Description: Wing Xiaoping is, if nothing else, a highly devoted young woman who has her sights set on taking her delinquency to the next level - by wholeheartedly advocating chaos and disaster alongside a truly dangerous cult. Varvara Economou, though not exactly what one would call her friend, cannot understand for the life of her as to why Wing would throw away all the good things in her life for this, and has at least an inkling of a conscience to convince her otherwise. Unfortunately, by beating the stuffing out of her. (Don't grow up to be like Varvara, kids!)
She doesn't remember it being like this before.
Shivering slightly, clutching at its own arms, a diminuitive figure trembles with the shuddering of the subway car, flashes of brief light splashing an echoing image of a dirty grey hoodie against the graffiti-marked inner wall of the train. A light cough, a cleared throat, only the telltale pitch of these sounds faintly indicate a woman, the voluminous garment otherwise obscured everything about her, the hood pulled low over hair and eyes. A loud sniff, a gurgle that resembles a growl. They ignore her, of course, the passerby -- another sick, homeless street rat.
The car pulls to a stop, and the others begin to filter out, as the train nears the end of the line. But she stays, and goes unseen, struggling to contain feelings that those around her cannot detect. They see only the surface. They miss the true signs of what is afoot. The hands that clutch at her arms--
The knuckles are white.
She promised. She promised she'd stop.
Memories of her last conversation with Keith flash through her fevered mind as she twitches again, her untrained mind struggling to subdue the rage welling within her. She screws her eyes shut, knowing she can't look at them, can't look at any of these people, without loathing and envy and hate surging up from within her. There was a path, wasn't there? A way out, it seemed. A path she might follow, leaving her fear and her resentment toward her past, toward those that had belittled and mocked her, behind. A path in which power could be more than power over others. Sure, it's fun to be the queen. And Keith understands that, too. He understands her.
He forgives her...
But could he forgive this?
How long has it been? Did she miss their first fight? How did it go? And when did this start? She can't remember exactly how it began. Some preacher goon, wasn't it? She had stopped picking fights, too, but it was like he was egging her on, like he just wanted her to fuck with him. Eventually, she kicked his ass, and felt pretty good about it, too. But that was the only person she's picked on since the talk she had with Aranha. It just doesn't make sense. Why does she feel this way now?
Like she caught some kind of disease from him...
"G... guhhh!"
Wing Xiaoping spasms briefly, her head twitching up as the hood flips back. The poor girl, sometimes pretty, is a horrific sight, her eyes widened and bloodshot, her face pale and strained. She does not look as though she has slept in days. She looks as though she is back in Taizhou, back in a war zone, only the war does not leave her, only it is inside her, and there are no allies, and there is no escape.
"B... Bastards..."
Her voice rasps as her little body quakes.
"Wh... why..."
She is afraid. She cannot /stop/ being afraid.
And from her fear arises endless hate.
Looking past how much food gets strewn about here in America, Varvara still can't escape one very important fact about the very core of her being - she's a lowlife, she's a scumbag, she's good for absolutely nothing other than hurting people... and, in some ways, she has to wonder if she's even any good at that.
For being someone that customs should have never let into America to begin with, she belongs with the worst of the worst. Some natives don't even turn their heads much when she passes by, as though people like herself are the norm here in Metro City. For Haggar's herculean efforts of keeping this city cleaner of crime than it has been historically, there remains stragglers and ne'er-do-wells who have yet to be piledriven through the pavement a good ten or twenty times by his mighty mayoral mitts.
She has no aspirations to anything better, because she knows she can't. Her scars are her proof as she lays on a seat within a chilly subway largely by herself - having since chased off a few pedestrians looking for a seat. There's blood on her face and clothes which gave a clear signal to many - even the hardiest thugs - that she was someone, or maybe /something/, largely best left alone. Not that many people would have wanted to really touch her to begin with, given how dirty she got through the latest romps across alleys and dumpsters for sustenance.
