Description: Steel rains from the sky in a colorless Strolheim, crushed by the weight of inevitability. However, there is no room for mourning when Seishirou Ryouhara arrives, to investigate the peculiar Sphere that one Strolheim weaponsmaster holds..
The normally bustling town of Strolheim seems to be on break. Normally a good-natured hive of activity and tourism, formidable-looking men from the castle above wandering about in between their duties, today the streets are nearly empty, stalls closed early, only a few downtrodden-looking folks sulking from one place to another.
The reason is clear to people who live on a certain heightened level - there is a miasma over Strolheim. A perfect stillness born of despair and hopelessness, emanating from a single point.
Makari Maksimilian of the House of Strolheim ducks out of a cafe, squeezing through a door far too small for him, a cup of coffee and a platter in his hand. Humming softly to himself, he takes a sip.
"Blech! Grounds!" He pulls a face, scowls at the cup, and takes another sip. Seems like they phoned it in today.
The hood of his grey fur cloak is missing, fashioned into a bag and hanging from his swordbelt - the origin of the miasma is coming directly from within it.
A peculiar tune wrings itself out of the air.
Lonely, haunting. The last person standing at the end of the world. This is the sort of imagery the song evokes, with only the faintest discordance to mar it, it is not yet played by a master. As it is, the tune is cloying, it sticks to every element of the body, only a pleasant sensation when it slides loose, deliberate as a blind man be in touching a friend's face to know what it truly looks like. The song is distracting enough that one might not notice the daylight stars in the afternoon sky move and glitter as they drop down to earth.
It begins with one sword, slamming into the ground and sticking in the cobblestones with the authoritative ring of steel. A chokuto-style blade, it would seem cheap with its barest unornamented fittings, were it not tied with an elaborate red ribbon, whose embroidery implies an extensive formula that glows with golden wire when the light hits it just right. It begins with just that one.
And ends with the hundredth.
The hail of steel would be lethal if it were anything but intensely deliberate. Not a single person is harmed by the rain of blades, the swords slamming into every exposed surface at an even distribution, with no less than three feet between each handle. And the blades seem to cordon off a clear zone, filling the space before Makari with forboding teeth. It is only after the last blade falls that he makes his appearance.
Diving out of the sky as if his grey haori were a kite, Seishirou slams into the ground at the opposite end of the killing field. He stands as if unconcerned for even the slightest inconvenience of drop of blood spilt at his siege's expense. Eyes half-lidded and fingertips disappearing into the voluminous sleeves of his coat, he straightens. A large paper-wrapped bundle hangs low beneath his hip behind him, along with another sheathed blade. But he stares across the way, dead at Makari.
"I've come for what you protect," the young ninja explains calmly.
"Makari of Strolheim. I am Ryouhara Seishirou, the last living member of the Ryouhara clan of ninkougakusha. For the sake of the museum of history alone... I will hear your will, and grant you a single wish." He doesn't waste time mincing words. Only stone, bone and flesh.
Makari's eyes fix onto the first blade the moment it lands, his gaze sharpening as he takes the weapon in, analyzing it with a practiced gaze. He dismisses the ribbon as frippery and ignores the sword's lack of ornamentation, taking in the precision of the sharpened edge, the smoothness with which the blade's tang slides into its pommel, the clean lines and quality metal. "Good blade," he comments calmly, taking a step back as the swords continue to rain down.
He takes another pull of the coffee, wincing and reaching into his mouth, withdrawing half of a bean. He fixes it between thumb and forefinger. "Ridiculous," he mutters, hand tracking slowly to the side before flicking it away. The 65th sword shatters it on its way down.
The listless people in the area fall back as the swords come down, many onto their seats, where they just... stay there. One man pulls his knees to his chest and sags against the wall. A woman, her path now blocked, slowly falls over onto her side, uncaring eyes aimed in the direction of the ersatz arena. Nobody runs. Nobody causes a fuss. What's the point?
The Russian watches Seishirou glide out of the sky, sticking one finger into the cup and questing it around, fishing out a few more chunks of unground bean, dropping them to the ground next to him, shaking the grounds off as he introduces himself. "I think you have a bit of the wrong idea, maybe. I am not so much in the habit of this protecting. You protect things, you protect people, it just makes them weaker." He takes a deep pull of the coffee with a grimace.
