Description: In which Tran denies the rapture, sees ghosts, destroys a foe, loses a friend, and is left with the cosmic power of time pulsing, unstable, in his hand.
Magaki's pure white suit is the only bright note on the darkened street. The City of Lights has dimmed, and with Paris wracked by disappearances, no one is present to witness his scowl brimming with inhuman intensities of rage and scorn. Rage, as the hand plunged into the pocket of his slacks fingers a cracked sphere hidden there. Scorn, as he regards the once jovial private club before him now desolate and lonely.
The chi signatures came from here.
Human beings are truly pathetic. At their best, they are reckless and clumsy, like their supposed ally who is the cause of the damage he must now rectify. And at their worst, which is most of the time, they cringe and cower and do anything to avoid facing their own impotence as the world collapses around them. He so tires of playing along with this Gaia Tournament charade. Soon enough, he will be able to put all this behind him. But the more he can do to speed that day along, the better. And so he is here, forced to tread into this den of iniquity, a testament to man's banal vices.
He will correct Ash Crimson's error.
Magaki's mastery of chi manipulation has allowed him to monitor the ebbs and flows of the leylines in this tormented city, but even he could not predict all that has taken place here. Spirits of the recently deceased are remaining on this plane of existence, and one has manifested near a fighter known to wield an unbridled chi here in this building. Magaki is confident he can crush them both, but even if he cannot, the excess energy produced through their battle may be manipulated into restoring the sphere. It is, as they say, a win-win.
Except, of course, for the necessity of his presence in this cesspool.
With another sneer at the nearly-abandoned gentleman's club before him, Magaki reaches out with a gloved hand and silently opens the door. He is slightly too tall to enter, but refusing to bow, his body flexes and warps slightly, his head sinking into his body instead, before resuming his normal shape and coolly looking for the sources of the chi he sensed from afar.
TWO WEEKS AGO
THE INDIAN OCEAN
Dr. Richard Tran, international man of mystery and known maniac, is talking on a cell phone as he leisurely walks across an expanse of rippling ice that stretches to the horizon on all sides. Or, well, he's trying to.
"Hello? Hello?" Static is all he hears. "Goddamn lying cheapass piece of crap." Frustrated, he tosses the phone at a nearby frozen crest, a tiny monument to motion locked into stillness, where it shatters into a billion little pieces because it's cheap crap and 'anytime, anywhere' minutes evidently don't mean anything in the apocalypse.
FIVE MINUTES LATER
Tran stubs his toe on a wave for the billionth time. This is the exact moment he loses his innate awe and respect for mother nature, also for the billionth time.
ONE WEEK AGO
A MOB
Dr. Tran is trying to read a newspaper, made overly difficult by how goddamn many people keep bumping into him and screaming about some dumb apocalypse thing he doesn't care about.
TEN SECONDS LATER
Dr. Tran is standing alone, the ground steaming, the people previously around him forming a perfect circle that affords him all the elbow room he needs. He opens his (slightly damp) newspaper with a scowl, and tries to figure out what's even up. He quickly finds out.
"Holy shit, people are getting raptured?! I gotta get over there!"
TWO HOURS AGO
PARIS
Tran breaks into the first bar he finds.
NOW
"This is, hands down," he speaks into a small ornate french mirror who is his best friend now, "The worst rapturing I've ever been to." He drains the bottle in his hand and throws it into a wall, where its damp and shattered pieces join a surprisingly large pile of the same. As the door opens a crack, Tran doesn't even look up, locked momentarily in a life or death staring contest with his reflection.
He seems to be losing.
Funny you should mention 'rapturing'...
There's been a number of incongruous and scientifically impossible sightings of a particular red-haired fighter, recently. In China, Japan, India, Siberia, even one in Missouri though that one's probably suspect. Only one person's actually SPOKEN to him, and she probably isn't saying much about it, on account of it 1.) being awkward and 2.) she's busy setting Kyoto on fire right now and can't be bothered.
But all those sightings were on the SAME DAY which technically speaking should not be possible even in a world where folks are coming back from the dead and all that rot.
And so we find ourselves here, in this dingy little bar, where a tiny almost-certainly-an-American is getting drunk and being upset that he's about to live out those terrible Left Behind novels. It's dark, and quiet, and dusty, and lonely.
Frei literally appears out of thin air in a burst of light, which continues to sparkle faintly around him as he hovers, eyes closed, in the middle of the room. It pretty much does seem like Tran has died and God had a really intense sense of humor with regards to guiding him to Paradise(*)
(* haha who are we kidding Tran's going directly to Hell)
Eventually the glowing, floating figure opens its eyes, fixes them on the lone occupant of the room... and sighs. "You've got to be KIDDING."
Magaki's grip tightens around damaged sphere in his pocket as it begins to thrum slightly upon Frei's manifestation. He withdraws it slowly from his pocket, still silent, his finger tracing along its gouged surface as the digit sinks unnaturally into its crystalline cracks, melding and squishing as no boned flesh should. With a bit of concentration, enacting the ritual of restoration here is a simple matter for one as evolved as himself.
All he needs is foreign chi.
He is quiet for some time, giving Frei and Tran a little space for a heartfelt reunion (no doubt), as he synchronizes the damaged sphere with the energy wavelengths before him. With these preparations, even in its dysfunctional state, it should be able to receive any ambient chi they produce or drain their very spirits from them. All the easier when one of them is pure spirit.
Magaki's smile is for once full of savage delight. He loathes these creatures, and cannot understand what Mukai sees in them, but he does take pleasure in forcing them to know their place. Unlike the trivial joys this edifice provided not so long ago, his, he believes, is transcendent and beyond human comprehension.
"Rejoice."
Their battle shall sanctify this place.
"You shall find the rapture you seek," Magaki says at last as he steps into the light of the empty bar, "in service to Our noble ambitions."
