Description: Chasing after a forgotten dream, Zach Glen digs to the outskirts of Sunshine City to hunt down an elusive woman from his past: the fallen Templar Amy Johnson. With the technically useful detective Daniel Jack backing him up, Zach faces the difficult choice of showing mercy... when mercy is not wanted, nor deserved.
Riddles shrouded within myth, wild rumour leading to forbidding legend... the tracking of a mysterious cult is typically no easy thing. With such vehement opposition to their beliefs, the Black Serpent go to ground as instinctively and seamlessly as any other, well-organized group of their ilk. Public operation is dangerous, both to their physical wellbeing and the spiritual culmination of their path. But this town is at war, and none can stay hidden forever. To protect what they can, targets must be acquired and hunted, messages sent.
Sunshine City belongs to black hands indeed, the same guiding ministrations sending the Cult to their quarry. The errant Templar has already struck in their name, for reasons both personal and far greater, inserting the blade of her past and bidding he call off the other attack dog; the man emerging from the mists, to seek her out. For the first time since the harrowing loss of Orochi's bestowed gift, Amy was afraid, and she lashed out-- too merciful to finish the job, leaving a message alone to cover her retreat. This was a mistake.
It's not at her bidding, therefore, that a hooded man follows the detective's path to medical care, observing the psychic hero Zach Glen take his visiting rights. The Cult is subtle enough that this watcher comes not in velour robe, but looks the part of any scarred young street tough, bedecked in a stained sweatshirt and torn jeans. There was no reason to suspect him any more than a thousand others; his own retreat carried no message.
But the word he carried forth to his brethren brought alarm from one hot-blooded young woman, an alarm intensifying to firm resolve. Zach's search would be cut short when a message reached him through a local ne'erdowell, no more than a gangless rat paid to slip him a note.
Upon it; a time, and a place.
A lone figure now waits inside, choosing the late afternoon rather than the overblown cliché of night. Unhooded, Amy is sat plainly upon a workbench, amidst the clutter of components and tools that marks a job half-finished. Her dark, cropped hair is sleek beneath the dimming sun pouring in through skylights above, her stormy eyes brooding with a flinty edge as they affix upon the single entrance not covered by local gangs-- or her own brethren, a trio of whom wait at the rear, called off by her insistence alone. This place, this workshop, is not only where she first met Zach so long ago, but a neutral ground for the warring factions of Sunshine.
The lines are drawn. The stage is set. If they can't talk safely here, they can't do so anywhere.
Zach knew that he'd been spotted by someone visiting Daniel. Experienced from half a decade of globe-trotting, evil-battling fighting career gave him some indicators. Constantly developing psychic abilities gave him other indicators. He was a bit edgy when the ganger approached him, but confidence plus a hunch told the psion that the delivery man was just that. He took the note, read it, and gave Daniel a call. He adds three words to the message he had gotten, doubling the length of the thing.
"Got a lead. Pupa's Workshop," followed with the time, which is coming quickly. Zach hangs up the phone and hoofs it out to Outer Sunshine. He manages, through a bit of experience living on the streets and the newer aspects of his mental abilities, to avoid serious confrontation. Arriving at the workshop, Zach checks himself one last time. Daniel's no doubt going to poke fun at the outfit, but Zach's in no mind to argue. It's a get-up similar to what he wore while working for the Southtown Police department. A dark long sleeve t-shirt, fatigue pants, combat boots, and a tactical harness bearing not ammunitions but first-aid supplies. Clipped to the rig, just left of his spine, is the main difference from the improvised police outfit. A single wakazashi, ornate and somewhat high-tech looking, in a sheath.
Zach looks around when he walks in, letting his eyes adjust to the lighting. He doesn't say anything, allowing Amy to speak first. He's not at all sure what he's about to face down.
He just knows he has to face it.
It's a... curious place for a dramatic confrontation, the workshop. Despite possessing all the common trappings of an old Hollywood standby, the atmosphere is cheery and bright; to a psychic, the air bears only the unease of trapped creativity, the fevered need for invention that usually marks a keen artist. There's nothing dark or forbidding about the locale at all, even with the cluster of armed brawlers generally thronging the street outside. But the walls about the Templar do not define her; they never have, even in her deepest thrall.
Unlike Glen, she doesn't need to look about to spot her opposite number. The very moment he enters, her gaze is upon him and prepared for what it sees, though the garb does briefly cause a smile to brush her lips. A ready expression, bizarre only on account of what she now seems to be. Her own clothing lends itself to the purported Cult she calls home, though notable for a particular absence. About her neck, no glint of silver. No crucifix.
"So, it's really you." Her tone is as relaxed as her posture, one knee drawn up with an elbow crooked loosely about it, the opposite hand resting upon the forearm. The reputed madness that's afflicted the Templar isn't immediately apparent; if anything, she seems far saner than last they met. Comfortable in her own skin. The only sign of anything 'wrong' is the background hum of her energies, always focused and ready, apparent by no more than a feeling in the air between them; though at the far corners of the warehouse, fronds of that mist do linger.
"I expected another," Amy continues with a single-shouldered shrug, arms shifting aside as she lowers her leg and slips from the workbench, smoothing the material of her tunic over her hips. "I'm... not sure why you'd be searching for me, Zach Glen." The name sounds strange on her lips, a passing frown through the enunciation almost suggesting she's working to remember it, or at least to assign it to the face before her. Her head cants lightly to one side, a hand lifting to run through her shorn hair, gently mussing it. "Did you find that elusive faith you sought? Did you discover truth on your journey," she laughs, a soft, breathy sound, "Or merely a haircut?"
"It suits you," she decides after a moment, drawing and releasing a breath as she folds her arms about her midriff, fingers hanging loose in the air. "But you didn't come to hear pleasantries, did you? You should know my path is neither one we can share, nor one I can leave before its end. Your friend attempted to sway me with poorly-reasoned conviction, and I told him..." Her tone softens, "Nobody can stop this. Nobody can stop me."
"Perhaps something of all three," Zach says, a faint smile on his face as he keeps his eyes on Amy. The energies running through her are not the only clues. The lack of silver is, probably, the thing that alarms Zach the most in some ways. He frowns a bit.
"I've been looking for you for a year," he says quietly. "After I was able to understand what was going on around me, instead of just /to/ me." He rolls his shoulders back, loosening them. Zach's posture is relaxed. This will either be a fight, or it won't. With just Amy, or Amy and the trio who are in the back. Zach doesn't have to see them to know they are there. He can /feel/ their tension and unease from where he stands. "I'm just sorry I couldn't find you sooner." It makes what he is /here/ to do either much more difficult. Or impossible.
Not that Zach ever let "impossible" slow him down much.
"I'm here," he says finally, "To help you gain freedom from this path that you are on." He shakes his head. "You think it was a choice you made, but it was not. That it was a decision when it was really a trap." He raises an empty hand, extending it to Amy with a concerned look on his face. "Please. Let me help you."
