focusing on shoving it into the pouch at her belt, completely oblivious to Balrog's intention of dragging her into the collapsing floor with him. That's one trip she's got a slim chance of surviving at all - a rollercoaster descent into hell with the clawed killer.
But a man possessed of a partially exposed skull interfers with the ninja's intent just as Ayame turns, eyes widening as a situation keeps getting catastrophically worse by the second. A raging tank unwilling to give up being the focus of violence for even a moment, Yamazaki propels himself into Balrog's slice and dice violence and then takes off running with him to hell knows where.
Relieved of death-by-Balrog-or-Yamazaki, Ayame darts to the wide opening that used to be the exterior wall, sliding to a stop as she looks down toward the street far below. Taking in a deep breath, her hand goes to her belt, fishing for a small reel concealed behind a loop and begins unrolling a long length of high-tensile strength, wire-thin cable. Her left hand fishes a small bulb-like weight out of her staff-carrying pouch and affixes it to a hook at the end of the now unfurled wire.
In the back of her mind it only makes sense to fashion herself a grappling hook. But as she looks out over the drop below, the nearest building is far beyond anything she could possibly hope to hook onto. No last second leap could possibly help her span the distance to both escape the falling tower and descending close enough to find purchase on a neighboring business district skyscraper. Twirling her weight on a floor clearly seconds from giving out, Ayame exhales softly. "Well. This sucks."
"This sucks," she says.
A full second later, a bare hand sinks into the concrete not far away.
See, there's a reason why he gets paid top dollar for his services. Have you really ever tried to kill Yamazaki? Like, seriously? A firing squad, a maniac with a claw, and a three story drop through to the soup kitchens and at least half of another brawl entirely later, and the well dressed beast is still standing.
Well, figuratively speaking.
Yamazaki might be /here/, but it's undeniably clear, that clawed fuck did a lot more damage to him as he fought him on the way down, tooth and nail. Probably literally; Yamazaki's jaw is covered with blood, and it may or may not have to do with half of his face being gone. There's no mention of what happened to Balrog. And probably an excellent idea not to mention it; there's a lot of forks in the long road down to Hell, and not all of them lead to places better.
There is a bone-sucking crunch as Yamazaki pulls himself up on an arm that seems entirely dislocated that wasn't there before, and the mercenary emerges from the gaping chasm a bleeding wreck, with the most wicked scowl you can imagine. As to how Yamazaki could scowl and still appear happy, that's left to the imagination, and probably a good chunk of that haunting, coughing cackle as he hauls himself up to his full height over Ayame, standing upright only by the favor of that one arm that seems like it's got a couple more joints than it should. "I'll tell ya one thing..." the berserker finally manages to growl, appreciatively..
"You pick the /hottest/ parties to sneak into!"
One hand easily larger than Ayame's head reaches out.
Oh shit, he's grinning.
"--It's time to go.."
For the record, just because Yamazaki's other arm isn't broken doesn't mean it doesn't have the ability to bend in the kind of ways his dislocated one can. Hardly. At least, so you might thing, seeing him whip it out on Ayame like that. There isn't even anything meaningful in the way he whips a hand out to grip her by the banding at the back of her skirt. Yamazaki just doesn't care, and if Ayame doesn't think really fast about what kind of death she wants to have, Yamazaki's going to pick her up off the ground by the skirt like mother lifts a misbehaving kitten by the scruff. His laughter will be heard in every hall on the floor, sister; He's swinging his entire weight into it, stumbling with the motion that will likely end off with his ass on the ground.
But first, the maniac is shooting to lob Ayame out of the cavernous hole in the wall right out into the vertiginous wild blue yonder. With the kind of distance Yamazaki's used to getting in the Lowbie Toss, she might not need that hook of hers to do much more than save her from becoming wall pizza.
COMBATSYS: Ayame endures Yamazaki's Medium Throw.