"I have heard of you, though, a bit. A bit, da? But I think maybe you have the idea that I know a bit more than I do. I just hear... riddles, riddles. I come to ask, eh, Krauser, yes? But he is not here. Probably dealing with some of these crises that are everywhere." He shrugs. None of the hopelessness pouring from the fur sack at his belt is in his expression - indeed, his mouth splits into a wide, blindingly white grin. "Maybe you explain a bit? You know a little more of this?" He turns and sets the cup and platter down on a table still cluttered with the remnants of its last diner and resumes facing the ninja. One hand drops to his belt to casually bobble the Time Sphere.
The shinobi's eyes fix on the coffee cup. He has a quick and endlessly sharp gaze. Even his glance would be unretractibly lethal, if a look could be a weapon. He surely would have slain Makari's coffee in an instant, from the way he looks at it intently. It's a serviceable fix for his attention--his lips tighten as Makari makes his position known. Though there seems to be nothing that isn't severe about the young man, Ryouhara seems to harbor the faintest patina of distrust of Russians.
"I see."
"You have a Time Sphere. It is one of the pillars of existence, and the focal point of the temporal anomalies all over the planet. They all govern over some mansion of time. If you open your spirit to it, I am sure you will know which one. I've done my own research. Judging from what my ninkoujutsu tells me, that thing you harbor is one of the fulcrums upon which our history balances."
"... but that isn't of interest to me."
He matches the grin with none of his own. Instead, Seishirou raises his chin, looking up into the sky openly. "Strolheim knows it well. This world as we know it is coming to an end. A great revolution in history is beginning, an unravelling which will not be reversed. When strength ceases to matter, and the machinations of a long-wrought plot come to trump all. Were it not to perpetrate tyranny and oppression, I would have lauded it as genius. As it is now... there is only one way to assure that the work we've done is not lost."
"...Please excuse me," Seishirou interrupts himself. "I'm an analyst at heart. It likely isn't a thing that even matters to you. It was my wish to meet Master Krauser once last. But to think that any further tales could be woven of the way things are and will be is pointless." He opens a hand. "A wish granted... will you surrender?"
A hand that drops to his hip.
".. Or is it my jutsu that will decide things for us?"
Makari sees something of the sword inside Seishirou himself. He respects the man for it, irrelevant his respect may be to the ninja. The young man hooks his thumbs in his belt and settles back on his heels as Seishirou begins his explanation, square jaw working as he sucks on his teeth and tries to digest it. Makari is a brilliant fighter, but nobody would ever call him a brilliant man.
"I would rather stay closed to it, for now. It tries to tell me that everything is hopeless and reminds me of all my failures, a bit, eh, incessantly. I'd say it even belabors the point a bit!"
He begins to talk about the end of the world, and Makari's face grows grim. His thoughts travel upon a particular line that starts as soon as Seishirou talks about strength no longer mattering - he begins to imagine a world where, as had come up earlier, everyone is... protected, after a fashion, even if the protection is under the aegis of a dictator. His face grows sour, and he rubs the close-cut back of his head.
"That is a grim picture that you paint. I had known things were coming to some kind of... end, as you say? How could they not! But I did not know there were hands behind it. I was hoping it was just, eh, the world restructuring itself. Something of a big pop quiz to see who'd be standing at the end. Make the world a bit more /interesting/, not more boring." He is silent for a time.
Then his weight settles and his shoulders shift. The heavy grey cloak of rabbit fur tumbles forward, obscuring his body from the neck down save for the very tops of his boots. Seishirou can see a dozen minute shifts beneath the coat as Makari begins to remove fasteners, loosening his weapons, hands moving like lightning.
"But I cannot simply surrender. If you know how Strolheim works, you would have assumed that! I tell you this: If you prove to me that your strength is up to the task of doing this thing that you say, then I will follow you gladly, to spit in the face of this constructed fate with whatever assistance you may need! But if not, well, who knows? Perhaps I will find my own way to spit in this fate."
"Such is the nature of a terrible thing. Regret and hopelessness seems to be all that the spheres are made of; as always, the nature of things attempts to dominate those who are underneath the heel of history. I have a problem with that."