A lead.
Daniel Jack hears those words on the phone. Shutting the cell phone, he gets a taxi. He would want a taxi for this, on such short notice. Daniel Jack didn't believe he was doing this. The detective's expression was grim, despite the bright orange suit. The detective's leads were all gone, except the one that Zach was pushing. Amy Johnson. A simple name, a mysterious past. The detective mulls about her, as he enters the Cab.
"Pupa's Workshop."
Her crimson hair. That freckled face. Those giant breasts, only augmented by her tall, statuesque form. Well over six feet tall, and with a belt loaded with different firearms. And the eyepatch, yes, yes, it was all coming back to Daniel.
The giant, red-haired pirate.
The taxi pulls up to the workshop. Coming to a stop, the detective shoves the money to the driver, and steps out. "Thanks bub." The detective bites, stepping out outside the Pupa's Workshop, he looks at the exterior. Taking a deep breath, he pushes open the door, taking off his hat as he enters.
"Sorry I'm late Zach, I-"
The detective pauses, looking at Amy.
"Oh." He states flatly, disappointed in his own memory.
"A path, the truth, and a haircut?" Amy quips back to the young psion, her voice still subdued, some dichotomously distant and intimate emotion sweeping through the undercurrent of that clear, crisp accent. Her lips turn up once more, freckled cheeks dimpling just faintly, setting off the gleam in stormy eyes. There's a sweet irony in them, as a pair. That they'd meet now, of all times. "Would that all could be so lucky as we."
A year, though. Such a year. The Templar's self-assurance lies rooted in her escape from the recent past, leaving behind a swathe of bloody destruction that haunted her dreams and waking moments both; until she found renewed purpose. Path be damned, Amy knows in her heart that her quest has been a mess of muddy trails, winding chaotically through a treachorous marshland. Only through faith does she maintain an illusion otherwise, along with the illusive form of a willpower she doesn't truly possess. Her beliefs are flawed.
She forges her weapons from tin, and claims that they are steel. Faith, alone, is not truth.
"You didn't want to find me sooner." That much is certainly true, the dire edge to her words telling it plain; she was a maddened wreckage, and even at the memory her prodigiously-harnessed chi eddies forth, the twisting fronds in the workshop's corners seeming to multiply as they stir, stretching out across the sunstruck floor. "My fate was to be bound within a prison of my own devising, assaulted by nightmares I created myself. Have you ever tasted the hollow kiss of betrayal? Have you been utterly abandoned by your spirit's dearest companion? It..."
All that apparent confidence cracks momentarily, revealing a damaged creature beneath. Her expression darkens, and a shudder runs the length of her spine, creeping like an assassin in the night. It's flung away swiftly, though, a shake of the woman's head dispelling her darkness. "It doesn't matter," she rejoins in a murmur, drawing slumped shoulders upward, but hugging herself a little tighter about the midsection. "Let my anger toward your friend be proof of my conviction. I've found the light at the end of a long, black tunnel, and I mean to claim it through sacrifice; it's too late for me to be saved, Zach, but you're wrong. I've been given the greatest choice of all."
Her words hang a moment, as the detective makes his entrance. Amy's abyssal stare tracks to him, flashing with a volence that's been the furthest thing from her demeanour or mind, until that instant. Her arms unentwine, one hand clawing at the air as the other clenches to a fist at her side. The fronds of the Dragon's Breath suddenly surround her, grayish tendrils blossoming from the very air, soon filling the interior with a roiling mist.
"I can live as nothing, and fail," she ends her speech with a hardened tone, shifting her gaze from Daniel to Zach, only partly shrouded by the looping maelstrom of her summoned energies. "Or lay down my pride, accept my fate, and save the world from itself. If you wish to help me... I beg you, walk away."
"Some of it was easier than others," Zach says quielty with a slight nod. The past year has been ruthless, almost completely destructive for both of these two people. Where Amy's path may have been through a swamp, Zach's has been one of consant battle. Pushing his limits, forcing him to face things he had no business facing. Coming away from those encounters batter, broken, scarred. But still alive.
Zach's face darkens a bit as Amy starts to talk of sacrifice. He squares his shoulders, glancing at Daniel as he is mentioned. "Pain," he says finally. "I know pain. Not a person alive doesn't know it, to some degree or another." The frown deepens, sadness washing over his features as Amy gears up for the fight. "This path you're on. It's destructive."
Zach slides his right foot back, spreading his weight between both legs. His left hand comes up to waist height, closed loosely as his right fist centers on his own chest. "Not just for the people you are hurting," he says, pain in his voice, "But for you as well. Whoever it is you are working for now... they'll just use you and cast you aside. Just the Cult of Gaia did." He takes a deep breath, summoning up the power of his will.
"Daniel," he says quietly to his companion. "Watch my back, please. It's not just the three of us." Golden light sheathes his body. "And what I'm about to try is going to be... tricky." He leans forward slightly, his whole posture taking on a more offensive look to it as Zach assumes a Detroit-style boxing stance.
Daniel Jack couldn't quite shake the feeling that Amy and Zach had a much deeper history than he had with either of them.
Adjusting his suit, he solemnly walks to Zach side, falling into rank as he turns and faces the woman. Where did he get GingerTit from- Oooooh. He suddenly rolls his eyes. He was confusing her with that Cale dame on the television. Must of been all the painkillers. Sticking his tongue in his cheek, he lets the dialogue unfold. Looking back forth between the two, a lull finally breaks... and Zach drops into the defense stance. Daniel Jack just shakes his head. There was one thing that caught his interest.
"What's this about a cult of Gaia."
Dropping into his own defensive stance of Todoh beside his ally, he mulls on this. Two melodramatic jerks smashing foreheads at each other. He wasn't going to learn about those fighters. It was going to be a darn mystery that he wasn't going to solve. Casting a glance behind Zach, he makes a low grunt. What was being played here. As the mist come oozing in, he suddenly steps back. "Watch out for that mist! She can use it for- you know what. What the hell am I saying."
"You know more about this broad than I do!"
Destruction is a part of the infinite cycle, of death and rebirth; that beloved of all religions, lying steadfast at the core of their deepest-ascribed tenets. Amy's oceanic gaze darkens just a hint, her brow lowering as Zach speaks what she already knew, and has come to terms with. Yet it sounds alien on the lips of another, so otherwordly as to be offensive, leaving a bitter aftertaste that challenges her bespoke convictions. The mist continues to roll, deepening with a resonant background hum so faint upon all sense but one-- that only fighters share, the deep quiver in the gut chiming with the very core of the human form. Though Zach is different...
She's unsure precisely how, only remembering the feeling. She's felt it in others, and it sets the Dragon's Breath to a curious trembling tone. The hanging gray fronds billow in a way that's odd, to her, disturbed by something alien just as she. One in all things, mist and mistress fight off a shudder.