While pedestrians and the like come out of the car, Varvara looks up at the little lights within from her hard-won bench, feeling a slight chill in the subway tunnel. It'll be warmer in there, she thinks. Much warmer. Like a simple creature who only understands the basic needs for one's survival, she thinks nothing of pushing along through a crowd despite her comparatively diminutive height to a lot of people, but her frame's about as thick and strong as someone of that height can manage or really even come off as.
It's the only way she knows how to really get anywhere in life - and in this case, how she helps herself onto the car, unwilling to make eye contact or small conversation with anyone that might be in her way. She'll sit where she damn pleases and be there as long as she wants.
In some ways, she's a native of Metro City already.
Wing's nostrils flare as she inhales, brow knitting at an unexpected stench. It's not as though the erstwhile Queen of the Streets is faring any better than her counterpart -- but there's something familiar about that particular odor, something that stirs her from her tormented reverie and reminds her of a life lived not so long ago.
"G..."
That's right. She knows that woman. That woman is...
"Goon..."
Wing's lip curls back in a feral snarl, a trembling hand reaching out to grasp one of the metal support poles and hoist herself to her feet. The subway car begins to move again, the rhythmic flashes of light from the dull lamps in the darkness illuminated the shadowed train. Those few that remain in this car have drifted to the corners, and when she rises she is the only one standing. She lurches toward her fellow hard-luck streetfolk, seemingly unpreturbed by Varvara's grotesque visage, and almost shoves herself from pole to pole, weaving with a slightly sickening dizziness before rooting herself on both feet, raising her now-revealed face to glare at her teammate with a preternatural intensity.
"You."
Not that she remembers her name, or anything.
"The fight."
That's right. She has to know. Her life. Her sanity.
"The fight... what happened."
It's out there, somewhere.
"We win?"
Her voice is strained, her eyes maddened. Her fury is so diffuse and rootless she cannot even recall how irritating she fundamentally finds this person. Indeed, it is the anger itself that scares her.
And it is fear that makes Wing the angriest.
Such a vicious cycle is beyond her ken to articulate or resist.
"Where..."
She swallows, and at last a flash of that confusion, that terror, in her eyes.
"Wh... where's Keith..."
The thought of seeing him like this--
What does she even want, anymore?
Where the tortured girl in the gray hoodie is the only one on her feet, the bloodied, dirtied Greek Cypirot helps herself to far too much real estate in subway car seating, dazedly looking up at the flickering lights and a poster from the corner of her eye, a PSA about sharing seating space or some such that she willfully ignores like more or less anyone else in Metro does.
It's not much warmer here inside the car, and the movement on the rails makes it a little more difficult to rest her head. It sours her mood a little more than it already is, but she takes what she can get. What she can get is anything her two hands and the muscles behind them will allow her to, and on this day, these seats are within her vice grip of greed, if not need.
'You,' the bloodshot-eyed face of Wing tries to address her, where Varvara can only barely make out that it's that scrappy Wing girl looking like hell as her prone head looks back a little, then relaxes - to the extent she can ever really get to relax when she doesn't have any sort of real stability in her life or location. That's the price you pay when you're someone like Varvara.
"What fight?" Does Varvara really have to ask? It's only when Wing rasps out the 'we' that she pieces together - barely - what she's referring to instead of, say, the scrap she had a few hours ago with a dating couple when she up and stole their basket of fries right in front of their faces.
That guy was kind of sweet, though, his girlfriend's lucky he was willing to stand up for her. Aside from the fact Varvara beat him to a pulp.
"Yeah." She replies succinctly and plainly, not bothering to think to ask what's up with the tense way Wing's speaking or - from the corner of her eye - moving. After all, she's trying to get a good rest on this here subway. "We won." Though it's more truthful to say Shiden and Aranha won - she got beaten down very convincingly by that Sorsha, someone she more or less hates after getting a feel for the way she carries herself.