Slowly, the shinobi steps into the field of blades, an eye for detail naturally counting each saccade-like twitch and movement underneath that heavy barbarian's cloak. This sort of thing is done subconsciously--though Ryouhara could be pressed to recall with clarity over a dozen in specific, he is not strictly aware of his detailed accounting. Truthfully, he could be pressed to remember at least that many visible blades before the weaponsmaster dropped his cloak over them. A keen mind aggrieves the details.
"And I am familiar with the workings of your House." Ryouhara has a great respect for the House of Strolheim; they have the same goal as he, though they often go about it in completely seperate ways. "This world is filled with few agents who care for the 'roudoushakaikyuu.' The proleteriat exists to be as gears and pawns of those greater than themselves. And now that things have progressed past their calculations, now that the people are awakened, they seek to tear away the individualism of everyone by denying them the events, trials and histories that made them unique. It is something even my own ninkougakujutsu cannot repair. I know that Master Krauser cannot give his consent to such an act. That is enough for me to set foot here..."
As he strides amongst the swords, the earth quivers. His hand lifts from his hip, following his slow stride, and winds fingers through the railing ribbons of the blades it passes. As he does, the blades shiver in their landing places, rising inches from the cobblestone as if aching to be used. Makari might notice that the barely-perceptible quiver in the earth as Ryouhara approaches has nothing to do with raw power, but the reaction of the entire armory to the ninja engineer's presence.
"As expected, there is no room for a peaceable conclusion in a Strolheim heart. I will now discharge my final obligation to the House."
It grows warm in the immediate area around Ryouhara, a visible ember crawling in the air. The ninkougakusha makes his weapons at the ready without a single movement--he simply releases the seal keeping them locked. The blade hanging from the pack suspended just behind his knee is the most visible factor of this--a thin line glows red, forming a visible seam where there was none before. Steam ejects from the fissure, and the blade clicks, loosing itself from the sheath automatically.
"Please don't misunderstand, Makari-sama... but the path I walk shrinks by the moment. I won't hold back. Come at me with your fullest intentions."
COMBATSYS: Seishirou has started a fight here.
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Seishirou 0/-------/-======|
Seishirou says, "that works too"
Makari's grin stretches out again, his eyes widening to something close to madness, the dark blue blazing within the dull greyness that has encapsulated the town of Strolheim thanks to the Sphere. Unbidden by Makari it begins to focus its efforts on the ninja engineer (ninjineer???), whispers of unworthiness, of past mistakes, of how everything would be better off if he just laid down and let the world roll.
"Holding back would be an insult, no?" He does not charge in himself, making slow circling steps, watching Ryouhara. "And do not mistake this for, eh, the word... antagonism! I simply cannot allow myself to follow someone without testing their steel first. Peace is something that does not exist for a man like me." Beneath the cloak, he wraps his hands around the grips of Viktor and Nikita, double-edged battleaxes with heads graven with the images of a bear and a wolf. With familiar steel in his hands, his focus comes to a razor point. He is still an amateur, and Seishirou can see the almost-invisible tension of spirit that comes with a man deciding his strike.
Makari Maksimilian steps across the boundary that separates the rest of his life from its epilogue, the axes sliding from within the cloak and lashing out - one low to hook at Seishirou's leg, the other up high at his opposite armpit to try and twist him down onto the ground. From the moment his blades come near the ninja, Makari realizes that he almost certainly cannot win. "Yes, yes..." he mutters as they clash.
Makari has clear potential - perhaps even enough to one day realize his true goal of taking over Strolheim - but has not and will never have enough time and hardship to reach that goal in this life. The realization of futility causes no hesitation in his technique, Maksimilian axe-fighting drilled into his body from an unconscionable age.
COMBATSYS: Makari has joined the fight here.
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Makari 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
COMBATSYS: Seishirou dodges Makari's Medium Throw.
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Makari 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
"Ninkougakusha" is a term adopted for the shinobi engineering clan. It is literally what one calls a ninja engineer. Seishirou remains standing still, oil-dark hair slipping to one side as he tilts his head forward, his sharp eyes cutting from beneath his brow to finally focus with clarity on the weaponsmaster before him. He purses his lips for a moment in thought, a low wordless tone vocalized on the still, hot air in recognition of the target.