"I know nothing of a 'Cult of Gaia'," she says at last, seizing meaning from the grip of a delirious uncertainty. Her lifted hand jerks, fingers twitching like impatient talons. Gritting her teeth, she raises the hand higher, runs it through the close-cropped raven's wing black of her hair. Her accompanying statement rings at once hollow, and alarmingly hard, "I've only served the Lord in his many guises. He calls, and I answer." Her eyes shift to Daniel once more, nostrils flaring almost imperceptibly. "You need not be his vanguard; I've made my choice, and I stand alone. Any man or woman who tries to help me forfeits their grace..."
Lifting her chin, the fallen Templar turns back to Zach, suddenly drilling both hands forward, until she presents her palms toward him, aligned, the buoying tendrils of the Dragon's Breath held between them. It twines about each finger, spiralling swiftly until her pale flesh lies in an odd, living cocoon.
"What means will you try, Zach Glen? To strike me down? You only quicken the inevitable end. We are all the hands of God, acting upon His will unto the day we are judged. That day falls fast upon us, and do what you will; I'll not be standing when it does. Perhaps, then," her voice suddenly quiets, a dissonantly gentle smile brushing her lips, setting a gleam to those odd blue eyes, "As the circle turns, you are to play out my final notes." Her lips curl further, forming a momentary snarl before she jolts forward, outthrust, chi-sheathed palms impacting upon the charged air. Her voice raises to a tight, clear yell, "Then come!"
Over the harsh clarion of the Englishwoman's tone, an accompanying hiss as her mists obey an unspoken command, writhing through a knotting tangle of looping spirals as they knit a curiously flowing approach toward the two men-- and then, curling downward, striking like a crashing wave against the floor before rising to entangle their legs in grasping tendrils, quickly reversed back toward Amy to haul them toward her.
"Be struck and then strike in turn! So let it end!"
COMBATSYS: Amy has started a fight here.
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Amy 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Amy has joined the fight here in the center.
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Amy 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Zach has joined the fight here.
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Zach 0/-------/-------|
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Daniel has joined the fight here on the right meter side.
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Zach 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|-------
COMBATSYS: Zach slows Quagmire from Amy with Homing Shots.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Zach 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 Daniel
[ ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|---====
"Not now, Daniel," Zach says quickly. Amy starts to, well, rant. Zach takes in every word. He is still frowning, waiting for Amy to make the first move as he prepares. He looks tired. Saddened by what he perceives as a personal failure. /His/ failure, not Amy's. Zach's failure to get to Amy quickly, to free her of the prison she is still in.
The mist comes sweeping in, and Zach responds. Throwing out very short, controlled bursts of power, Zach tries to diffuse the grip of the mist. He slides towards the young woman depsite digging in his heels. Still, though, he keeps his feet.
Zach looks at Amy, green eyes locked on blue. "I'm not here to end you, Amy," Zach says finally. He doesn't have time to keep an eye on Daniel. For that matter, Zach is counting on Daniel to handle himself as well he knows Daniel can. "I'm here to cut you free of the cycle that you are trapped in."
COMBATSYS: Daniel fails to slow Quagmire from Amy with Chou Kasane Ate.
-* CRITICAL FAIL! *-
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Zach 0/-------/------=|====---\-------\0 Daniel
[ ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|--=====
"Oh, sure, leave me out of the loop."
Daniel Jack goes out of his way to help out Zach, and nothing on the Gaia Cult? The detective makes a note to explore that subject later. But no time for that. Amy raises her arms high. In turn, Daniel Jack raises his own arms high, building in power. Charging himself up, as Amy lets down her crash. Daniel Jack tries to time it perfectly..
But fails.
"KASANE- Graagh!" Was the cry as Daniel Jack jerked hard towards Amy, knocked clean off his feet. Swiftly, he grabs a nearby shelf to keep his bearings, keep his balance. "I'm not going to let you do that to me again, Amy! I got class! I got swag! I got-"
And then the shelf collapses.
Tool boxes, paint cans, and razor blades come tumbling off of the shelf, smashing hard into the head of Daniel Jack. Under the rain of brickabrack, his hat is smashed in, his skull begins to bleed. And yet, as the torrent begins to wane, his grip is broken free, the pull continuing to come. He stumbles forward, rising up in a drunken, stance. Grabbing a nearby table, where an engine is being worked on. Leaning all his weight on to it, he is swiftly pulled under the table rattling it fiercely. Grabbing the legs, he chokes out. "I.... Am.... Okay!"
And then the engine block falls off the table, onto Daniel's torso.
"GRAAAAAAAAAGH!"
"I! AM! OH! KAY!!!!!"
That power. Zach unleashing his curious talents brooks a full-body shudder from the fallen Templar, her arms remaining extended a moment longer before she pulls them back as though stung. A wince only drives it home further-- this psychic force disturbs her, reminding her of one thing and playing upon fragile senses. If she possesses only one weakness even in her maddened state, it's that; a victim of frail willpower since her teenage years, she's easily unhinged by even the apparition of that mind-affecting energy.
"You say one thing, yet echo my meaning," she grits out, looking very much as though she were the one struck, even as her ebbing mists flow away from their brief, tenuous control upon Zach. Her words are almost lost through the accompanying posturing by Daniel, and then the sad, inevitable and eardrum-assailing crash of that falling engine block. Dark eyes lash sidelong to take in the private eye, as Amy draws a breath. Far from the predatory creature that brought him low before, she's like a caged and cornered beast, wild, uncertain. "And this is how you provide my salvation? With empty promises and an emptier-headed buffoon?" With a sudden-dawning rage she pulls one hand back, leaving the other extended but now pointing as she takes a lunging step forward.
"This is the action of a hero? This is the action of a righteous man?" Her lips curling once more, she takes another stride and then moves in a darting blur, the crushed crimson of her curious uniform crumpling from view within the looping fronds of the Dragon's Breath. One moment she's there, and the next there's a streak of collapsing motion, as she falls forward into what appears an attack lunge; until in the next instant she's behind Zach, leaving in her wake a disrupted 'hole' in the mist. "This cycle you seek to end..."
Tendrils amass at the fringe, and then follow her through in almost the same stalled instant, gaining speed as they thunder in to strike the psychic from head to toe with dozens of hardening, missile-like lashes of hardening grayish chi. A rapid-fire burst that seems, bizarrely, almost lazy in the execution, but leaves Amy drawing a hard breath as she speaks from a lunging half-crouch behind Zach, casting that oceanic stare back over her shoulder.
"You're part of it, Zach. We all are. You're deluded if you believe you can stop it. I'm sorry."
She sounds confident, until the last, when her voice cracks just barely. She covers it with a frustrated hiss.
COMBATSYS: Amy successfully hits Zach with Stormwitch.