The cracked sphere in his hand catches and splits the light in a manner that makes his physical transformation all the more fantastical. His ashen skin turns bubblegum pink, his jacket sliding off his frame and to the floor as his arms sway gelatinously, hanging low as though dislocated, yet with the sphere still held fast.
"What remains of your miserable lives shall be a sacrifice to the Time Sphere of Memory, and herald its glorious resurrection."
COMBATSYS: Magaki has started a fight here as a boss!
MAGAKI [W]
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"I bet it's not even a real rapture," Tran tells himself after he inevitably blinks. "Probably aliens or something, or maybe it's...maybe it's national hide and seek day, I bet it's some dumb holiday like that and they didn't even tell anyone, or..."
He's interrupted as the mood lighting swiftly goes from 'pleasantly dusky' to 'ghost bright'. With an inarticulate grunt, he averts his eyes until it's bearable again, whereupon he is greeted by the first familiar face he's seen since returned to civilization. It's just floaty and glowy and shit.
"So which angel are you? Michealangelo? Gra...grub...Groovetron?" He finds another bottle, tipping it upward in a toast. "So you're late, you know, but we can rapture anytime you're ready, I've just been killing time, and..." Tran trails off as Magaki comes in, monologues, and reveals his true form.
"Hold up hold up, what's going on here? It can't be legit AND aliens, that doesn't...it doesn't fit the narrative, you can't BOTH rapture me god damn it." Pushing himself upright, the doctor points the bottle menacingly first at Frei, then at Magaki in turn.
"First you're late, then you screw it all up by double booking me without even CHECKING first...this is some AMATEUR BULLSHIT and I am going to COMPLAIN TO YOUR BOSSES." Scowling, Tran flips the bottle in his hand, clutching the expensive and fancy liquor like a football. A football made of glass that you throw at people you don't like. Like Magaki.
"Or maybe I'll just beat your asses and rapture you /myself/."
COMBATSYS: Tran has joined the fight here.
MAGAKI
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Tran 0/-------/-------|
Yeah, this is turning out about how he expected it would.
Frei's body is basically entirely and utterly disintegrated by Seishirou, yet the SOUL STILL BURNS. Which is to say, however briefly, the sage has become one with the flow of the planet's energy. This has some minor benefits, not the least of which is that he is without many of the constraints of a physical form anymore. It also has some drawbacks, one of which is that he is just as under assault by Mukai and company's meddling as the actual planet itself is.
So he's been riding the currents of the not-quite-Lifestream, following the flow, letting it carry him and intervening when necessary. And somehow here, tonight, is when he was 'supposed' to show up. When he does, he finds a... friend, in the loosest sense, drunk to the point of delusion, and a powerful and quite obviously 1.) malevolent and 2.) CRAZY figure claiming he's going to rapture them both to fix something called a time sphere.
Oh right, and technically he's still dead.
The glow and sparkles fade away as the... whatever it is that Frei is right now takes full form and lands lightly on the floor of the deserted bar. Just in time for Tran to launch into who even knows what and throwing a bottle at this... whatever the hell it is.
"Where do I even start," Frei asks, rhetorically. He doesn't start battling yet. This is a lot to figure out.
COMBATSYS: Frei has joined the fight here.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Tran
COMBATSYS: Frei focuses on his next action.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Tran
COMBATSYS: Magaki reflects Thrown Object from Tran with Exploding Sphere.
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Tran
Magaki glowers as the drunken doctor begins to rant at Archangel Groovetron and himself. The One from the Past's words did not have the cowing impact he anticipated. Mukai might find the unpredictability of these lesser life forms entertaining somehow, but Magaki simply finds it annoying. He has come to find that even in the face of his awesome power, those humans who have trained as fighters -- the ones necessary to the success of their plan -- have the most obnoxiously persistent personalities of all.
In such cases, a display of might is in order.
"An alien," Magaki muses as the bottle is hurled toward him. "There are less accurate ways your feeble mind could comprehend me." That sneering smile returns, but his hands do not move from their dangling position as the liquid-weighted glass nears his face. Instead his eyes widen, and with that small gesture explosions of energy the hue of his skin burst all before him, producing a cacophony and shattering the bottle, sending cuttting shards of glass glittering with pink energy and imbued with greater speed and heat to imbed against the bar and possibly Tran himself.
He raises the hand holding the cracked sphere, palming it as a philosopher might hold a skull aloft to contemplate man's fate. "This reality will soon come to an end," he announces almost casually. "Its entire purpose has been to pave the way for Our own. The process cannot be stopped, but it can be accelerated. Take pride that your lives will be given to hurry its demise."
Magaki's gaze grows almost dreamlike for a moment.
"Can you hear it? This world crying out for its misery to end."
COMBATSYS: Magaki successfully hits Tran with Reflected Thrown Object.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/-------|=======\-------\0 Tran
For a bottle he was holding in his hand just moments ago, Tran finds this new, /improved/ bottle to be quite the fearsome tool. Its raw potential unlocked, one could now call this a king of glassware, possessing the energy and force to lay even the mightiest of men low.
To summarize: Dr. Tran eats it. Hard.
The pinkly gleaming shards catch the doctor completely off-guard, his reactions so dulled that by the time he even thinks of dealing with this nonsense, it's over and he's bleeding from his everywhere. It takes a second to register, even. For an unnaturally long moment, Tran just stares at his own shredded torso, unable to really discern what just happened.
Then the illustrious doctor yelps, flips out, and dives behind the bar /far/ too late to accomplish anything at all useful. For a few moments, he just groans in pain, hidden from view. Before too long, however, he rises up, looking exactly like the complete mess he is.