"Ambition to serve an ideal isn't something to be ashamed of. History has been decided with nothing less."
Seishirou can read the strength of his resolve in his form and his words. But that strength falters as Makari enters the battle with him. It is similar to the other denizens of Strolheim, and their lost natures. But Makari's attitude is replaced with something else. Something mad, and wild. Committed to a different resolve entirely. A Ryouhara is always going to be intimately familiar with that attitude of mortality.
It's called "a death wish."
The axes never really get too close to him. Ryouhara is baffingly difficult to hit even standing alone--but on the battlefield, Ryouhara is adept at weaving into and out of the forest of steel forming the hundredspan of blades that fell from the sky. As Makari steps into his range after him, Seishirou moves out of reach, gently nudging the swords in their perches to intercept Makari's strikes--as his axes cleave air, they ring against steel as if striking an anchored post. The weapons that he touches seem as if they stick in the ground even more resolutely than they were before. However, Makari doesn't get a big chance to think on it.
Taking a short jump, Seishirou alights on the pommel of one of his swords weightlessly, whirling on the ball of his foot to kick out at Makari, a laser-sharp blade of black fire flashing out with the arc of his kick. Defense is not enough to block this--as and if Makari attempts to deal with the slashing fire kick, he'll realize that though the blade scalds the same as any other, the Ryouhara he fights breaks apart into nothingness, only being a cover for the ninkou user himself, who reappears at Makari's flank. He has unsheathed that blade he carries with him and moves quickly to stab through the back of Makari's leg with a thrust from the sharpest primary steel...
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Makari with Shunshin Mirage.
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Makari 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\0 Seishirou
The axes chime brilliantly off the swords, the sound of good, high-quality metal. He pulls them in, turning the weapons in his hands, and they vanish beneath his cloak. Makari tracks Seishirou as he leaps, lightning-quick hands settling on another weapon.
Death wish... almost. The Russian does not wish to die, and values his own life fairly highly, but is... aware. To die would mean that he has failed himself, the legacy of his father and his own goals, but to die would mean he did not deserve success. Not a wish. Acknowledgement.
There is a clear, beautiful ring as Makari faces down the length of black fire. The cavalry sabre Maksimillian, heirloom of his house and one of the finest swords in the world, leaps out in a perfect arc. The rippling Damascus steel neatly bisects the illusory heel and travels up without resistance. Makari's thick blonde brows pull together in a knot as the flame comes right into his face. He snaps back and staggers a step away from the impact, greater than he's used to.
Seishirou's blade punches right through the light material covering Makari's legs, red blood gouting up its length. He bares his teeth, stamping the other foot down. The Sphere reacts to Makari's pain, whispers flooding the air, the colors of Strolheim washing out just a little bit more. Shut up, Makari wills at it, dragging himself forward and ripping himself off of the sword.
He keeps Maksimillian in hand, the blade trailing smoke and motes from the black fire but otherwise completely undamaged. He turns on his undamaged left leg, letting the sabre swing out wide as he goes, the Damascus playing a dissonant song on the blades penetrating the earth. He flows toward Seishirou, left hand plucking a roughly-made dagger from inside his cloak. The blade whips out over the ninja's shoulder, the real blow coming after as Makari jumps and drives his red-armored right knee at his face, growling through the pain of moving the leg so extremely. Blood spatters the stone walk beneath.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou endures Makari's Medium Strike.
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Makari 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\1 Seishirou
Ryouhara lifts a eyebrow as Makari begins to lift his swords from the ground and slip them unbidden beneath his coat, flipping his own blade around and withdrawing it quickly from the weaponlord's leg. His proximity to the Time Sphere exposes him to the save whispers of hopelessness and inevitability that Makari's been exposed to. Of all of the curious artifacts Ryouhara's dealt with over the course of his life, these Spheres are unique in that most of all they seem to harbor a curse for the user, as opposed to anything else.
The artifice shinobi finds them distasteful to an extreme degree.
Ryouhara imagines he will enjoy finding a way to break them...
Of note, the heft of Ryouhara's blades are quite different from commensurate swords, even a similar available in Japan has quite a different heft. Ryouhara's seem balanced to the center of the blade, as if they had a weighted hilt, and were made to be manipulated for stabbing. Each taken has a similar center of gravity, but none are exactly alike. A hundred swords, all handmade as part of the same series..