- Power hit! -
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Zach 0/-------/---====|====---\-------\0 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|-======
"I never claimed to be either of those things," Zach says calmly. Amy charges, and Zach... doesn't even move. If anything, is seems like he relaxes his stance enough to let every single strike through. He grits his teeth against the pain that sears through his body. Amy comes to a halt, and Zach turns to face her.
Zach doesn't quite catch the quavering voice as much as he does the emotion behind it. It gives him something important. The one thing that, if Zach is honest with himself, will help him save this young woman. He's just not sure how he is give this to Amy. He decides to test the strength of Amy's conviction.
"So," he says as he retakes his stance. "Just... tear it all to the ground, see what rises from the wreckage?" That energy that licks across his body, that amber aura of power intensifies. "That's... not going to work, I don't think."
He needs to buy time, time for the conversation to do what it can before he resorts to throwing punches. Once emotions get stoked to that level, it might become far more difficult to bring Amy back to herself. Whatever is left of her in there, at any rate.
COMBATSYS: Zach gathers his will.
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Zach 1/-------/=======|====---\-------\0 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|-======
"God DAMN!"
Daniel Jack shoves off the engine block, and with a ginger rise, he begins to limp back into his bearings. Zach and Amy shoot back in forth, in their dramatic, elegant banter. His eyes scan around. This was a WORKSHOP. He should be making use of it, dammit. A big, double-headed wrench seems to answer the call. Lowering down, he hefts it up, shouldering it as he turns towards Amy, eyes burning. "Hey! Sweetheart! How about the actions of 'Not Giving A Rat's Ass!" He bellows as the wrench glows with fierce, orange energy. Building into a frenzy, he takes two even steps towards Amy
And explodes forth, wrench in hand.
Swinging once with both hands, and once with an one handed smash, he attempts to smash the wrench twice across Amy, to stagger her back. Should he land the first two hits, he will slide in, attempting to grab her, and with a pivot, slam her hard into a nearby work table. He would finish the assault with a finishing slam of the wrench, burning off the chi energy in the process.
"Back me up here Zach!"
COMBATSYS: Amy interrupts Bring Down the House EX from Daniel with Wyrm Waker.
- Power hit! -
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////// ]
Zach 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\0 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|=======
To attack the assertions of the crazed, without foundation, it should serve well. But the raven-haired woman, hunched like some ragged, lonely wolf fresh from the snapping pounce, is better prepared; with belief predating the jagged lines of insanity she absorbs Zach's word with a flaring of the eyes, and a quiet intake of breath that ill suits her mien. For a moment she does seem to think on it, and then...
"Yes!" Replies the Templar with excessive passion, her shoulders tightening before she rises, tossing her head and allowing a desperate sort of relaxation to overcome her shifting posture. "If that's what it takes! Man has trod too far, for too long, without seeking to renew His faith and establish peace. This is a doomed land. You speak of cults, and we both know too well the trials of our fragile existence... are these the trappings of a healthy world, civilized and civil? An example must be set." That falls like a stone slab, another faint shudder barely setting Amy's shoulders aquiver as she reaches with one hand for the empty space below her neck, where a cross no longer hangs. "It pains me, it cuts me to the quick that others must suffer, but--"
She's cut off by Daniel's cry. With a frantic motion she windmills her arms, stance lowering and spreading to a firm root as they fall to martial positions around her, not bearing the common loose demeanour of her style; but something more violent, tilted upon the edge of a long and forbidding fall. Her cheeks are flushed now, eyes bright with the madness that no longer lies dormant but consumes her. There's a beauty in it, but one compelling only in the shade of darkness. Around the stricken woman, throughout every confine of the workshop, the mist thickens further, choking and cloying, tendrils spiralling inward as though to grasp at the incoming wrench.
But they don't; the first blow catches her cheek, opening a bloody gash in pale, freckled skin as she jerks to one side. The motion is controlled in spite of the pain, or possibly because of it, as she twists once at the hip and then winds that gathered torque back through, her centre moving in a perfect, bloody-minded circle as arms windmill a second time. When Daniel's second hit comes, the wrench-bearing hand finds itself flanked, softly grasped by one open palm and caught in the other forearm, looping past to secure an unorthodox grapple. For an instant, her eyes meet the detective's over their enjoined limbs, and she smiles with a curious sadness.
"A truly convicted soul needs no companion to bear its load; if Zach is true, you need never have /come/!" That comes out in a tight bark, as a third motion from those arms suddenly drags Daniel inward, and spins him feet over head, neatly upending him in a display of strength aided by the inward-darting tendrils of the Dragon's Breath. They wind about those joined arms, but also strike downward from above, throwing the brightly-clad meddler toward the unyielding concrete with a lashing strike, in perfect rhythm with the Templar's own motions. They are one.
As she releases him to his brutal collision, she looks immediately to Zach, stepping deftly around to circle the psychic. Her movements are not so smooth as they usually are, carrying a jerky, almost marionnette-like quality as she fights of the risen passions, no longer brooding but billowing in her dark majesty. It's with this emboldening that she rejoins her speech, words clear and cold in the mist-wreathed air.
"Man has never changed under his own impetus. It falls to the truly righteous to make sacrifice that those left behind reap the benefit; and for my sins, I gladly lay myself at that altar. I want this, Zach. My entire life has been some fool's masquerade, dancing upon strings that vain men pull, but it's been that way for a /reason/. I embrace death even as I regret bringing it to others, but my destruction cleanses as it burns! I condemn myself to pain and the stinking pit of Hell that better people may rise! Better people..." Her empassioned words falter, though not with uncertainty, as wild, oceanic eyes dance from Zach, to Daniel, and back to Zach.
She hesitates, and then she speaks her last.
"Better people, like you. I've failed as a person; truly. Now let me give the only gift I can."
Zach winces as Daniel throws himself into the breech, watching as Amy tosses Daniel aside like so much trash. Taking a deep breath, the psion turns in place to keep Amy in his sight. He looks /hurt/ at her words. The despair coming off of the young woman is felt by Zach, to the point where he almost cannot seperate the woman's emotions from his own. He winces, trying to put memories up to prevent Amy's despair from consuming him. He remembers the people he helped save from, what he thinks, is the same problem facing Amy.
Antoine. Chun-Li.
"Again," he says quietly, "I think you have me confused for one of those righteous people you talk about. You think my hands are any cleaner than yours." Zach mentally lines up his approach. He takes a deep breath. "I'm no hero. Not righteous." Zach's body tightens for a moment.
"Daniel," Zach says in a firm tone. He doesn't look at the detective; his focus is completely on Amy. "You can leave if you want. I'll answer all your questions after this is done." Zach doesn't wait for Daniel to protest or comply, however. Instead, the psychic takes a lunging step towards Amy, closing the gap between himself and the fallen Templar in a blur.
"I don't have the answers you are looking for, Amy," Zach says. "I wish that I did. However," The boxer plants his feet firmly after closing on Amy's right side. "I cannot let you destroy yourself for this cause." He drives a soul-gauntleted fist into Amy's liver. "You are too valuable to be simply sacrificed."