"Who what?" Varvara unhelpfully asks back on a question she ought to already know the answer to, turning her head away as the rare subtle gesture that says 'I'm tired and I'm grumpy and probably hungry, leave me alone.'
Wing's eyelids flutter, taking a deep breath, as the woman's words settle in. We won; we won. The spark of the hopeful Wing that remains, the one that saw a future in their alliance -- and in her friendship with Aranha -- is genuinely gratified at this, that they can advance, that they did not need her help during this desperate time. But the question was, more than anything, a desperate gamble that she would hear of victory and, in so doing, the darkness within her would be appeased. Elsewhere, havoc was wreaked in her name; those who serve her cause have struck down her enemies.
Know this, my soul, and calm your fury...
But the appeasement, such as it is, is short-lived. Wing's rage is a tyrant that enslaves both body and mind, a hateful god that demands constant sacrifice, for the first time something other than herself. This anger, she does not recognize it. This loathing, it is disconnected from her resentment. This fear--
"KEITH!"
She cannot allow herself to think of it.
"I SAID KEITH!"
Roaring, startling even those lurking in the shadows of the car, the suddenly explosive girl drives her fist into the seat next to Varvara, over which the greedy woman is presumably partially draped. Though she deliberately avoids punching her ally, it is clear, the act could only seem mere intimidation to the very unobservant. For Wing is trembling with rage, her eyes snapped dangerously wide, a thin strand of drool dribbling from the corner of her thin, cracked lips. This is no suggestion of strength.
"You idiot!"
Wing is holding herself /back/.
"You /worthless trash/!"
As though it no longer matters from whence her self-loathing originally came, the hatred fountains from her, an endless black plume pouring from a gaping wound in her heart. It was always easy to project her rage on those around her; now it is so terrifying easy she has, paradoxically, became aware of it. Even those who do /not/ seem weak and pathetic to her are the objects of her fury. What remains of Wing's frayed consciousness continues to reel at this turn of events.
She doesn't feel like a queen anymore.
"Where--" Her hand, plunged into the seat, clenches and unclenches, crushing metal with a agonizing squeal as her little hand bleeds. "--is--" Leering, leaning in, she looms over her seated ally with undeniable madness glinting her eyes. "--Keith?" She forces out the words, forces herself to articulate her sentiments. She can't explain it. But she feels like only he can save her, only he can bring her back to the path she thought she had found.
She doesn't have time for losers.
The force of Wing's fist against seat just right next to her head is enough to jolt her neck up, and greeted when she tries to lay it back down with an erected bit of sharp plastic that she nearly stabs into her skull. That she shows much more worry about this than the screaming corrections of Wing may be an ample indicator of her state of mind.
Or, perhaps, general lack of intelligence.
She growls at the insult visibly, powerful hand grabbing at a nearby pole to pull herself up as she is referred to as what she basically /is/ in the eyes of just about any society out there - worthless trash. Fatigue starts giving way to a slowly awakening fight or flight instinct, a feeling she has since become innately attuned to as she leans tiredly against the pole - but she is not just tired and dismissing what just occurred.
She's stunned at what Wing did to /that seat/ - and before she knows it, there's Wing leaning in at her, the dangerous gleam in her eyes, that drool. The way Wing's facial expression shows itself through passing beams of light down the tunnel adds a somewhat more frightening edge as the light above starts to flicker dangerously.
Varvara chooses to rise up almost immediately, white-knuckled hands clasped around the metal pole and, visibly, leaning /away/. She is shocked at the forwardness of this little girl, as if there weren't already a number of facets about Wing's personality on a given day that should be giving the average person significant pause to want to be around her.
She /doesn't have time/...
"I ASKED YOU--"
...for any of this.
"--A QUESTION!!"
Time has run out.