Seishirou senses the clear and resonant song of steel's perfection tolling from the exquisite saber's length, its reverbations trailing through the air just as clearly to the engineering scion's ear as the smoke and embers from his clone's eviscerating chakra attack. Good steel and a cherished blade will go far in the hands of the right user--but a cheap forgery isn't without its own place. Ryouhara's eyes move quickly in the midst of the whirling battle, his own blade's flash following behind him in an eerie mirror of Makari's own saber. Makari might notice that Ryouhara's quick glances are not concerned of any particular details of Makari's own movements, but moreover they seem to be counting out spaces between the missing blades in his collection, counting from the edge quickly and determining exactly which of his weapons are missing, absently.
For him, it seems each of his blades has a name.
However, in the midst of his apparently concern, he is forced to overcorrect and evade the cheaply made dagger's feint, Ryouhara drops too low, and is hit square in the forehead by Makari's angled knee, an arc of crimson blood spraying across Makari's knee and middle from Ryouhara's skull as the skin splits, bleeding easily. Lifting easily on the heel of his foot, Seishirou falls full backwards at the heavily armored force of Makari's attack, and negotiates it into a full backflip, his exposed and wielded blade slamming back into the sheathe as the young man's white haori catches the wind in his wake. He uses several hilts of the sword array, rolling hands off of each to negotiate a turn, flowing and rolling through the flip and putting space between himself and the weaponsmaster relatively quickly. That's when a fast eye will notice the glint of wires in the air.
Each touch of Seishirou has allowed him to attach Seisen, a type of controlling ninkou wire, to the myriad blades. The pretense of retreat allowed him to activate no less than six blades in this way. One stomp and a pull of his forward hand sends six blades tumbling between three and six feet into the air, rotating end over end on that bizarrely perfect center of gravity. The wires attaching to them flash red as Ryouhara activates them, stepping into the center of the tied weapons. Though now the blood from Makari's strike is beginning to well into the orbit of his left eye, he has also left a great quantity and variety of blood droplets on Makari, which he might notice very little of is actually on the hardened point of his chestplate, more curtaining across his stomach and limbs. It's blood infused with his chakra at the last second.
Ryouhara's marked him for targetting!!
Each flick of the wrist from the ninkougakusha causes one of the airborne blades to thrust down from the sky on the end of a wire towards a point on Makari's body where his blood has targetted. As long as Makari stays within Seishirou's range, Ryouhara can continue flipping the blades end over end in the air, and stabbing them at and perhaps even into him. A deadly attack..
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits Makari with Tsurugi Festival.
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Makari 1/-======/=======|=======\==-----\1 Seishirou
Makari may not be fighting at the level of the ninjineer (because Makari has difficulties with foreign words over four syllables), but his ability to assess a weapon in his hands is at the master level. He collects eight of the blades, though where they're going isn't immediately clear.
He lands after the knee strike with a rattle of steel and Maksimillian vanishes back into his cloak, hissing into its sheath. The Russian's tongue flickers across his upper lip, one eye narrowing in concentration as he calmly watches Seishirou flip away, choosing not to follow, not to step into the more experienced fighter's rhythm. His cloak shifts and ripples, metal clinking as he does something beneath the fur.
He spots the wires perhaps too late, that narrowed eye snapping open wide. His hands recall the peculiar balance of the sword, and he grins, eyes tight. "I see! Incredible!"
His right hand slams into the waiting red gauntlet at his waist, the snap on the leather strap clicking loudly as it gives way. He doesn't notice the blood, but has assessed the nature of the attack on pure intuition. The cloak tumbles back from Makari's shoulders as he reaches for the long zweihander hanging behind him - the eight liberated swords dangle along the back of Makari's belt. The other blades tumble toward him slowly... his arms move even slower.
Seishirou's swords rain down into Makari, and it's only from a last-second twist that he keeps himself from being pinned like a collected moth. He snarls in pain, blood exploding around him as the Sphere begins screaming at him, his worthlessness, demanding he simply give up now and lie in the street, let everything pass him by.