"I just want you to know," Tran calmly states, "I want you to know that you're an asshole. And I should do something about that." Despite his words, the doctor seems to be content to seemingly just chill out for a moment, recuperating from his injuries. But to everyone in the room, his true objective is plain as day, writ bold in the flowing lines of power spread throughout the room, bending and warping as he draws them toward himself, drinking in and drinking in and releasing none of it, clutching it in tight to his metaphysical breast. He seems, for the moment, to have entirely forgotten about Frei, probably because /ghosts/ understand the concept of /manners/.
COMBATSYS: Tran gathers his will.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/-------|=======\===----\1 Tran
How do you even start handling this. One of these people is a dangerous lunatic, and the other is Magaki. To say that this is Frei's nightmare scenario for dealing with the invaders looking to destroy the world is the understatement of the year. Where do you even start unraveling the answer to this conundrum.
Forced by expediency to resort to his fallbacks, Frei glances at Magaki, gives him a single upraised finger in the universal gesture for 'one moment,' and then turns to Tran before taking a deep breath.
"Okay, look. This is not the rapture. You're not dead. However this person right here who is, probably, an asshole is apparently one of a group that as far as I can tell are using leylines and tainted chi to literally rip the planet as we know it apart for whatever insane, messed up reason overpowered megalomaniacs always have. So what I need you to do is dig deep, find whatever ridiculous place it is inside you that turns beer goggles into actual offensive strength, and basically eradicate him utterly."
There's a brief pause while Frei takes a deep breath. He doesn't even have lungs anymore, really, but it's the spirit of the thing. Eventually, however, he claps his hands and says, brightly, "Right! Good talk."
Then he turns around, and with a wave of one arm, sends a ridiculously large pillar of fire blazing across the floor, looking to engulf Magaki, as Frei simply shouts, over the roaring of the flame: "WHAT'S YOUR _DEAL_ ANYWAY"
COMBATSYS: Magaki endures Frei's Seiya.
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/-----==|=======\===----\1 Tran
5tMagaki can barely repress his smirk. The harm he has inflicted on Tran is meaningless. What matters is that Tran has begun to gather his chi, and the damaged sphere in the protean warrior's grip is reacting. Dr. Tran is notorious, and data on him was not difficult to gather. By synchronizing the Time Sphere with him, with every mote of energy in the environment that is converted to Tran's own steam power, the ambient effects feed the fractured artifact.
This is going well.
He is savoring this fact as Groovetron finishes lecturing Tran and turns his own fearsome chi upon the alleged alien. Magaki's gaze averts from the sphere just in time for the phantom sage's pillar of fire to engulf him, rendering their enemy a shadow obscured from view by the flames.
"It is simple."
Magaki steps from the flames, his voice measured even as they lick at him, the sphere unharmed in his grasp. If anything, a keen eye might notice some of the cracks appear to have sealed.
"So simple even ones such as you could understand."
Magaki carelessly lifts his off-hand, still far from both of them.
"We shall rewrite history," he intones, "and undo this world."
He thrusts out his off-hand-- and it disappears beyond the elbow, rippling into a field of garish pink. Within the space of a breath a mirror field has appeared right before Frei, and that same hand reaches out. Should it grasp him, it will trigger another series of explosions with a potent chi that aims to weaken his power to manifest even as it physically hurls him away.
"Good talk." Dr. Tran, perhaps somewhat sobered by the EXCRUCIATING PAIN that used to be his torso, responds calmly and barely wobbles at all as he stands up straight again. "Counterpoint: Obviously I'm not dead, I haven't been raptured yet and WHOSE FAULT IS THAT." A beat. "Yours probably, it's you guys. I'm talking about you."
His position on the matter made explicitly clear, Tran moves into action, hopping lightly over the bar and walking calmly toward Magaki, as though the man /weren't/ an evil alien on fire. And obviously Tran keeps talking, who's gonna shut him up? "And anyway, I don't just eradicate things because people tell me too, that is /exclusively/ for me, and honestly even if you are an angel or whatever that doesn't make you the boss of me, got it? Good." Then, in an instant, he whips his arm forward toward Magaki's neck, his relatively small fingers possessing the uncanny grip strength to sink deep into flesh.
"I mean, ok I'll do it, listen to this guy go on, but it's not /for/ you."
With any leverage gained from his terrible grasping hand, Tran uses his free hand for a highly technical maneuver that could be precisely described as 'beating the hell out of this stupid bubblegum man with his bare hands'.
COMBATSYS: Frei blocks Magaki's Dimension Claw.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/--=====|=======\===----\1 Tran
They always have some grandiose... thing. It's all about the Fighting Proletariat or the Glory of Lord Vega or the Price of Corn Was Too High This Year And Now All Must Suffer and let's just say that *actual death* has put some perspective into Frei's life, vis-a-vis needing to listen to whatever crazy-ass rationale this year's world-destroying maniac is going to deploy to explain the latest attempt to End All Life as We Know It.
Let us also say that the presence of Dr. Tran has a certain... pragmatism-inducing effect on the philosophical. It's really difficult to get mired in conversations about the nature of existence and expansive blah-di-blah when the good doctor is there to put everything in perspective.
"Oh my lord," Frei moans, as he thrusts his hand into the grip that suddenly lashes out at him, fighting back against it with forces spiritual as well as quasi-physical, and not... entirely succeeding, if the trickle of blood down his nose is any indicator. The clashing of auras does not, however, serve to drown out Frei's response to Magaki, or Tran, or possibly even both, which is: "Shut UP."
The sage is left breathing heavy as the smoke clears, before he gives a baleful glance at Magaki. "Oh my god has this been happening my WHOLE LIFE and I never noticed? Just blah blah blah talk talk talk glory to Cthulhu this or we shall reshape the world that. Has it EVER worked out?"
Apparently he's not thinking terribly straight either, since Frei's fist -- glittering with a hazy rainbow of barely-attenuated chi -- just sails on toward Magaki's face. Anything to get him to STOP MONOLOGUING.