Wing may not remember any of what occurs after this moment. If when she awakens from the mindless fury that seizes her now, consuming her consciousness, she attempt to ponder what might have occurred, the last thought she will recall will be a helpless, hopeless, apology to the one person who continues to believe in her.
She can't contain it any longer.
Screamingly incoherently, succumbing to the darkness raging inside her, Wing terrifies the forsaken few huddled in the corners as she lunges toward her stunned erstwhile ally, power flooding her veins as she embraces -- is forced to accept -- the endless fury that crashes over her, wave after wave in an ocean of malice. She begins to laugh, giggle emptily, less delighting in the strength than overwhelmed by the absurdity of the moment as she finds that rather than extract her fist from the chair, she can simply tear the seat, fixed by iron bolts though it is, from the floor of the subway car, bringing some of said floor with her. That seat fixed about her wrist erupts from it, torn into pieces of shrapnel, as the chi surging through Wing's shuddering body is released all at once into the air about her, sending gale force winds blasting in all directions. Posters are torn from the walls. Windows shatter and sparks fly as lighting fixtures explode spontaneously. Those few passengers scream and flee desperately toward other cars. And the seat that was affixed to Wing's fist is hurled, even as the girl lunges, directly at Varvara, along with all manner of debris and the force of the wind itself.
"UURRRAGHHHHH!"
Perish.
COMBATSYS: Wing has started a fight here.
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Wing 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Varvara has joined the fight here.
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Wing 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Varvara
COMBATSYS: Wing successfully hits Varvara with Dragonforce.
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Wing 0/-------/---====|====---\-------\0 Varvara
Varvara is no stranger to steroid-induced rage, knowing full well (and, rather, being completely uncaring) of what it does to one's mind and emotional stability, where it just makes you feel like taking on pretty much anything and everything in an explosive rage among... less comfortable issues that, aside from acknowledging they exist in passing, are of no further relevance to what currently goes on.
"Gimme whatever that is," she foolishly blurts out loud when Wing starts turning the screams and cries up to eleven, her ears ringing to the chorus of madness with the torn apart chair. 'Whatever that is' does not culminate into what she believes it is, unaware of what is going on at a far more underlying, primal, and truly frightening level.
Tensing herself, the homeless scrapper thinks to lean forward and dive into a roll past Wing, maybe catch her from behind in some kind of hold - that is the extent of what she's thinking of (or even capable of thinking of) in such a short span of time.
Losing complete traction on the ground is a fatal mistake as she dives into gale force winds and the early pieces of shrapnel that scratch and scrape her, blowing her back onto her backside as she painfully hits a pole with her left shoulder while the air from torn open sections of subway car rush out. She has one hand on a pole to start standing up for when Wing rushes her, driving her further down the car.
In an uncomfortable reminder of how she took her out from some time back, her backside plows through another bar and at least part of one seat with the sickening crack of bone, her upper body buried in the jagged, damaged remains of the seat Wing herself utilizes, a loud scream of pain and utter, complete shock through her system.
One eye shut from pain, maybe even teary-eyed, the other is narrowed as teeth clench tightly. Varvara, as her every day self, can prove to be a match to Wing in at least one way - the saliva that flows freely from the side of her mouth.
"You, you tryin' to play tough again?" Varvara hisses out as she affixes one already bleeding hand to the wreck of seat pressed up against her, looking to give Wing one solid, forceful shove back so she can actually rise up as the adrenaline pumping through her does its damned hardest to numb what is already grievous damage from the onset. "Wanna play like you're like me?!"
COMBATSYS: Wing fails to interrupt Medium Throw from Varvara with Shaolin Worldwide.
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Wing 0/-------/--=====|====---\-------\0 Varvara
If only Wing could. She'd give Varvara all of it: all of the pain, all of the hate, all of the darkness that flows from her, thick as blood and unclotting. She screams in wordless triumph as her enemy suffers, the grappler's visage blurring into unrecognizability, the fallen Queen raising her bloodied hands high. But her reckless plunge toward her adversary cannot last forward. Even in the face of tremendous agony, even at a disadvantage, the Cypriot fights with the raw energy of a true survivor, rebelling against the damage Wing has inflicted. Though the little thug twists into what might have been a fearsome roundhouse kick, in her fevered state she misjudges the space between them, her instinct failing her, and the smaller girl is hurled toward the back wall.