He stands for a long moment, blood dripping off of him, arms locked on his zweihander. His chest swells as he takes a breath, steps forward, and slowly pulls the weapon from his back. His armored right hand slides up to its quillions and he lowers it until the tip is touching the ground, his body shielded.
"I have never seen a technique quite like that... Ryouhara-san." He stumbles over the half-remembered honorific. He grins, white teeth stained red. "I think I already know how this is going, but indulge me... a bit longer. A Maksimilian does not stop, you see."
He sprints forward, sparks flying up as the tip of the sword drags a faint furrow in the sword. He comes on in a straight line, no flashy tricks, just sheer gumption, using the greatsword as a barrier and moving right into Seishirou's range... and past even his own effective range, simply trying to hammer into the ninja bodily, stamping a foot down and hauling him up along the flat of the weapon. "The Wolf Creeps Across the Threshold!" If he has the ninja he simply rolls forward, trying to press him into the ground with the sheer weight of his body and equipment, launching himself forward to land - badly - past him.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou endures Makari's Creeping Wolf.
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Makari 1/=======/=======|=======\==-----\1 Seishirou
He pulls back with one free hand, each finger engaging a line to flip the airborne blades end over end. All in all, very few of the stabbing strokes are attempts to weigh Makari down--though that does seem to be an option for the bizarrely weighted blades. Makari might notice that, based off of their weight, they're not even actually meant to be used in the hand, though the weapons could easily be the basis of it's own minor martial art. As a skilled user of the Ryouhara Hundred Points Killing Array, Ryouhara would theoretically have no problem with withdrawing and stabbing many times with blades attached to the Seisen network from his hands. He draws his hand down, the ripples travelling down the nearly invisible wires and causing the swords to sticks back down into the cobblestone. A single sweeping motion detaches the wires from his wrist, freeing his hand to quickly seal the wound on his head, preventing him from being blinded by the fast bleed, which has outlived its usefulness.
Though his eyes are fast and piercing, Ryouhara has no opportunity to notice the action Makari takes inside his cloak.
Hands disappearing into the vast sweep of his sleeves, Seishirou makes no moves to engage Makari any further after the man stops. For a moment, he seems to be allowing Makari to decide if he wants to continue on. Of course, the weaponsmaster chooses the path of continued war to the end, drawing that great court sword before him. That much seems to satisfy the ninja, who can appreciate the workings of a great sword such as that easily.
"Mm. A wolf until the end..."
For someone who can move so fast that he can replace himself with a duplicate of his own body, Ryouhara seems sluggish in avoiding these attacks. Or more appropriately.. he doesn't seem to even try, staring Makari down as the Maksimilian scion rushes him. He seems to be looking at--and through--the swordsworn's middle, even as he plows bodily into him. Ryouhara's arms ragdoll at the shock, and his body is exceedingly light, being folded over the flat of that massive sword, and then smashed into the ground as Makari rolls over him. Even with a direct hit, the shinobi is hard to actually hurt--twisting so that he doesn't shatter entirely as the much, much heavier Russian threatens to crush him.
Appropriately, he takes his time in getting up.
Ryouhara is acutely aware of several cracked ribs at this point, the aftereffects of his own indiscretions in taking care with his own body. It's something Suzume would have scolded him over, once upon a time.... taking care of his body. Consumed in melancholy that lasts only fleeting moments, Ryouhara blinks slowly, turning to face Makari. He lets the master-at-arms get to his feet and face him as well. It's something strange that Ryouhara does, not really taking advantage of the situation at all, but instead, he elects to respond by speaking to his opponent directly.
"Your own style is laudible. A multiple weapons art, focusing on unpredictability. The differential in your weapons quality is the only determinant or telling factor in any capable analysis. My 'ninkougakujutsu' is the technique of my family, the Ryouhara clan of former onmitsu. The techniques therein were codified by our patriarch, the engineering genius and weaponsmaster Ikou Ryouhara. Since then, countless generations of Ryouhara shinobi have perfected the arts and preparations. My contributions have been minimal. But..."
Ryouhara lifts one hand, two fingers pointing straight up, thumb knuckle over his heart in a one-handed Ram seal.
"...forgive me, Makari-sama. This display is over."