COMBATSYS: Magaki blocks Tran's 3 2 1...Dr Tran.
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/--=====|=======\===----\1 Tran
COMBATSYS: Magaki just-defends Frei's Fierce Punch!
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/--=====|=======\===----\1 Tran
Magaki frowns.
"Well, it didn't work out!" he suddenly blurts in frustration. "That's why we're rewriting history!" Then he frowns deeper. These lesser life forms couldn't possibly be getting to him, could they? No. He's above that.
His arm has returned from the portal he summoned and now both again hang at his side like jelly, only to whip up as Tran advances. He bends at a bizarre angle in an attempt to elude the doctor's vise-like grasp, and his arm swings about, sometimes almost resembling a propeller, as he bats away the man of action's flurry of blows.
"You are just," he announces, "really disrespectful."
He has little time to balm his bruised ego, however, as Frei advances with a Tran-like punch raised, because Tran is making /everyone/ a little more like Tran. Seeing the halo of chi around Frei's fist, however, and with his off-hand already occupied, Magaki instead raises the hand clutching the sphere and takes the strike directly there. The artifact should be stable enough to endure it now--
"Hmph!"
It is. Frei's chi seems to seep into the sphere Magaki holds, and if he does not retract his hand quickly, it begins to slowly eat away at his very form, hungrily devouring him.
"This is only to prepare the stage for our true battle," Magaki says, in what he means to sound haughty but really sounds a little sulky. "We shall undo the mistakes that have been made and start again. In the next world, we will gather the strength to return even farther into the past."
Then, snarling, he turns and lashes out with his flexible limb to try and hit Tran right in the Somewhere Hole.
"So you shut up!!"
COMBATSYS: Tran blocks Magaki's Somewhere Hole.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/--=====|=======\=====--\1 Tran
"Well maybe if you want respect so much you should stop being /pink/."
Tran's retort is quite irate as he's almost casually deflected by Magaki's wild gyrations, feeling the spotlight slip away from him back toward Frei and this man's mysterious mystery ball. Even without an audience, some habits die hard.
"And grow up a little! Oh boo hoo, everything sucks, I'm gonna cry about it and write in my diary and kill everything that's alive so I can replace it with something else that sucks just as bad, sob sob whine whine I'm a big stupid pink baby and--."
And then Magaki is trying to put his hand where hands /absolutely do not belong/ and Tran finally has to shut up and deal with the consequences of his big mouth. He does so by clenching his /entire body/, sealing every hole that could possibly exist, like we are talking everything down to sealed pores which are going to ruin his complexion later probably. The impact still drives him back a step, sending him awkwardly stumblehopping into a table which the knocks over, barely avoiding a similar fate himself.
"Rude. That is rude and my heavenly appointed sidekick and I will in /no way/ allow whatever your stupid plan is."
Dr. Tran arches back, feeling his spine crack, and then all at once charges right back in like the moron he often is, in the manner of morons the world over: forehead first.
'Disrespectful'.
Those who know him, know that Frei doesn't really get upset. Think about what's been done to him. An uncounted number of people arrived at the YFCC, usually looking for SOMEONE ELSE and would then take it out on Frei, who did his best to defend the people under his charge. His crazy brother tried to not only kill Frei but turn his friends against him through not-quite-mind control. SIN filled him with an experimental chemical that burned out his chi abilities. He was cloned, then forced to kill his OWN clone. There were various other and sundry bad things that have happened to Frei and not once, not even once, has he said 'you know what'.
He's always smiled through it.
Oh right. AND HE DIED.
The chi-vampiric effects of the orb Magaki is carrying do not go unnoticed -- Frei surmises this is the 'time sphere' that was mentioned -- but frankly all of that is taking a back seat to what comes out of his mouth right now, which is:
"_I'M_ disrespectful?!"
Apparently, even a mountain can eventually be eroded down.
"Listen, buster," Frei says in heavy, ominous tones, slowly advancing on Magaki, rolling up sleeves that aren't even really sleeves, just the ectoplasmic MEMORY of sleeves. And while he is not a time-destroying demon, there is the sudden sense that someone has been holding himself back for a very long time and now that power is about to find itself unleashed.
"How about you take your stale, busted-ass apocalyptic plan..."
Frei gets in as close as he can manage, and then sweeps one arm up. A gigantic stone fist, easily the size of a large person, erupts from the ground and looks to, quite frankly, punch Magaki's smug bastard face right out of the bar.
"And SHOVE IT!" is Frei's final demand.
His voice *echoes*.
COMBATSYS: Magaki endures Tran's Strong Punch!
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/---====|=======\=====--\1 Tran
COMBATSYS: Frei successfully hits Magaki with Reiki EX.
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/--=====|=======\=====--\1 Tran
Magaki's eyes widen in outrage, the hand which clutches the cracked sphere trembling with his indignation.
"Your inability to recognize the supreme majesty of my color," he says tremulously, "is proof of your status as a lesser being!"
He should've stuck Tran right in the Somewhere Hole. Instead, the impudent alleged doctor has the sheer gall to charge at him directly. Agitated more than he could have imagined was possible, Magaki, unhesitating, whips his head down in an unnaturally liquid motion and takes the impact of Tran's headbutt with his own skull. He whips back to his full height, glowers down at Tran, and then frowns again, narrowing his eyes.
"Why," he mutters, "did I /do/ that?"
This question is all that remains hanging in the air when Frei's mighty stone fist bursts from the floorboards and pounds Magaki right in the face, sending him crashing through the main entrance to the bar, his semiliquid body rolling and undulating to a stop before he unfolds back into a standing position. He is grimacing somewhat, and his face temporarily appears somewhat pancake-like before it eventually resumes its normal shape, but the sphere he has maintained his grip on now hums audibly, glowing with a faint light of its own.