> /////////////////// ]
|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///// ]
|=======\=------\1 Ayame
[ |||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|--=====
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Jehuty 0|-------|------=
> /////////////////// ]
|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///// ]
|=======\=------\1 Ayame
[ |||||||| ]
Yamazaki 0|-------|--=====
'This sucks.' may have very well been Ayame's last words. With thirty floors below her and over twenty above, the odds of survival are grim. She had, at times, contemplated how she might go out. And then immediately set about devising intricate schemes by which she would avoid said-deaths. It always pays to be prepared, after all. Getting sandwiched between fifty floors of wood, concrete, and steel hadn't actually even made it into the top fifty possibilities and thus, she hadn't really figured out what to do about this one ahead of time.
Taking in a deep breath, she furiously debates death by ridiculous falling or death by extreme compression. And that's when Yamazaki's skull arrives. Again. "Who the hell are you? King Kong?" Ayame snaps back irritably. This guy... this guy just doesn't not die. Even with his limbs in the condition they are, he keeps on moving. She has no where to run, no where to hide, and thus it is as he pulls himself up to his full towering height over her, she's still right there.
If she hadn't already embraced the high probability of her imminent demise and rationally decided that throwing her arms around in a wild panic wasn't going to delay the inevitable, she would probably look quite terrified to have the bloody mass of shreaded meat and exposed bone standing in front of her. Whatever Balrog did to him makes the crossbow bolt she put in Yamazaki's eye seem like child's play by comparison. Maybe that's why it still seems like he's grinning behind that mask of blood.
Uh oh. He isn't there just to stare and look scary. He's talking. When Yamazaki is talking to you, that's bad. She knows this by now. "What?" she asks back quickly as he begins to speak. And then he moves. His arm snakes around like a boneless serpent, snapping behind the girl and easily seizing her by the band of her skirt before pulling her off the ground entirely and holding her there dangling.
Her first expression is one of abject confusion as her arms hang down, fingers wrapped in the wire she was twirling before he so rudely hefted her off the crumbling floor. In a dark black alley, she might be mortified by this manhandling, but in a building that's going to cease to exist in the next quarter of a minute or so, she can't really imagine what Yamazaki intends to do in that span of time...
And then it becomes more clear as he takes a step forward and readies to hurl her out into the wide open space between buildings. At first she thinks he's out to kill her, but her mind instantly concludes that if he wanted to kill her, he wouldn't settle for something so detatched as a long fall off the building but would instead probably be ripping an arm free or crushing her skull in his hands or some other horrific way to go out.
No, he's going to throw her free. And, given the power in his arm, possibly right /through/ the window of an adjacent building. Well, that's unexpected. It must be a byproduct of his agreement with Shihong, a morbid, nausaiting deal struck in the depths of a burning apartment after who knows what degree of pain the Chinese woman endured. Ayame should just enjoy the free ride out of the death trap even if there's a painful impact expected on the other end...
But Ayame always has to make things different. Always has to try and do too much at once. Never able to settle, never quite happy with 'how things are'. And right now, she senses an opportunity. Oh, sure, it's nice that Yamazaki isn't about to kill her. That's great in fact. She likes that. But that doesn't mean he isn't like an unleashed, rabid dog. Just because he doesn't bite you one day doesn't mean he won't the next when you least expect it...
The decision is made in an instant. It's not even a decision. It's a reflex reaction, filed under 'G' for Death by Gorilla. It happens in a flash, a blur of arms and fingers, and by the time Yamazaki has sent the featherweight flying, her work is finished. A wire up around his neck, around an arm, up over a pipe exposed by a collapsing ceiling, around an ankle... Both ends come to an end, wrapped around the blade of a knife. A blade Ayame so kindly left burried in Yamazaki's side right as he sent her flying. "Nothing personal, you just freak me out!" she explains so helpfully as a parting shot.
As he stumbles out of his throw, the damage would be done, the wires pulled taught, the blade burried deeper into his side. Of course she knows it won't kill him. It would take more than that. But perhaps it will keep him from being able to take any measure to save himself from dying in the falling building? The girl can hope, at least. After all, what's a criminal rapsheet without a little bit of...
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki endures Ayame's Manslaughter.