He's figured out exactly which swords in his array that Makari's targetted, and has attuned his chi to their individual seals. At that point, Makari might begin to understand the layered nature of ninja crafting. A sword is not meant to just be used as a sword. Variously, when combined with other techniques and ninkou, a sword can become an aerial spear, or a defensive device.... or in this particular case, a remote munition. In a ninkougakusha's hands, even the most exquisitely crafted sword.... might last only seconds.
Makari has less than a second to remove the blades from his belt, before Seishirou detonates each of them in sequence, with the cumulative force of the chain of chakra explosions more than enough to shatter the cobblestones beneath the weaponsmaster.
They've been standing in a field of bombs this entire time.
COMBATSYS: Makari fails to reflect Atari from Seishirou with Maksimilian Falcon.
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Seishirou 0/-------/-----==|
COMBATSYS: Makari can no longer fight.
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Seishirou 0/-------/-----==|
Makari has some difficulty getting up and facing Seishirou, though given what he's already been capable of, it's likely he could have mustered a response if charged. For all his madness, there is an accompanying stillness. Ignorance is generally where Makari makes mistakes, not haste. As Ryouhara talks, he appears to master the pain of his wounds, shifting the blade behind his back into alber. The fool's guard. A completely unprotected stance that relies on the wielder's reflexes to punish an approach. "The Maksimilian weaponmaster style is similar. All-encompassing. We are never unarmed..."
He trails off as Seishirou makes his seal, realizing that now is not the time to have a conversation. Though Makari has no skill with energy manipulation, no externalized chi abilities, there is something more abstract but similar between a Maksimilian weaponmaster and a weapon. Any Maksimilian weaponmaster can assess a blade fully with a few moments of study, and they get a... /feel/ for them.
And he can feel that the blades at his waist have gone wrong.
"...because a Maksimilian weaponmaster can wield /anything!/"
Makari simply releases the zweihander and lets it fall to the ground, reaching down to grab a loop of chain at his belt and yank. The eight swords all come away, hooked into loops of the chain, all swinging out in a wide arc. The motion tears the cloak off of his body, scattering more hand-forged daggers of varying quality as they fly. His axes on a low belt, allowed to move out of his way with his motions. Six more daggers sit at his hips. What appears to be a three-section collapsible spear hangs from the small of his back. A small mace is further up, nestled near his spine.
The ornate cavalry sabre sits in its sheath on his left side. Makari's hands blur as he releases the chain, tears the scabbard free, shucks his gauntlet with a sharp twist and pull and takes hold of the heirloom's grip, hand fitting within the gold, silver, and platinum handguard as though it was made for him.
He has a single instant to do it twice, and do it as well as his father could. The chances are astronomical. A curious emptiness comes into Makari's face - his arms twitch and a cry like a falcon rings out as Maksimillian leaps out and slices the chain to pieces faster than the eye can follow. Blood /bursts/ from the wounds on Makari's arms. He sucks in a breath.
The cry of a falcon resounds once again, blending with the tremendous explosion of the blades. Makari is obscured in smoke and hellfire. Burning, red-hot, melted daggers hiss through the air in every direction.
---
Makari does not stride out of the smoke. He is left lying flat on the ruined ground and naked to the waist, burned and bleeding, smoking shards of metal embedded in his flesh. The flexible fabric of his pants are left nearly to a state of immodesty. His axes, Viktor and Nikita, lie in ruins around him. The zweihander is half-melted, standing up out of the ground where it spun and stuck, steel running and dripping.
The sabre's guard is gone, the ornamentation scoured away, the scabbard reduced to ash, but the blade still clenched in Makari's right hand is still pristine and perfect and whole, matched only by the fur hood fashioned into a sack at the Russian's waist containing the Time Sphere.
He should be dead. He should absolutely be dead.
Leather, saved from the flame by Makari's own hand, creaks. Maksimillian rises up shakily, point sticking into the ground as the big man strains to push himself up through the blinding pain. He tries to say something, but only coughs and nearly falls back down from the pain.
His lips split into a weak grin, berating himself.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou has ended the fight here.
For most opponents, there would have been no opportunity to respond to Seishirou's decisive attack. It was one of the worst mistakes one of his opponents could make, assuming that they could use his preparations and weaponry without his consent. Unfortunately, the time in which one could successfully take his preparations and keep them as part of their collection had passed long ago, in his adolescence. Even a blade with the quality of a masterwork is created by the user to be destroyed.