"Such pests," he sneers. He might lose his composure, but he never loses his condescension. "Your every action serves me so long as it serves the Time Sphere!" He raises his off-hand again, this time summoning as though at a whim crackling spheres of pink energy which divide into four and then descend in a barrage upon Frei's form. "Acknowledge your fundamental impotence, and despair."
First things first: as the Tran effect spreads, the source himself enjoys the sick crunch of headbone on headbone. It hurts a little, sure, but it hurts /good/. After all, Magaki might be pink on the outside, but it's all the same inside, right? ...right?
But then more importantly Frei goes nuts in an /extremely/ non-heavenly manner. What kind of divine messenger gets super pissed, shouts a bunch, and summons a giant stone uppercut? Uncharacteristic as it might be for the spiritually centered monk, it gives Tran pause. That, and Magaki's abrupt departure THROUGH the front door. There's a slow moment as
"...so I'm beginning to think that you're /not/ an angel taking the form of someone from my past so as to not explode my brain with your true splendor and glory, but are instead someone from my past who figured out how to teleport." Even as Magaki's ball collection comes screaming back in through the door, Tran ignores it in favor of CIVILITY and INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION. Which is to say, the doctor wiggles his hand and bobs his head inquisitively, adding, "Warm? Cold? Lukewarm? Work with me here. Or actually, forget it."
Looking back at Magaki through the shattered doorframe, Dr. Tran hops from one foot to the other, stretching lightly and generally warming up as though he weren't already embroiled in conflict. Almost like someone flipped a switch, the flow of chi around him reverses. The lines of power that were invisible shimmer and thicken, a hazy white web of lines that lazily stretch to the ceiling. His light warm up slows down, slower and slower, until he stands dead still, only the air around him moving now. The doctor's lips broaden, showing a grin full of his pearly whites.
"I'm busy now."
COMBATSYS: Tran takes no action.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/--=====|=======\=====--\1 Tran
COMBATSYS: Magaki successfully hits Frei with Phantom Sphere - Descend.
MAGAKI
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Frei 2/<<<<<<</<<<<<<<|=======\=====--\1 Tran
There is, briefly, as Tran continues to rant onward with his typical entirely detached grip on reality, a glowy purple moment, a smoke cloud, and then every reasonable sensory indication that Frei has been more or less entirely obliterated for the second time in as many weeks, because in the path of Magaki's attack there is a lot of rubble, dust, and an impact crater but nothing even remotely approaching Frei, unless you had exceptionally poor eyesight and thought Frei had a lacquered, wooden appearance, three legs, and no skin.
This means that Tran doesn't get an answer to his question for some time now. Until eventually the back door of the bar into the storage room, which was hanging precariously on its hinges, suddenly and rather violently gets exploded off, hurtling at high velocity toward the front wall where it proceeds to impact and then shatter into a million pieces, like some sort of Ikea-based comet.
This is when Frei slowly stalks out of the back room, not... looking so great, physically speaking, because he might not have a physical body but apparently remembers how to bleed. But in other ways he appears to be doing okay because elemental power is literally spilling off him like a lit sparkler. If Tran's sudden shift in demeanor is understated, yet potent, Frei's is bizarrely, insanely over the top. Fire, wind, tiny sparks of lightning, motes of frost... all of them swirl around his slowly advancing form and spill off into the air before disappearing, their mere existence an ephemeral side effect to the sage's might let loose.
"You know what," Frei says carefully, staring out at Magaki. "I have given every inch of my existence in the past eight years to helping and protecting others. And not just people I know," he adds, turning to look at Tran intensely for a moment, before snapping his gaze back to Magaki. "Total strangers. People who probably, by common reckoning, didn't deserve it. And I paid the price, often with my own body. But you know what?"
The redhead extends a hand, palm up, and the aura around him intensifies, gathering in his hand in a swirling, chaotic mass... curiously enough, a form reminiscient of the chaotic Hadouken that he developed with Sakura Kasugano's help, however many years ago, though on a much advanced scale. "I have never been 'powerless.' My ability has always been something bigger than earthly strength. It's been friends and colleagues and the moral good. It's been being willing to put myself on the line time and time again not because it was the right thing to do but because my heart demanded it. Nothing more, nothing less."
'Love is miracles.' That was what he told Seishirou Ryouhara, and with all his heart, Frei believes it.
"So how about this: you take your Xanatos Gambit villain monologue and either make good or get lost because I've got more important things to do. And before you make any more comments about us being powerless, I'd just like to point out that so far NOT EVEN DEATH has been able to put a stop to ME."
This... went in a very different direction quite fast, as far as Frei's concerned.
COMBATSYS: Frei charges his next attack!
MAGAKI
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Frei 2/<<<<<<</<<<<<<<|=======\=====--\1 Tran
Magaki's upper lip curls back as Frei appears to vanish in the wake of his empowered spheres, the One from the Past's masquerade of human musculature adequately conveying his contempt for species and individual alike. His venomous gaze shifts to Tran, the chi manipulator observing the transforming energies around the steam wielder with an expert analytic eye. His smirk loses some of its savagery to become largely of smug satisfaction as he raises the hand holding the Time Sphere. Its cracks have mostly faded, and it continues to glow with a faint pearlescent light. Synchronizing it to these two has been thoroughly effective. Now, if the good doctor would add just a touch more--
"What?"
Magaki exclaims aloud despite himself as the sphere in his hand begins to tremble rapidly, its light brightening until it blinds. As he squints and flinches, what he sees beyond it makes him wonder if his eyes deceive him. Frei is emerging wreathed in an impossible array of elemental powers, as though all the possibilities of the planet flow through him unhindered. The sphere, resonating with this, begins to squirm bizarrely in Magaki's grasp, humming until the sound grows piercing.