"Ghahhh--!"
Thudding against a broken window, sharp panes of glass falling and bloodying the back of Wing's head, she hisses like a serpent as she stumbles from the wall of the damaged subway car, her body spasming again. The pain is felt as though from far away. But the sound of the subway's movement, the screeching of the rails, is infinitely louder now that the doors and windows are damaged or destroyed, and that painful echo jars her all the more, that nails-on-blackboard sound stabbing into her dismembered psyche like an icy needle, again and again and again.
"Hhhhuraaahhhhh!"
She can't take it anymore.
Make it stop.
Make no mistake, Varvara wants to make it stop. That screaming, that posturing, pretty much everything as she rises from the initial brunt largely on her adrenaline, a sharp pain in her back dulled only through sheer cussedness as she stumbles towards the disoriented, pained little(r) lady with a snarl. There's already a visible limp in the way she traverses the car ever closer to Wing.
"Think it's... fun 'n games... don't you," her teeth bared as she struggles to hear herself think - maybe even /exist/, odd as that may sound - within the vortex of absolute noise, the Cypirot's hair flapping with the breeze being sucked out the subway window while a recently stopped cut opens, and stains one of her eyes anew with blood - a fairly recent wound from a scrap with some guy carrying a pocket knife.
Thrusting one arm outside the subway window, she tries to pull Wing down into a headlock, facing her further towards the floor as she simultaneously seems keen to squeeze the fight out of her as much as she is to beat it out of her - as the cracking knuckles of a freshly-balled fist would attest - in an attempt to slam it down into the back of Wing's head and out of her headlock - assuming she can even hold that little dynamo of energy to begin with.
Wing is slippery and dangerous even without all this added... whatever it is.
COMBATSYS: Varvara successfully hits Wing with Minotaur Slayer.
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Wing 0/-------/=======|=====--\-------\0 Varvara
Wing is a brawler by nature, but a technical fighter by trade. The arts her grandfather taught her, as much as she loathes him, she has never forgotten, and the forms of Liuhe Quan are second nature to her now, even if she has adapted their guardian animals to more nefarious and somewhat odder ends. Yet in the moments where her body finds itself forced to accept a power still foreign to it, those instincts too are subsumed. Where the Wing before might have attempted a more nuanced defense, the wild rush she evinces is exactly what it looks like, and her flailing fists, though more powerful than they appear, are no counter to Varvara's own brutal assault.
The littlest gangster screams and wails as Varvara begins to beat her mid-headlock, the scene for a moment resembling a more terrifying and grotesque vision of a family moment, an adult disciplining a child. But this adult is hardly responsible, and this child is bereft of innocence. Wing's feet scrabble at the ground, the blows echoing through her skull, but the pain is nothing -- she simply feels her body becoming fatigued, and her hate rages at this possibility. No, she cannot stop. She cannot allow herself to be stopped. If this body fails, then she cannot spread her pain -- she cannot release the chaos within her.
Wordlessly crying again, she tears herself free with the punch that slams against the back of her head, and though that must have hurt terribly, somehow the girl does not seem to be slowed. Indeed, she rises almost immediately with a balled fist of her own, aiming to plunge it with all her strength into Varvara's gut, blasting the wind for her lungs, and follow up with a wild but mighty hook punch.
COMBATSYS: Varvara endures Wing's Strong Punch.
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Wing 1/-------/=======|=======\=------\1 Varvara
Where Wing's ability to fight was bequeathed to her by a man she hates, Varvara's is cobbled together from somewhat simpler times, where her teacher rewarded those that did well in class with snacks. Lacking in much sustenance even from an early age, such things were hard-wired into her as a means of survival as time went on - the viciousness inherent in which she fights is akin to an animal fighting for its survival.