Daniel's offense is sadly interrupted.
And painfully interrupted to boot. The last sweep is met with explosive force, Daniel held high, stupidly, before smashed hard into the concrete. He bounces off once with the grace of a dead cat, spiraling through the air briefly as he hurtles a short distance into the air towards a top-down convertable. Smashing hard through the flimsy roof, he crashes through into the vehicle, dazed briefly.
And the car alarm goes off.
DAniel Jack painfully reaches out for the door handle, trying to pull it open. After the first attempt, he slowly moves his hand to the door lock. Unlocking the door, he finally is able to open the door. Lacerations running over his body, the detective rolls out of the car. As the car alarm ceases, he opens his eyes, bruised and bloodied from the assault. And bleakly, he growls out. "Don't you start this crap Zach. I am came back because I didn't need to!" The detective roars to life. "Zach, you god damned asshole.You do what you can to sell this to me, and only NOW you tell me to back out? I dig it. I really dig it."
"You don't think I am pulling my weight, do you?"
The detective focuses hard, closing his eyes. Building unstoppable tension in his arm, he begins to stick it stright out to his side, before flattening the hand. Raising it high overhead, he draws in a deep breath, and relases. His eyes open, fixed on Amy as Zach rushes in. Another breath. Several steps are made. Focused on the freckled form's collarbone, Daniel Jack begins to advance. Energy builds to his hand, reaching a climax as he is upon the zealot. The hand come down with flawless form, with bone shattering force. Unstoppable power, unyielding power. With the force that could sunder battleships and raise Atlantis from the depths of the ocean, the detective hurls the most perfect of hand chop towards her neck.
Right with Zach's own flanking.
COMBATSYS: Zach successfully hits Amy with Liver Blow.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
Zach 1/-----==/=======|======-\-------\0 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||||||||| ]
Amy 1|------=|=======
COMBATSYS: Amy fails to interrupt World's Greatest Hand Chop from Daniel with Guardian Severance.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
Zach 1/-----==/=======|=======\-------\1 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|----===
Though it takes a hundred assaults, or a hundred thousand crashing waves, it remains a truth universal that even the tallest, broadest wall can be brought toppling down - be it brick by painstaking, excruciating brick, or in a singular, mighty effort that tops all those past... with belief, and with strength, there is no obstacle that the resolute warrior cannot overcome in their hour of utmost need. So it is here.
Even in the throes of lingering chaos, the last of the Knights Templar seems near indomitable here, her wild stare reaching so far that she simply sees through her own obstacles-- Daniel's assaults turned aside expertly, or simply outright denied. Zach's power threatens to bring her to its knees through the background effects alone, but still she stands firm, her erratic motions holding nevertheless a certain unrelenting force. Faith can hold firm on shaky foundations, and it does so now, as both men approach, Zach through his own conviction and Daniel through the noise and turbulence of his own, uncertain element. Amy's gaze takes in both, but sees a threat only in the former, her abdominals tightening as he closes, her guard faltering and then falling away quite purposefully.
When faced by what she fears, the Templar simply stands, and challenges it to crash upon her.
"Valuable?" She spits out, even as the blow lands, the word gone from her lips by the time it becomes a pained, strained gasp, the blow driving her back a full foot across the filthy concrete. Torso jerking forward over the point of impact, she's left off-balance, blood spattering from her injured cheek as she hisses back a line of saliva from her bottom lip, forcing herself aright in scant time to prepare for Daniel's approach. Wide eyes continue to behold Zach, staring him down with disbelief and crazed, delirious panic etched upon her features-- in that moment, for all she's taken a heavy hit, it seems unlikely it's the physical shock that has reached her. It's something more, something that disappears abruptly behind a suddenly descending /sheet/ of mist, tendrils knotting together in the final approach by the detective to sweep across her front, obscuring her from view...
And then, he strikes, his own unstoppable force - the Todoh spirit of which he boasted before - scything clean through the Dragon's Breath, parting the mist like a spread curtain before the rays of the morning sun, revealing that shocked stare an instant more before his devastating chop reaches the women's collarbone. Her mouth widens in a scream, as she's pitched into a ragdoll spin, shielding arms wavering uselessly to the struck flank as she topples into an unwary backward stagger, finally falling to a knee, one palm pressed to the floor and the other to that splintered bone just beneath the muscular curve of her shoulder.
Yet, bloodshot and teary-eyed, she's still staring at Zach Glen through the turbulent mists.
"Is there value to a broken toy? To a corpse upon a cross?" The first comes out angry, but then she shudders, her head hanging as she heaves in a breath - physical pain threatening to overwhelm her as her willpower begins to shatter. Her voice drops to a lost murmur, barely above a mumble, that oceanic gaze slipping momentarily to Daniel - but she looks through him, out into the infinite void beyond all things. "I... gave you a message, to walk away, I asked you to, and I begged you... and I suppose you won't." Suppressing another shiver, she looks up, then begins to stand, forcing her body to obey her command-- though it comes with far less ease than her unerring control over the rolling mist. "But you have to believe me. You can't stop this. There's no other answer, and no more questions to be asked. If I don't do this, I'm nothing; I'll be the same nothing /he/ believes me to be, just another madwoman who never found her peace... I've lost my way, and I've lost my mind."
It's hard to see in the darkness of her stare, but tears gleam somewhere in both eyes. Tears she refuses to cry.
"A true hero always fails to acknowledge what he is, but a martyr knows, Zach. She knows. This is where I die."
Zach watches as Amy all but falls to pieces with sorrow on his face before looking at Daniel. Zach is trying to keep it off of his face, but the detective can see the traces of doubt and sorrow in the psion's eyes.
"I don't want..." Zach shakes his head, before continuing quietly. "It would be better for you, I think, if you didn't see the end of this." In case he fails, something Zach is almost never willing to consider, goes unsaid. If this fails, Amy may very will die at the end of this. He takes a deep breath. "I..." A slight scowl. "You shouldn't have to bear the weight of this fight."
Then he turns to Amy. It's all there, all of that emotion. "I refuse," he finally says. "I refuse to accept that." Motes of amber light flick off of Zach's body. "There is value in every person. 'We are all precious in the eyes of the Lord.' Isn't that what your book says?" Zach takes his stance. "I will not accept that your death can't be stopped. You are too important to me for me to accept that."
Zach examines Amy carefully. "I don't know who this 'he' you're talking about is." Zach's fists unclench. "I don't know that I care. But to me, you matter to me, Amy." Golden light sheathes Zach's hands. "You have never been nothing to me." Zach charges the woman, reaching out with his hands.
One of those warm hands reaches for Amy's head, for her crown. Purity of mind and body. The other hand reaches her solar plexus. Mental attitude. Zach allows his energy, driven by his hope, his love, to bolster whatever part of Amy truely wishes to be free of what torments her. "You're in there somewhere, Amy Johnson" Zach whispers in Amy's ear. His short arms force the psion to be dangerously close to the young woman. "I can help you break free of this, but I can't do this for you."