"Impossible--"
He never imagined that these adversaries would threaten to /overload/ the sphere. He can't predict the consequences fully, but he must quickly decouple the sphere from the fighters before him. He concentrates, and then cries out and jerks back, releasing the glowing and untarnished sphere to roll into the center of the room.
"Hmph."
Although he seemed nearly panicked before, Magaki oddly seems in no hurry to retrieve the sphere, which by its silence seems to have stabilized, no longer so acutely affected by the chi accumulating in the environs. Instead his eyes shift from Frei to Tran and back, both of his adversaries having seemingly prepared themselves differently.
"Very impressive, human. But time threatens with more than death."
With both hands free, he spreads his arms wide, features contorting.
"You have overcome great obstacles in your time. The powerlessness of which I speak--" His ten fingers flex and wiggle unnaturally. "--is that of overcoming time itself. I do not say you will die. Neither do I say that you will be forgotten. No--"
His eyes snap wide.
"You will never have been known. Your stories will be replaced, /fighters/, for what you are powerless to do is to transcend time. You will cling to this one, which makes sense of all you have been and can be, as it fades into oblivion."
And then he is a blur, lunging toward Tran this time with a sudden burst of stamina, perhaps wary of Frei's radical escalation of power, and sends both his arms out stretching and contorting into a vice that aim to hammer the good-ish doctor from two bizarre angles at once.
"I would pity you, if you were not all so revolting!"
COMBATSYS: Magaki successfully hits Tran with Death Vice.
MAGAKI
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Frei 2/<<<<<<</<<<<<<<|>>>>>>>\>>>>>>>\2 Tran
The air is thick. You can feel it. You could touch it, try to push it to the side if only it didn't seem so immutably /heavy/. It's as though the slightest, barest of movement is an impossible slope, where merely existing takes all of one's effort, all of one's will. It smells like /danger/, and somewhere in the back of Dr. Tran's head, he wishes that it was all him.
However, as much as he postures, for all his diligent efforts toward appearing as threateningly non-threatening as possible, he can't help but think that maybe he's a little bit out of his depth. Though he's not looking at Frei, Tran can still feel the raw energy, more vibrant and more /alive/ than it's ever felt to him before, and he wonders just what trials the cheerful monk's endured to produce and refine it.
And he pretty much just got chumped by Big League Chew, who really might be an alien for all Dr. Tran knows. Certainly, this energy is unlike anything he's ever encountered before, in scope and in origin, and he has had his ass handed to him by some of the most powerful men on the planet. Rationally speaking, he should be so afraid he can't even think of anything other than running until he can't run anymore.
Mostly it just pisses him off.
"So what?" Tran's voice rasps and distorts with every angry word, a haze of steam billowing from his mouth with every breath. He doesn't get the chance to continue because good lord is Magaki fast, inhuman arms crushing him from either side like jackhammers, cracking bone and badly bruising flesh. "Nothing I've ever done has meant anything, nothing I've done has mattered. Maybe it's too late, and it never will." As if on cue, Tran coughs--three times--before he finally forces some blood out, because even now there are forms to observe. He wobbles forward a step, seemingly having trouble even staying upright.
"So maybe you'd be doing me a favor by erasing everything." The steam grows thicker, ever thicker, making the space around the doctor more and more resemble a sauna, clinging to his body like a living thing.
"So let's make sure you never get a chance to matter, either, you STUPID ARROGANT GARBAGE SPECK OF NOTHING."
Dr. Tran, intent fully made clear, charges forward and headbutt Magaki again -- the difference being, this time his entire face /explodes/.
'Nothing I've ever done has meant anything , nothing I've done has mattered.'
Those words, more than anything else, freeze Frei in his tracks momentarily, though in his head that moment seems like it goes on forever in a reverie of flashbacks. An angry Tran helping Frei to finally decide to confront his mother. Helping a Rage-empowered Tran give Frei the necessary inspiration to banish what was effectively a Real Life Demon back to the nether realm. A host of other moments where maybe Tran didn't mean to -- or perhaps more chillingly, DID mean to and this was the only way he knew how to go about it -- help, but he helped.
He mattered.
"Tran..." Frei whispers, even as the doctor is charging suicidally toward their shared opponent and is likely well beyond hearing, "...I'm sorry."
But maybe that's how it should be. Where and when it counted, Tran mattered. And nobody can take that away from him. But he'd be INSUFFERABLE if he knew.
Despite himself, the thought brings the quirk of a smile to Frei's ghostly lips.
Even as Tran dashes at Magaki, Frei simply winks out of existence for a moment, before reappearing on Magaki's opposite side from the good doctor, waiting his turn. People underestimate him, but Frei's been on the receiving end of Tran's unleashed might before and frankly, he doesn't envy Magaki; when the Real American Doctor wants to hit someone, he is going to make sure they stay hit, and Frei is counting on Tran giving him enough of an opening -- prying open a crack in Magaki's defenses -- so that the elemental sage can take his moment.
And when he does? Hands come up in complex interlocking gestures, and the steam created by Tran's powers does not dissipate; if anything, it intensifies, swirling around Magaki in a cyclonic pattern, creating a miniature storm front that suddenly erupts into a hellaciously large bolt of pure, white-hot lightning that drops out of the sky to strike Magaki full-on. And if the pink-skinned not-quite-human doesn't have some way to negate it? Well...
COMBATSYS: Magaki endures Tran's Aggressive Strike.
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/---<<<<|>>>>>>>\>>>>>>>\2 Tran
COMBATSYS: Magaki fails to reflect Empowered Shinra Banshou from Frei with Vanishing Cosmos.
