The 11th Nintendoland Battlefield Tournament, round 2 battles.

[Galefore]

Welcome to round 2 of the NLBFT. Here are the rules, repeated for your good, but that part isn’t so important right now…

1. This will be judged by three people and have sixteen combatants. All round battles are in ONE TOPIC, such as “First Round” will be for the first set, and “Second Round” for the second, etc. This matches the most recent and also the most classic form for the NLBFT, as it was the first form used and also the most recent, as reinstated by SML.

2. This is for serious battlers only. I won’t restrict who joins and who doesn’t, but if you cannot write, do not join this very important event, for either judge or battler. By saying “Cannot Type”, I mean no spaces, punctuation, capitalization, etc. I would prefer that only seniors and vets join, but newbies of high skill level and regular members are just as welcome. It is a free forum, after all. Remember, this is a tournament of high pedigree, and you will likely be facing tough opponents, so do not expect to be baby treated. High quality posts will probably be a must from the judges, and you would do best to remember that.

3. There is a strict time limit. 60 hours is the usual before a half point is taken from the final score of thirty, and 24 more is another deduction, another 24 is another, and 24 more is possible elimination. Remember this, as it is standard, and complaints will only be considered if not simply whining. Also, reasons to have been absent are to be discussed by the judges as acceptable or not. If your computer explodes and you had no access to another, fine, but if you simply were too bored to try, it is elimination. It sounds retarded, but it isn’t. Trust me.

4. The judges word is final. I want to see good sportsmanship from the loser, and likewise from winner. I will be honest and tell you that if I lose my battle, I will not complain. Simply put, it is un-sportsmanlike and very dishonorable.

5. The first to post has battlefield choice. Make it something past generic, and give it some specialty and pizzazz. Not to say having an interesting battlefield is a rule, it’s just kind of useful.

Battle Only Rules:

1: No transforming or character switching, this is permitted only between rounds and is not to be done mid-battle for risk of deduction from the ever-present final score out of thirty. In other words, judges will judge on a scale of 1-10 and will at the end combine the scores of each judge for a single person into a final mass of thirty, as most of you know, but I know that some of you battlers are new to this and may need a heads up.

2: No healing, and this means any healing. As is known, many of your characters regenerate, but you will have to make an exception for this tournament as not to infringe this rule.

3. No god-moding, as this isn’t a damage based tourney, it’s performance based. God-moding is wrong, and as Wyborn said in his rule set, “You can be brutal without being cheap.” Remember that. Oh, and unleash hell. It’s fun to watch.

That’s about it, we pretty much have everything covered. If I forgot something, point it out, please.

No round specific rules. Remember to follow each rule diligently and with a smile.

TOURNAMENT ROUND ENDS WEDNESDAY, July 4th, at 3 PM Central. I will be gone on this day, so I need either Repster or a qualified judge to call time.

Lineup:

Alpha Division:
Asnabel Vs. Kargath
Acradius Vs. Erdawn

Beta Division:
Scripture Vs. Metal Man
Repster Vs. Selene.

Judges:

Seat 1: t3hDarkness
Seat 2: NintendoGod
Seat 3: Heroine of the Dragon

[Metal Man]

It was a bitterly cold day in the Russian steppe. The wind blew across the mostly flat, snow-covered land, and the sky was a depressing color of gray. A few trees in the distance swayed. All in all, it was a very bleak land. While underneath the snow was plenty of dirt, one couldn't see it without digging; and for all the whiteness, it actually seemed quite dark.

The snow was not entirely solid; one who walked on it would sink in a little, and its slippery texture would make any kind of running hazardous. Furthermore, it had the tendency to slow down one's steps and weigh people down by getting caught on their feet. Jumping would result in being buried even further in the nasty ice dust, and anyone who used fire attacks would be subject to the melted stuff solidifying right on them.

Indeed... the only peculiar thing about this firmly Earth-style arena was the clouds, which appeared to be doing something never really seen with snow: crackling with thunder and lightning. Indeed, the occasional freak bolt smacked the ground, causing an explosion of dirt and snow, and often creating a unique-looking formation of melted snow in its path.

As the flashes boomed in the distance and the occasional tree exploded in a display of burning sap, hurling embers about, and then being snuffed by the lack of flammable material, something else very peculiar was about to happen. Indeed, what few animals lived here could sense it in their bones. This kind of weather made no sense, and now, a bolt of lightning hit the ground and behaved in a way more like the Twilight Zone.