The berserking Wing puts Varvara's own tendencies to the challenge with her quick recovery and even quicker shot to the gut. There is no mistaking the weight that first punch itself carries, bone snapping where that fist finds home. A visceral scene of spittle and vomit flying freely from the Cypirot's mouth should drive it home for those horrified people huddling in a corner.
This isn't the usual street fight that goes on. These are two ladies who look - and act like - that they're ready to outright murder one another, free of the confines of rules and regulations, with no real prize at stake other than what one would assume to be their continued survival.
Nearly breathless, Varvara gets a hand on a pole when that hook comes by, a vicious punch in itself that turns her head sharply to the side with blood flying freely from her mouth. She is stopped from collapsing onto her side by the virtue of that aforementioned hand against the pole, pushing against it to keep her balance as she bares her yellowed, disgusting teeth at the troubled young girl as she thrusts her free hand right for her throat and awkwardly attempts to angle a punch up against Wing's upper back while pulling herself up with a cough.
If Wing doesn't wiggle out of this, that's not the worst of what's to follow.
COMBATSYS: Wing endures Varvara's Giant's Crypt!
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Wing 1/----===/=======|-------\-------\0 Varvara
"Shut /up/," Varvara wheezes out much too quietly to be heard above the screaming of the train car against the tracks and the air rushing out the nearby window as she wrestles Wing down to a kneel, one hand firmly squeezing around her throat while her other hand punches away at her upper back, rapid-fire in an all-out slugging. With every punch, she drives Wing further and further down, as though a great weight were intending to crush her outright.
"You want to, you want to live life like /me?" She asks pointedly with a snarl and another cough as she struggles with her oxygen intake - what with how smashed up she is in her midsection - as she hurls Wing back with the hand grasped around her neck, forcefully laying her flat on the ground atop numerous sharp, scattered debris of plastic, glass, and even a bit of steel to finish matters off.
Varvara /thinks/ it'd finish matters off.
Wing's body shudders amidst the disaster she's created.
The two of them like this, surrounded by blood and fear and chaos, present a strange story, one tragically lost upon a girl who is equally lost to reason. One hopes that Wing does not lose these memories in their entirety, that the Cypriot's unexpected words hook on to some remaining tether within her mind, and she reflects -- or at least takes a second look when she next encounters her thuggish teammate. Where is Wing headed? How far will resentment, living day to day, take her? Does it make her happy? The girl knows only brief triumph over fear, only the hollow salvation of crushing those weaker than herself. Aranha has opened up new possibilities for her, merely by being himself, and even if some of those doors someday close, Wing will not forget that they existed. But--
"NNhrghh..."
No questions have been answered.
"Huuuaaaghhh!"
And it is obvious to all--
That the darkness within Wing has not been resolved.
She emerges like a vengeful ghost, a bloodied child goddess of war, crimson-stained glass and wrenched-free metal falling from her tattered form. Somehow, despite how incredibly delibitating and brutal Varvara's strikes were, the girl, though she should not stop the strikes, does not seem to have been slowed by them; it is eerie, truly eerie, that a surge of speed seems to overtake her, the girl striking like a predator, raging like a demon.
And wailing, wailing like a banshee, as she drives her fist with all her confused but potent strength into the grappler's gut, aiming to literally take the woman off her feet before Wing -- white-faced, eyes bloodshot, spittle flying from a jaw hanging loose -- explodes into a wild, terrible blur of punches, inflicting horrific violence against her alleged teammate, driving her back toward what remains of the dismembered seats, as though to pound her back into the seated position in which Varvara began -- and leave her there.
COMBATSYS: Varvara blocks Wing's Wing Dynasty.