MAGAKI [W]
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Frei 0/-------/---<<<<|>>>>>>>\>>>>>>>\2 Tran
Things move in cycles. The elements are just one example. And finding his opening salvo having succeeded, Frei's final ecstatic burst puts this principle into practice. The chi of water called the chi of wood in the form of storms, and as Frei's flowing hand motions continue, the mounting swirl of energy continues to change shape. Lightning sparks a towering column of flame that erupts skyward, which then becomes a whorl of erupting stones, like a tightly controlled vertical avalanche, which THEN become interlocking lattices of silver-gold light that sound an audible metallic hum, until the cycle loops back around to water, and the air around Magaki suddenly and entirely freezes completely solid, before shattering into a thousand glittering pieces.
"Someone, somewhere, will remember," Frei hisses, eyes narrowed. "Nothing was in vain."
And then, because he may have overtaxed himself a TINY BIT, the sage topples over to one knee, taking in huge, gasping breaths. The aura of power is entirely gone, expended in one great burst. And that sphere which Magaki seemed briefly in a hurry to get rid continues to feed, distractions having been eliminated.
"Tran..." Frei mutters. "I can't..."
Magaki roars with arrogant laughter.
His arms retract, spasming as though a shudder of glee has passed through them after they tear into Tran, who advances bringing with him a nihilating miasma. There is little about humanity that delights Magaki. Typically even their vices are boring. But when humans are driven to such depths of despair that they dig to its molten core, and burn with a black heat as they seek only to drag others down to their level, Magaki finds this highly enjoyable, if only because it confirms for him that this is the ultimate limit to what humanity can be. Humans are always absurd self-nihilating entities.
To Magaki, Tran is just fully self-realized in that regard.
So he roars, mocking and triumphant and condescending, and one again takes Tran's full-force blow head-on, this time not because Magaki has been provoked and somehow infected with Tranitude but due to absolute confidence. The pain reverbates through his body, his strange and malleable bone structure crunching in a manner that suggests it will not so easily reform. But Magaki's senses sing. The sphere is complete. He will obliterate them at their mightiest now. Sensing Frei's power building, Magaki's lip curls back.
And he sinks into the ground.
At first it just looks as though he's being lowered, even though the floor beneath him isn't moving and his feet and legs are simply disappearing into it. But soon his body is oozing apart, sinking into an invisible pool that ripples and vanishes. No conventional attack can strike him now. The floorboards quaver slightly, the only indication of his continued existence. He can move anywhere, strike from anywhere now. It is time to show the humans how far beyond their comprehension his power is.
Until the lightning strikes.
Descending from above, exploding through the ceiling, perhaps drawn to the faint chi signature Magaki still emits, it unerringly plunges right to the slightly wavering fluid point where Magaki has blended in with the floor. An ear-piercing unearthly scream cuts through the room. As the lightning pulses through, Magaki seems to be forcibly pulled up through the ground, a shrunked twisted putty man who still resembles him, dripping arms upraised as though in devastated plea to the heavens. The unsettlingly strange cries continue, emerging from a half-formed mouth and no normal vocal chords, as flames and light and ice in turn envelop him.
When the ice shatters, Magaki is hurled back, but he is not what he once was. Misshapen and oozing pink goo, his silver hair liquified and drooping to the floor, only two-thirds his original size, Magaki wheezes and groans, the contentedly glowing sphere on the other side of the room entirely forgotten.
"Heee.... huuuumans.... haaaaaaAAAAAAaaaa..."
Words seem beyond him now.
In his time, Dr. Tran has had his fair share of regrets, things he wishes he could have done differently, things he wishes he could change; indeed, it wouldn't be so bad if they could just have never been. Perhaps he is mistaken in that his life has been largely without impact, but can he be blamed, having failed to cause the impact he wished for when it mattered most?
As his skull once again crashes into Magaki, Tran is at least content in this moment, at this time. In so many ways, he is once again in his element, surrounded by a unique blend of steam, blood and chaos that nobody else can exactly replicate. His head sobered by pain and a fighter's naturally high performance metabolism, the most American doctor possible actually feels just a little bit happy.
It makes him look deranged.
But it doesn't take long for him to be outclassed THERE, too, as Magaki is treated to all the wonderous power of mother nature, courtesy of one Frei...Suitcase Rainman? Close enough, probably. Tran frowns, he frowns hard, and his mood flips in an instant, as it is ever wont to do. He turns and points a steamy finger at the mystical warrior in question, which is rude but also he doesn't give even a single damn.
"Shut up, you STUPID asshole! You've done plenty, take a god damn five before I make you." Message and feelings mixed as always, he then gets back to business, hopefully before this weird monster man pulls out some stupid, bizarre trump card that kills them all. Luckily, he has a /plan/.
Crossing the room, Tran casually reaches down for the Timesphere of Time, tossing it up and down as he feels its weight. Unattuned as it is, he doesn't have much trouble bringing his chi to bear, gathering it tightly around both it and his hand, concealing them both in an ever contracting blob of shimmering, white hot power. It builds and builds as he focuses everything he has, everything he's been gathering all this time, into one point. And then he speaks.
"Hey, I've got your stupid orb, ass. What're you gonna do about it?" Instead of waiting for an answer, Dr. Richard Tran leans way back, stretching his arm out as far as it can go, relaxing his entire body as much as he can without literally falling down limp. And then he snaps, entire body tensing to /launch/ him forward, the chi-concealed timesphere gripped tightly like a fist, or maybe some kind of hand-sized missile?
Obviously, upon contact, the entire mass of energy explodes like someone just shot a scuba tank and today Magaki gets to be Jaws.
For a second, there's a brief smile on Frei's face. There's something reassuring about Tran staying to form. In a way, he's probably the friend knows who's compromised themselves the least in the entirety of the time Frei's known him. And while the sage still feels regret that maybe he didn't articulate his appreciation of the doctor in the most direct, verbal way, maybe Tran knows deep down what Frei felt about him.
Good thing it's not verbal though because there's an excellent chance Tran would be having a brief gay panic right now if it were.