> /////////////////// ]
|=======\-------\1 Poison
> ///// ]
|==-----\-------\0 Ayame
[ || ]
Yamazaki 1|------=|=======
COMBATSYS: Ayame has left the fight here.
> /////////////////// ]
|=======\-------\1 Poison
[ || ]
Yamazaki 1|------=|=======
Nice parting words and all.
Yamazaki might be a little bit more inclined to take them seriously if Ayame wasn't sailing out of the window at 90-some mph when she says it. Yamazaki laughs once, harshly. Now, while he sensed she was up to something with all those little whipping hummingbird motions, what you have to understand is that pain is a kind of tapestry, and right now Yamazaki's in quite a bit of it. Blades buried in sensitive spots are the sort of thing that registers like an ant biting you while you're on fire. And for a second, he doesn't seem to truly notice, stepping forward with a big gory-ass lopsided grin. He seems like he's about to laugh and do a little dance, until the wires draw tight around his bicep, drawing blood as the tension drags on the knife, and then his leg, knocking off his balance. Then, Yamazaki actually notices how much blood he's truly lost.
See, you might not notice the knife, but it still draws an awful lot of blood.
Well, at least he doesn't have to bother saving candypants.
Yamazaki only got paid enough for one dame, thanks.
The mercenary hits the ground titanically in a comical kind of twist that sets him against what's left of the wall, bringing the pipe down across a leg. First he lands on his ass, then the rest of him topples, his shoulderblades hitting with a deep whump that's dwarfed by the unearthly crumble that's the fall of Geese Tower. And that's about when he realizes he can't move, not with the amount of blood he's lost.
"Little minx." He might have to spank her later.
Wide-eyed but not really 'seeing' a whole lot through the red haze and the pounding of his own heart furiously trying to keep him conscious, Yamazaki pats a pocket with his one hand that's not been horrifically tied down. Finds a stray cigarette just shy of bent in half, and a silver lighter. Opening his ruined jaw to accept it, he pauses for a moment as pain stabs through his skull. What in the.. gripping the cig between two fingers, he reaches behind his opposite ear--
.. and rips what's left of Balrog's claw out of the other side of his head.
He pitches that into the chasm.
"Fuckin' nut.."
Yamazaki lights up, blood pooling rapidly under him.
"What a day...what a goddamn day..." He takes a long drag to make up for it. Course. Now that he's more or less immobilized, Yamazaki has the time to glance up as the ceiling starts to cave in, as the rest of the building above topples. "....."
Yamazaki's cigarette falls out of his mouth.
Really, the tower was trying to be nice about this whole falling business. Geese Howard had gone to great lengths in personally overseeing the original construction, making sure that a little terrorism would never see his empire crumbling around him. Therefore, it is not the tower's fault when its foundation gives one last groan of exhaustion, and suddenly expires.
This is not terrorism. This is war.
From the inside, it's hard to tell exactly how the whole Tower comes apart. It's uncertain what even happened out there to put it in this state of affairs to begin with. Long cracks stretch across the walls, the ceiling is rent asunder, and debris rains from all directions.
At last, the floor itself gives way, having already received its fair share of punishment from the battle that had occupied this room for the last hour or so.
Yamazaki already knows the hard way that it's a long way down...unfortunately, this time, he's got a whole lot of building coming with him.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki Toughs Out Jehuty's Babel Falling+! =8D
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Jehuty 0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\1 Poison
[ ]
Yamazaki 2|<<<<<<<|<<<<<<<
[OOC] Jehuty says, "You jackass."
[OOC] Jehuty says, "You JACKASS"
[OOC] Yamazaki :)
[OOC] Yamazaki has toughed out a building falling on him.
[OOC] Yamazaki can retire.
Barely conscious, and in a freefall.
Half his face carved off. Arm broken.
Lost massive amounts of blood.
Helpless with about 20,000 metric tons of steel and concrete above him.
Yamazaki still manages to go down the whole way cackling.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki can no longer fight.
Log created on 20:19:17 05/27/2009 by Balrog, and last modified on 23:47:15 06/08/2009.