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Wing 0/-------/-------|==-----\-------\0 Varvara
An already tender stomach is almost certainly about to become a complete tangled mess of damaged muscle, broken bone, and internal bleeding when Wing's screaming catches Varvara off-guard and once again socks her in the gut. Stumbling back across the length of the car, the homeless wrestler only stops herself from falling back any further by once again getting a vice grip on one of the metal bars while she remains doubled over. Vulnerable.
The bloodshot, pale-faced Wing is probably aware of Varvara's weakness and is not giving her a moment to catch her breath. The flurries of punches come, and there is absolutely no stopping the Wing Dynasty - the testament to a tradition passed through generations.
Chi-clad punches slam into Varvara rapid-fire, the only thing between her tender, weakened body and those energy-laden fists being one of her hands as she tries to swat what punches she can out of the way. Even with a direct stop of a single punch, that energy shines past her own flesh in a numbing, cutting feeling.
The hand on the pole squeezes tightly, her knuckles seemingly ready to rip right out of the flesh of her hand. The metal even squeals a little under her grasp.
A vocalized grunt, maybe a guttural yell, escapes Varvara's bloodied mouth as she actively re-doubles her efforts to ward off these blows, throwing more of her shoulder into the endless stream of punches - but she is steadily losing ground.
Wing's ferocity is such that regardless of what one may call a successful defense, the stream of punches eventually outpowers the grip she has on the bar and sends her towards the side of a seat - partially jagged from having the neighboring seat ripped out of it - a sharp shard of plastic poking into her thigh.
The subway car comes to a stop to a waiting crowd outside that's looking ready to get on with its business here in Metro City, disorienting a hurt, weakened Varvara further as she pulls herself up out of her seat.
"Get... get out of my face," she spits on the floor as she tries to reach an arm around Wing's waistline, with further instruction:
"'n get, get your ass out of this life," her breathing too heavy, voice too weak to muster up an exclamation mark as she tries to hurl Wing right out a currently unbroken subway car window out to the waiting crowd outside.
Maybe even /into/ the waiting crowd outside.
COMBATSYS: Varvara successfully hits Wing with Strong Throw.
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Wing 0/-------/----===|===----\-------\0 Varvara
The carnage is obscene.
By this point the subway car has finally stopped at the next station, and onlookers are greeting with the horrifying sight of utterly destroyed doors and windows, and a woman and a girl fighting themselves to the brink of-- well, serious injury, if nothing else. The rage consuming Wing, though she has yet to truly integrate with the power it has to offer her, is mesmerizing in its inhumanity, the girl heedless in her efforts to completely pulverize her adversary. Yet the assault has to end somewhere -- about the part where it begins to seem as though her arms have just stopped working -- and it is then that Varvara has an opportunity to strike.
Screams elicit from a previously breathless group as the impromptu audience scatters when Wing is hurled into their midst, felling an old man and a young woman with the sheer force of the Cypriot's fling. But even as she bleeds and coughs, even as her body cries out for her to stop, the calls of both crowd and body are as distant as the pain she has been suffering. Yes, all of it, all of it is fading. She can feel it now, feeling it getting even farther away. What is this power? What is this darkness? The last of her resistance begins to fade, and what was once Wing--
"...ahaha... ahahahaha!"
--is supplanted.
"...th... this life..."
It as though she throws her own body.
"...m... means nothing to me!!"
The words do not sound as Wing's own. They echo with the hints of several voices, primal and unknown. Her body is as a rag doll, propelled by an inexplicable force. She cannot strike, her arms utterly useless; she cannot kick, as she can barely stand. So instead she hurls herself forward straight-forwardly, and though her body can barely obey her, her ferocity is not to be discounted when she seeks to plow her forehead directly into Varvara's face.
COMBATSYS: Varvara fails to interrupt Taiga Style from Wing with Fleeing Musician.
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Wing 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\1 Varvara
COMBATSYS: Varvara can no longer fight.