COMBATSYS: Zach takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
Zach 1/-----==/=======|=======\-------\1 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|----===
The chop comes.
And boy does it come.
The bone shattering force manages to stop the woman cold. And yet, despite the flawless power... Zach and Amy break any joy from it. Daniel Jack couldn't help but see himself as a man putting a sick dog out of its misery. But the presence of death hung heavily in the air. The woman was breaking. But it was Zach's expression that stop Daniel Jack from unleashing the recentering Zoot Suit Riot. He stares at Zach, before glancing at the woman. A human psychopath, two sides of utter distaste. He speaks with resolve, trying to break from the merciful pangs in his heart...
"Zach..."
But Daniel Jack can't say anymore.
He can't be a hypocrite. He can't help but see Zach as himself, reaching out for Marz. To save her. To pull her out of hte madness. The unbreakable madness. The madness that only a nuclear explosion has been proven to break. Daniel Jack should never stop his relentless assault. To cost would be too great. And yet slowly lowers himself down. He recoils. He breaks the relentless assault. Casting his eyes towards Zach, and Amy, his visage hardens.
Zach better know what he is doing.
COMBATSYS: Daniel is waiting for something...
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
Zach 1/-----==/=======|=======\-------\1 Daniel
[ |||||||||||||| ]
Amy 0|-------|----===
The Book. Even thinking of it sends the capital at the fore thudding into place, as surely as when she conceives of Him; but Zach surely knows he targets a weakness at the point of seeming highest and fullest strength. Sometimes it's not the highest stone that needs to fall first... that impenetrable defense, that towering impressive wall, can be brought down from the very lowest point. From that shaking foundation.
"I am precious," Amy whispers, barely cracking out the words, "Through what I buy with my life's blood."
Sometimes even a weakness found will not admit its existence, and still she clings, reaching again and again for the broken cross no longer hanging at her neck. For the crumbling vestiges of a faith that can no longer stand firm, fingers fumbling through the ebbing tendrils of the Dragon's Breath in search of something lost and cast aside by that same hand; in search of the past. As another fearful, maddening shudder wracks the Templar's crimson-clad form, she regresses further into her own thoughts, stare now comprehending nothing.
"I cannot be important to you," she tries to raise her voice but can't, even has to avert her gaze. The key to salvation, to fighting this, must lie behind-- in what she is. In what she embodies to herself. "I'd never been important to anyone, until..."
It falters and dies.
A withdrawn child, effectively orphaned and raised by a well-meaning but frequently absent guardian, Amy Johnson has never known much in the way of love. Neither has it ever bothered her - from retreating into books and the solitude of nature as a child, to her unruly teenage years, rebellious and scathing toward the society that rejected her outlook so utterly, she always found a route away from the common ground. Sparing friends and a large number of passing acquaintances marked her passage into adulthood, and not once has she questioned the things she doesn't have, and hasn't had; life dealt her a hand, and she played what cards she could, with impunity.
Then... then she fell into the arms of the Knights Templar, into the machinations of a man who hailed her as the messiah of his fever-dreams, who held her aloft into the light of a purpose she'd never sought. No matter the outer shell of a person, it's their inner child who makes so many decisions, and the little girl who cried at the absence of her father and mother - never knowing for what she truly cried - embraced this newfound warmth. It's formed her path ever since, glowing in burnished bronze and brushed with silver motes, the path to the pearly gates of heaven and a promise of eternity, if only she were to have the strength to reach for it.
She's moved on since, felt the bitterness of betrayal and begun to see through the lies; so transparent, diaphanous, but for the conviction of a faith kindled in a desperation heartfully denied for two decades. Now she sits upon her knees before an advancing enemy, one who seeks to tear aside the drapes concealing that hurt little girl inside, behind all the long speeches and the unyielding aspect of a classical shieldmaiden. Lost in her own mist, having the strength of purpose remaining only to hold back the floodgates, she watches Zach's approach.
His hand closing upon her forehead is a shock to a system ill-prepared for anything but violence, the underlying warmth communicated not through flesh alone - but through some vestigial, electric sense, that which would pass for the 'psychic' in a world not consumed by the terror of Psycho Power - for beneath the surface, Amy is a sensitive soul. Philosophical. Pained. The watchful eye of Daniel Jack is once more tuned out, as is the waiting audience of her compatriots-- called off by her words, by her command, before this encounter began. In this moment, as her oceanic eyes lock with Zach's own resolute gaze, she sees nothing else. Nothing else matters.
"Until Him," she finishes at long, delayed last, that capital letter once more heavy in her speech. The hands at her throat slowly slip downward, over the shallow upper curve of her breast to come to a pitiful rest, as though lost in some final prayer in the instant before Zach's hand brushes her own downward. They refuse to separate, coming to rest in her lap so heavy the motion actually drags her forward, until she presses against his touch. "And what are you?" She asks in a numb, deadened murmur at their newfound proximity, eyes wide and glistening as they look up to maintain contact. She doesn't shy from the closeness-- physically, she never has. "My hero?"
A sudden laugh burbles up from within, but it barely breaks the curve of her lips. What it does, is dislodge the first tear, a streaming rivulet running down a freckled cheek to tease salty and bitter against the edge of her mouth. She shivers once more, and this time it doesn't end; within seconds she's quivering like a child, lost and scared in the darkness of the woods, separated from home and hearth. "My freedom?"
The shaking isn't emotion alone; that energy ensorcels her, forcing her mind to a maelstrom far more dizzying than the madness that has gripped her, the taint not washing away but cast into an unending spiral - because it's part of her. She begans to babble, tone rising and falling in pitch and volume both, the scattered words of an hysteric breaking the charged air, as around them the mist closes in, leaving the outer fringes of the workshop to form a thickening shield, knotted but fading slowly as it battles against the fury of that psychic energy; the two opposed forms coming together at the heart of a greater conflict.
"Death is this one's gift," hisses the Templar, struggling for identity, separating self from self, "Her escape, her salvation... without my faith, I'm nothing again. Even with it, I might just be a broken thing waiting to die, but-- but I can cling to that, Zach. I /can/." Her tone grows insistent, but it's a pleading of a little girl fighting for independence from an older, wiser creature; the nagging of a lost cause, "How can you help me find myself when I know, I'm right here, I've always been here... and... and that's why this tears me apart..."
But through the desperate, some things ring true. Her damage is her own, self-accepted and self-inflicted.
"I can't... break free... without--"
"I don't know if I can be those things, Amy," Zach says quietly. He doesn't fight against the pull. The flow of energy is gentle, like a stream. But like a stream, he carefully tries to clear out the muck in Amy's soul. "I can try, though." He means it. The only other thing he can do, he does.