A masterwork with a dark curse. A blade after any Ryouhara shinobi's stripe.
So the direction of the battle was predetermined from that point onward. Ryouhara sees the next few seconds in a purely detached clinical fashion, as a study in vital moments. However, even the smooth of his brow furows as it becomes clear that Makari simply doesn't give up as he ought, submit to Ryouhara's attack as he should, and perhaps even die as he is intended. The weaponsmaster has but scant seconds to respond to Ryouhara's attack. Scant seconds to break free and escape, or empower a defense.
Instead, he attempts to use the detonating blades as a weapon. After every ghost in the Strolheim family's heart, the Russian moves, resolved to destroy Seishirou even from the cusp of his own destruction. Giving himself only an instant to accomplish the impossible. For any other person, it might have been a laughable venture. But as it stands, Ryouhara's eyes are fast enough to see what it is Makari is doing. And for a moment.. even if only for a moment, the perennially unmoved and hawkish shinobi finds himself ... mildly concerned.
When Makari just barely manages to escape his technique with his own life instead, Ryouhara pauses, watching him closely to roll over in his mind the array of weapons that he had seen, just before his technique came close to annihilating them all.
"An impressive technique," the scion finds himself commenting, as he steps closer to Makari's supine position, in the nest of the Falcon. The young man is able to rise to his feet after absorbing a blast such as the one Ryouhara almost killed him with. It's enough to gain Ryouhara's attention. It's enough to garner an explanation.
"Though there may be nothing we can do to save this world," Ryouhara explains, "a new world will inevitably come to follow it. You've earned your place in that new world.."
Ryouhara steps into sword's range of the man, only to open a hand.
"People like you, men with strong ideals are required to make sure that the new world's history is not written by tyrant gods. You said you would follow only the strong. Instead, come with me, and you will be the foundation of a new world order, subversive to everything.."
The evidence of Makari's route to survival is written in the ground around him - in a scattered arc in front of him are lines of unscorched earth where he seems to have cut the concussive force of the very explosion away from himself, impossibly.
The Russian gains his feet... at length. The first thing he does once he's up is look down at his sabre, turning it in his hand to examine the now-missing guard. Some tiny molten drops of the precious metals remain melted into his fingers, causing them to glitter in the fading light. "Hmmm," he rumbles, coherently.
He turns to look at the ruined zweihander. "My father's technique, the Falcon. It is said that he could strike..." Makari hisses in pain, left hand pressing to his chest where red metal that used to be his breastplate continues to smoke in his skin. He stops twisting toward the greatsword. "...fifty times in an instant." He's on the edge of consciousness. His eyes unfocus and wander for a time.
The pressure of the Sphere lets up briefly as Makari's head empties itself. Despite his defiance, he comes to the border of the land of death in that moment, coming to himself instinctively as Seishirou enters the range of Maksimillian. The blade tinks gently as Makari turns it unconsciously, readying the edge, but his arm remains slack. His gaze finally focuses on the ninja's hand.
"I am sad to see it go," he replies. Makari shifts the sabre from one hand to the other, the fine wrapping on the grip at least undamaged thanks to his meaty hand. "Some things nobody should try to control. So much wasted future."
The Russian may be able to get his energy back, but living long with his injuries is unlikely. The metal melted into his skin will eventually infect even a fighter, and some fragments may have gotten even further in. But then, hey - nobody's living long.
"I will not say something so idealistic as 'everyone should be free,' but everyone should have the opportunity to at least try and claim that freedom, da?" He clasps Seishirou's hand, mouth opening into a somewhat ghoulish grin for all the blood. "Let us go, then."
Makari turns and walks over the strewn remains of his weapons, giving the shattered Viktor and Nikita one final glance of faint regret. He transfers Maksimillian again, grabs onto the melted zweihander, and pulls it out of the ground. After some rearrangement, he uses it to prop up his weight and hobble after Seishirou. "Maybe, though, some food. Then the founding and subverting."
unidle
Log created on 03:55:57 10/01/2014 by Seishirou, and last modified on 03:05:37 10/09/2014.