There's also the minor fact that as much as Frei wanted to stand up to Magaki, that orb is another thing entirely... and distracted as he was by the One from the Past's speeches, the redhead didn't give it much notice. Now, he has to, because the enervating effect it's having on him is pretty pronounced. Before, a combination of something-like-adrenaline and emotions was keeping it at bay, but having exhausted all of that power in one go, Frei is deeply aware of the pain that having your very EXISTENCE leeched away can impose.
As it is, he can't really move from where he is to attack alongside Tran. But at the very least, he can summon enough of his will to bolster the doctor's strength, intensifying Tran's already-prodigious output of energy, in the hopes that it might be enough for him to power through to Magaki.
COMBATSYS: Frei assists Tran.
MAGAKI
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Frei 0/-------/---====|>>>>---\-------\0 Tran
COMBATSYS: Magaki fails to interrupt Here Comes Dr. Tran! from Tran with Interstellar Void.
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Frei 0/-------/---====|>>>>---\-------\0 Tran
COMBATSYS: Magaki can no longer fight.
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Frei 0/-------/---====|>>>>---\-------\0 Tran
Magaki no longer possesses what can properly be called a mouth.
"HuuuuUUUUUUuuuuaaaAAAAAaaaaahhh!"
But oh, how he howls.
As Tran approaches girded in a field of his chi and wielding the sphere in his grasp, Magaki widens his dripping maw, his baleful and wretched cry growing louder and more agonized. Pink chi erupts around his misshapen form, no longer used with subtle care to maintain a humanoid appearance, and instead pouring forth with unhinged malice. Should he will it, Magaki could fill their world with a raging storm, reducing this miserable edifice to powder. But all he sees before him is the Man of Action, Dr. Tran, holding the newly restored Time Sphere. And so it is that Magaki focuses all of that energy--
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"
--on him.
When Tran erupts forth like a missile, he is met with a veritable wall of roiling, bulbous chi, swelling and engorging itself. Even as Tran's super-compressed energy strains against it, the sheer mass of Magaki's power seems to stifle the possibility of an explosion, growing like a preternatural bacteria and smothering all unlike itself. It builds like foam, filling the frame of the shattered door, seeping outside, fitting into the cracks of the walls and roof and floorboards, as though without a limit it exists to drown them all.
Perhaps it is Frei's leading the strength that remains to him. Perhaps it is Magaki's current weakness. Or perhaps-- it is simply Tran, making a difference.
But something snaps.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUHHH!!??"
The center is pierced through. The foamy chi which has expanded in all directions collapses in on itself as Tran breaks through, fist clenching the Time Sphere, and releases an earth-shaking explosion that fills the room instead with a shrouding, somehow quite refreshing, probably exfoliating, cloud of steam.
When that steam clears, Magaki is gone. Trails and droplets of pink goo splashed onto the sidewalk and street outside the splintered doorframe are visible in a pattern that suggests what remains of him was flung bouncing away into the night. Nothing but that evidence will be found, however, and even that seeps with eerie swiftness into the stone, not to return.
The sphere remains in Tran's fist, glowing as though with satisfaction.
The steam slowly clears as unnatural silence descends upon Paris once again, save for the muffled sound of booze dripping off a shelf. Dr. Tran is left, standing by himself, spattered with goo and holding a mystery orb so tightly his knuckles are sheet white. But then there isn't even goo, and he's just standing there, small in the recently enlarged ruins of the door. It takes the man of action a moment to do anything but catch his breath, so exhausted is he.
"...it worked?"
Or maybe he's just stunned with disbelief. Shaking his head, he turns to Frei, carefully maintaining distance between the two of them. Despite appearances, the doctor /does/ pay attention sometimes, even if he's unaware of the finer details regarding an orb and...whatever is going on with one of the few people he can remotely consider a friend.
"So..." Somewhat at a loss, the doctor tucks the artifact into a blood and booze soaked pocket, hesitates, then takes a step back. "...I don't suppose you have any idea what happens next?"
COMBATSYS: Tran has left the fight here.
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Frei 0/-------/---====|
By the time Tran turns around to ask his question, he might have his answer in an entirely non-verbal form. Which is to say, Frei has staggered to his feet, but the form he has taken -- something approximating his physical body -- is not looking so great. The sage is slumped forward, one hand against the deteriorating wall of what used to be a bar and is now basically a war zone.
He's quickly becoming transparent, too, which is sort of disconcerting. The pulsing strength of the orb in Tran's hand is, rather too clearly, in time with the intermittent and slowly intensifying disappearance of Frei.
For all the times he's put his life on the line, all too ready to throw it away, when it comes to the moment of realizing your existence is about to end, it's impossible for the most even-keeled of individuals not to look... unsettled. While it's not entirely clear there's a real body to BE nauseous right now, the expression on Frei's face say he remembers what stomach-twisting anxiety feels like, and if anything, he feels that sense of growing anxiety right now.
But in spite of that, he does look a little happy. The orb's not in Magaki's hands, so that's a good thing. And who knows; Tran's got the kind of luck that means maybe someone who can actually do something with the damn thing will more or less fall out of the sky and try to take it from him.
For himself, Frei seems like he's struggling to find words to say in this moment. This is his chance, presumably. He could tell Tran lots of things: to make some positive changes in his life. To maybe be less angry. Certainly to drink less.
Instead he says: "Tran..."
"You did good."
There's a grimace that passes across the redhead's face and he slumps forward, then extends a hand... and watches as said hand slowly starts dissolving into motes of light that flutter off in various directions like fireflies.
Turning his jade-eyed gaze to the good doctor, the chi sage says, "As for what happens next, I... guess I'll find out."
The nervous yet genuine smile on his face is one of the last things to go, and then there is nothing more than fireflies, a cool breeze, and memories.
COMBATSYS: Frei has ended the fight here.
Log created on 22:22:51 09/08/2014 by Frei, and last modified on 20:46:26 09/10/2014.