He doesn't pull away from the woman. Doesn't push her away. His hands stay where he placed them, because he knew that this placement would work and he isn't about to mess that up. He stays close, in an attempt to show Amy that he accepts her. As broken as she is, as hurting as she is. Zach accepts Amy as Amy. He just would like to get her off this genocide kick. He's fairly certain that /that/ isn't her, but the foul taint of the Orochi still within her.
"But there's something that you should know," he says after a moment. He keeps his eyes on hers, resolute emerald meeting wavering azure. The flow of energy is constant, consistant. It is a thing of building, of creating instead of a thing of destruction. "We're all broken here. It's... what we do despite that. The things we do with others, /for/ others, that gives our lives meaning." He grins faintly. "And we're all waiting to die, in our own ways. What we do before then, how we /face/ that, that's what makes us who we are." His eyes narrow a bit, emotion starting once more to tug at the edge of Zach's place of control. He needs to get this done, while he can still do it at all.
"What is it that you need, Amy?" Zach asks carefully. "What is holding you back?"
And Daniel is worthless.
It was Zach's moment. His moment to save. His moment to redeem. His moment to save. But Daniel JAck.... he was nothing more than muscle. A bystanding to the redemption unfolding.... or the failure that was coming. He was not here to save Amy. He failed that. The detective holds steady, brow furrowing. It was Zach's turn to be the hero.
But it was Daniel's turn to learn.
Watching the pair exchange stuff, he heads to the window. Peering outside, he glances back towards the pair. "..." He thinks in silence. Nothing he could say would fit. Nothing he would do. All he could do is stand by for Zach, standby to protect him. Or if the time comes... to help Amy. He waits. He watches. He studies, he waits. Grimly, he crosses his arms, and glowers. And quietly, his colors fade and saturate.
And Daniel Jack becomes one with the background.
Care, acceptance, love without need, these are notions that have been stranger to the Templar's life. Adopted through duty by a grief-stricken aunt too afraid to show it, but bold enough to believe she could account for it by her actions alone, elevated to fresh purpose by a man out for his own egotistical fulfillment of crazed belief, then serving as pawn to two dark forces... Amy is used to being a tool, even if she's never acknowledged it. But a piercing intelligence and a lurking cynicism toward the world has never utterly abandoned her, and somewhere in the back of her mind there is a former self striving to break free. Albeit without purpose.
But even as the washing energies seep through her, bestowing a warmth of which she's afraid - the taint within her own corrupted chakra fighting back furiously, but not just through taint alone. Through nature, too, the conflicting energies stewing to a seething, bubbling cauldron of doubt and pain. There's no entirely clean way to soothe a damaged mind, and it hurts mentally as well as physically, stretching every part of the woman to a limit less great than others would have had her believe-- in the scope of the world, she's but a neophyte. A stripling.
The only constant in that battering of memories past and futures abandoned is the eye contact she maintains, the closeness of another person; something she associates with utility, or with the cheap but heady thrill of physical contact. Not with any sense of depth, or with faith, or salvation. A hero. Freedom. These are concepts she finds laughable, in the truest core of her being; because Amy the Templar and Amy the outsider disagree on almost everything. Her transformation was absolute, and in its own, odd way it was firm and even true...
Through the wavering, breaking line of her fragile state, she searches for an answer to Zach that comes from both women - because there's a third, a creature never quite formed but often teased at being whole, who holds the optimism and ambition of one but the quiet, realistic intensity of the other. Her brow creases, a tight swallow setting her throat to a flutter that almost threatens nausea, and then Amy Johnson gives the only answer she can, in this instant, regretting it quite as soon as she's said it. What IS holding her back?
"You are."
Like that, the shivering stops, her spine straightening as she inhales back a gasp at the abrupt, shocking delivery of the words. They come out clear and confident, with certainty she didn't believe she felt, her stare widening, brows lifting and mouth forming a taut little line as she continues to meet Zach's kind, empathic gaze. Her heart is thumping in her breast, and blood soon flows into her cheeks, a reddening occurring before she forces herself to jerk away, struggling away from the link still sending psychic energies tumbling through a disarrayed mind. Behind her, through the mist now faltering around them, drifting toward the floor and gradually diminishing, she focuses past her now-steady shoulder onto three cloak-clad forms at the back of the workshop. Indistinct figures, another part of her that doesn't belong-- but perhaps never did. With equal certainty, she adds:
"They are."
Then her gaze whips back to Zach, and with a shake of her head she tries to break free.
"Everybody who tells me what to do, how to act, who to be, who's /always/ done that; like it was their decision, as though to make my own choices were beyond me." Her words come faster now, surer and louder, as she struggles to push Zach away from her-- not with the strength of a fighter, but with the insistent if weakened touch of a normal woman just trying to be free. The mist has almost fully settled, merely coating the concrete beneath them now, as her subconscious will calls it away, rejects it as she rejects everything else. "I'm sorry, but, it's not me. If I turn from them, to you, that's the cycle you're asking me to break. This is why I've been so... so sure..."
Her first faltering only summons deeper conviction, her teeth gritting momentarily before another sweep of her head, and a raised hand brushing through hair once falling almost to the waist, once so long and sleek, now cropped as close to bare as it's been since she was such a tiny, squalling lump. Her hand comes to rest at the nape of her neck as she moves to stand, glancing across all five figures strewn around her.
"The only person here who's made even the slightest sense is..."
Her gaze alights upon Daniel, and Amy snorts, a soft but derisive sound as she settles upon the private eye. Zach's workings have certainly had an effect-- almost like a different person now, she stands as an odd, dissonant reflection of the empassioned zealot who stood there scant minutes ago.
"You, of all people. But even you tried to command me. To tell me I was /wrong/. Why don't I get to decide that?"
Her gaze shifts back to Zach, and she smiles, almost the same sad smile she bestowed on Daniel in her violence.
"I asked you to walk away, now let me ask you... what will it take to make everybody do that, to let /me/ choose?"
And across the room, there's a sound as three ritual blades are drawn in perfect synch.
Zach's eyes go wide. At this. Amy approaches this from an angle that Zach hadn't considered. Zach is positive that he is not wrong about what he has just done. The weak push is all Amy needs to set Zach on his rear end, staring at Amy as she makes her stand. Not as a Templar, or some Emissary of Destruction, but as herself. He smiles faintly as he wills his power away from his hands. Yellow sparkles dance across the floor as Zach sets his weight back on his arms while he thinks. Something about this tells him she's as out of the dark pit as she's going to get right now. "You're going to get that anywhere you go," he says. "People will always tell you how to think, how to act. Sometimes they'll resort to force. You have to stand firm, no matter what they say or do."
He's at a slight loss because she's absolutely right. Or convinced of it, which is pretty much the same thing. He pulls his legs under him before getting his feet under him. He nods slightly, standing upright. "Now that I'm sure your making your own decisions," Zach says, "I'll walk away. You asked." Something about that statement sounds a little sad as the words pass his lips. "Though..." Zach looks away. Something's nagging at him. Something's... /off/. He just isn't sure what it is.