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Wing 0/-------/----===|
Everyone says it's a terrible sight. People will always describe it as terrible - but it is always human nature to have to want to peek at something horrible, something bloody, something truly vicious as a reminder of just how fragile life is, how easy it is to simply end at a moment's notice.
A tired, injured Varvara chances stabbing her hand on jagged glass as she stumbles and looks out the window to see where Wing ended up, as if wondering if she didn't accidentally just throw her under any wheels or anything.
The laughter confirms otherwise, although the murmurs of crowds and loudspeakers blaring about the next stop makes it difficult to pick Wing out of the crowd until she just happens to see Wing rising... unnaturally. It's curious.
Varvara thinks nothing of clearing out some more of the broken glass to - by some means - fit herself through that tiny window frame, crouched upon it and ready to leap at a moment's notice with Wing's declaration about some sort of life not meaning anything to her.
Does she want my scars? Varvara might think. Does she want everyone to look down at her for not being pretty, to live an unhappy life largely uncared for by the world at large - to more or less be destined to die lonely and cold, a body rotting in a ditch and tossed away in some mass grave as an unidentified individual?
Wing's not going to give her the chance to reflect on this. Somehow, she's throwing herself at her and the way the muscles move make no sense to what little sense Varvara possesses, a snarl on her lips and a tear coming down one side of her face from how compacting her stomach to fit where she is right now makes the pain so much worse.
Flexing her muscles one last time in a powerful, forward leap, she goes forward with arms outstretched as if to meet Wing head-on in a collision that, no matter who the winner is, would not end well.
It doesn't. Heads meet directly, and the energy-clad forehead clashes against Varvara's with such force that she blacks out entirely on the spot. No screams of pain, no passing words, nothing. The momentum of Wing's headbutt is so solid and absolute in spite of her shorter stature and lack of grounded traction that Varvara's body flips and contorts over Wing's at that point of impact, her body bouncing along past a parting crowd to a shower of broken glass as the bloodied, battered body of a foreigner that really should not be on US soil stains one of Haggar's many election-related advertisements, replacing his smiling, proud and powerful stature with the upside-down form of a passed-out woman whose left leg twitches every so often.
It's not a pretty sight.
Darkness.
Wing, body still, face plastered on the pavement, form bloodied and unmoving, slowly draws in the murmuring, confused crowd. The both of them are miserable sights, hideous and desperate. After a lingering hesitation, one woman in the crowd reaches out toward the girl, if only to check if she still lives.
"...eh he he he..."
As one, the crowd all steps back.
Tasting blood, smelling dirt, hearing the screech of the heartlessly moving subway, fingers rough with tiny slivers of shattered glass, Wing's unearthly giggle sends tremors through the animal brains of those unfortunate enough to hear it, reminders of a long-forgotten past -- when human beings were prey, and beings of tremendous and terrible strength stalked the land.
"...eh he he HA HA HA hA Ha HA HaAaAaa..."
She flows from the ground like liquid, more reconstituting than rising. When her face was buried in the pavement, she could see only darkness. Now, her once-attractive, now-horrific features revealed, Wing sees that darkness in the eyes of others, the pitiful herd that staggers in fear away from her. Varvara is forgotten, as though she were more obstacle than person. It is impossible to say if her words were heard, to say nothing of whether or not they will be remembered, if the person that Wing was re-emerges to take hold of her own mind. But the entity that she has become thinks nothing of the chaos she has caused. Shambling like the undead, she moves slowly toward the subway exit, mindlessly seeking the light above.
She will extinguish it.
Just as she will annihilate all in her path.
She does not know her Master, but she feels it, like a beast she feels it -- that more destruction, more and more, will bring her what she craves, the final solution to her endlessly troubled heart.
The culmination of hatred.
COMBATSYS: Wing has ended the fight here.
Log created on 15:24:46 03/06/2011 by Varvara, and last modified on 16:39:45 03/07/2011.