"Though I'm willing to stay, if you'll have me," he says as he looks around. It might be nothing, it might be something. Zach scowls before looking at Daniel. "I think we're-"
It's then Zach hears it. The drawing of blades, the resolution. Sharper, more focused than what was coming off of Amy. Zach winces, feeling the abuse of the fight and helping Amy. "Shit," he says quietly as his left hand drifts up and back towards the wakazashi on his back. He's not entirely certain how things are about to go down, or his ability to deal with the situation without the added punch the sword will provide.
Of course, there was backup.
Daniel Jack watches the dialogue unfold to its climax. Of course, Amy is too far gone. Daniel Jack was almost disgusted as he sees it play out all wrong. Of course, when Zach says that she can have him, he scratches his nose, ready to turn around. He wasn't a consouler. He was a detective. And right now, he was muscle. But as the trio of cultists enter, armed with blades, he gazes hard against the three. He brings a fist around, coming to the wall. And he unleashes the fist.
DAniel Jack slams a fist into the wall of the workshop, chi energy roaring across his body.
Building his energy higher and higher, he gazes bleakly across the room. The entire building begins to rumble, the very foundations shaking. The detective was feel the resonations, capturing the room. Eyes wide, his lips curl into a sneer. "You think you can break through, Zach? I'll buy you time." Daniel states, cynicism roaring to life as he approaches the trio of cultists.
"Course, you can't fix crazy until you utterly destroy her foundations."
"Maybe I... always was," refutes the Templar quietly as Zach passes his judgement, finding the mist-wreathed floor with a gentle glower as she tries to maintain this newfound clarity, so alien after months of doubt and dismay - so much washed away by a similarly outward, far-flung power, but pieces still clinging despondently on. Fragments of conflict, of taint, of insanity, echoing through her mind and fraying at nerves cut to their tender core. It's hard to be entirely sure of anything, her words coming on instinct, as pure and unconsidered as they can be. The nature of free will has been debated for centuries, and trying to linger on when, why and how she was made able to 'choose' - if indeed she ever has, or still does - is not something through which a broken psyche can work.
To Amy, it's not that something feels off; but nothing feels right. She's still clinging - but now to herself.
"If you want to stay," she lifts her voice as blades are drawn, slipping the hand from the nape of her neck to run down the length of her crimson garb, smoothing it before seizing a handful, pulling it outward as though assessing it, testing its presence upon her. It's dropped with a heartfelt, but oddly blissful sigh, as the forgotten woman keeps her back to the advancing forms of her supposed allies and protectors-- of Johann's cowled followers. "Then stay, fight, and let me walk away. Choose my destiny for me now," A wry edge creeps into the Templar's tone, lips quirking before she finishes, with a slow, solemn inclination of the head, "But don't follow--"
Dark eyes creep to Daniel as his fist impacts the solid stone. Momentary surprise brings that threatened smile back, even as underfoot the Dragon's Breath begins to tremble in responsive echo of the summoned energies - because in spite of her fostered beliefs, they are one and the same, her own mist intensifying at a subconscious command itself an instinctive response to the private eye. A note of old, abandoned humour creeps in, and when her gaze lashes back to Zach it's no longer bright with tears but a dry, sarcastic mirth. Amy, as she was.
"Your friend's right, for the first time. I'm not a princess, Zach Glen. I'm not even a good person. My parents didn't want me, my 'friends' branded me a witch," Neither is spoken with particular regret, but a roll of the shoulders as she takes a step forward, away from the encroaching horde, "The only thing I ever had was a belief that I could be something more... something important, to everything." The humour fading, there's still a hint of uncertainty in her manner, though a fresh conviction has replaced that departed. Something indistinct, but possibly strong in spite of it; a new bud waiting to flower. "I-- I don't know what I want now, but I mean it when I say again; don't follow me. What I do next, is my call. Faith, dishonour, shame, retreat, or death... no matter what I choose, that's the life I lead, or not. I don't belong to you. I..."
A glance goes back over her shoulder. Her former allies have stopped, two turned toward Daniel as the other directs a scowl between Zach and the Templar, reading in their body language something not made entirely clear by the words. She's not even acknowledging them, already gone before she leaves.
"I don't belong to anyone. Never have."
As she says that, the rolling mist parts in a spreading wave, the gentle hiss lost in the building background hum of Daniel Jack's energies. Through no coincidence, the path lies clear to the sunny portal leading from the front of the warehouse back onto Sunshine's stricken streets, and it's a path Amy chooses to take then, moving in a cautious stride as though she were just learning how to walk once more. The frown on her brow is almost that of a focused child; because she's been undone, stripped to the core and forced to rebuild in no time at all. Can sanity persist through such a state? As though questioning it herself, she stops briefly, near to the entryway."But... thank you, I suppose. For whatever it might be worth."
Zach scowls at Daniel's comments, releasing the grip on the sword. "I'm not a destroyer," he mutters at the detective. "My days as a human wrecking ball are behind me." He listens to Amy's words. He didn't know she was adopted. He smiles a bit, finally. He rolls his shoulders, the left one then then right one.
"Damn right you don't," he says as he points the index and middle finger of his left hand at the one mook giving him any attention, as if it were a gun. Which, in a way, it is. "If I might ask a favor?" Golden energy floods into that pointing hand. "Don't be a stranger. You don't belong to me, and I don't belong to you. But..."
Zach takes careful aim. "I think that we'd both benefit from each other's company." He glances at Daniel, his expression darkening just a bit. "I guess we're not quite done here, after all," he says deceptively lightly; Zach is sad to see Amy go. He understands the thing, accepts it. But it brings him no joy.
"Let's finish this and get the hell out of here," Zach says after Amy has walked out. "I've had enough of this city to last me a lifetime." Zach then fires a wrist-thick beam of Soul Power into the thug giving him the stink eye.
People like Amy were sobering, to say the least.
Daniel Jack stands tall, ready to meet the allies of Amy. But allies no more? Amy was lost, drifting away. What was her reasoning? What was her logic. Daniel could hear, but he couldn't understand. Riddles within riddles, secrets within secrets.
And above all, misery within misery.
As Zach steps up, the rumbling ceases. Daniel Jack had gotten the rhythm of the room, the feel. He was no long part of the background now, but of the foreground, ready to crush and destroy. Standing above the catastrophic fray that, uh, he stumbled into, he gazes down the way, down the room. Amy was no longer a concern. Sunshine was no longer a concern for him. He had it with this city. As Zach unleashes his beam, Daniel Jack begins pulling everything on hand, table, tools, boxes, chairs, and engine parts, hurling one after another in a frantic flurry over everything but the kitchen sink.... with one final word to Zach.
"Lets bring down the whole damn house, scuzzy."
Log created on 11:31:24 07/16/2012 by Zach, and last modified on 01:27:07 07/29/2012.