Indeed, it was as if this realm had been sucked into that zone; the lightning twisted into a ball, and grew larger and larger. It soon grew to the size of a man, and then a little more... and then it suddenly exploded. Electricity flew everywhere, melting tell-tale patterns in the miserable snow. Out of the smoke and steam of the explosion emerged Metal Man, in his shiny suit. With the dull glare of the cloud-filtered sunlight dimly reflecting off his suit, he looked around.

Standing at 6'4" and of a somewhat thick build, many details were visible here. A broken watch of some kind on his left arm; a recently rebuilt right hand (which was cybernetic); and most importantly, the cold glare of his eyes, which if anything exceeded the snow beneath it.

Inside his helmet he had a complex graphical interface. He checked the conditions, seeing it to be well below freezing and windy. Worse, he was an all-metal object walking in an area where lightning occasionally struck. He cursed at his fate.

He had come all this way to once again try to prove his combat prowess, and instead he might wind up being a lightning rod. He clenched his right fist, feeling a combination of worry, hope, anger, and determination. That was enough to disturb his stomach. It was good he hadn't eaten yet today.

He looked all around him, the depressing surroundings infuriating him. He always hated despair, and now it was everywhere around. He stepped forward a few paces, his joints creaking quietly in a sort of mechanical orchestra. His thick plexiglass visor had many scratches in it, which he noticed and also bitterly grumbled at. He had been careless before; he wasn't going to be caught without a functional battle plan this time.

He solemnly reached to his back, where his back-mounted storage unit was. It clicked open, and he stuck his hand in there. Feeling around for a few moment, he made a cacophony of noise. It was full of hundreds of objects, messily stored in some sort of subspace which no one could truly explain.

He was a bit nervous. His hands trembled eagerly as he found what he was looking for.

He thought to himself. "Ahhh. I was afraid I'd lost this several years ago." Indeed, this was something old. He withdrew what appeared to be a simple engraved metal pole, about 8 feet long. It was heavy, even for him. He stood it up, and then tapped the bottom on the ground 3 times.

*SHINK!* *SHINK!* First one, then another axe blade half popped out of the top. He gripped the top and turned it, snapping it in place, glancing at his reflection in its blades and seeing his gnarled look of disgust in them. He looked away from them quickly, as he detested his battered, scarred face almost as much as his foes.

Standing to attention, he looked around and waited for almost anything to happen. He continued to fear the lightning, but all he could do was move his feet to dig a hole in the ground. Once properly grounded, he gripped the axe with both hands and yelled out into the abyss of the steppe.

"Whoever dares face the Metal Man... show yourself!"

It was soon lost to the vast expanses of the area; the metallic groaning of his voice was nothing more than a self-thought when nobody was around.

[Scripture]

^That was quick. I was pondering posting, but way to go. Post pending for now, need to decide on a character. I dig the setting, by the by.

Oh, and watch out for Acradius and Erdawn. I expect great things.

[Kargath]

OOC: Asnabel, mind if I post the battlefield? I've got something in mind that will prove extremely fun for the both of us, just need to write it up first.

[Asnabel]

Go ahead man, it's no big deal.

[The Willful Wanderer]

This time, it's serious. XP

The wind howled across the tops of the palisades surrounding the city. Here and there, a bit of snow flurried away from the tops of the immense trunks, torn loose by a malevolent gust. The place had been thought impregnable with its titanic barriers- fully three layers thick of immense petrified redwoods. Indeed, so had it proven.... towards humans at least.

The war had been brief and bloody. Hordes from afar had swept through the countryside undaunted by any defense. Villages burned, armies slaughtered. The year's crops of precious grains and vegetables had nearly vanished under the locustlike hunger of the invaders, and what little had not been consumed was left behind to rot in the spring rains. Nothing, no weapon nor tactic, could halt the swarming savages on their rampage through the continent. Surely, it had been said, with all of their people of all ages contributing, the sweeping cloud of vicious wanderers would at some point lose momentum from sheer attrition. And yet they continued as if spewed unending from the womb of some vile font hidden beyond the Southern forests.

As they had encountered the fortress-city, the great ancient place against its nigh-unscalable cliff, they had finally come to a stop- for while there was food and water within, while there was anything there to be had, to be taken, they simply would not depart. The mass of people spanned near to the horizon were one to look from the base of the outer wall, a festering, seething cloud of humanity, awaiting the time when those within would give up- or some mob offense would crack the wall. Inside the city, people crowded- denied their usual luxuries by the sheer necessity of packing thousands into a space usually occupied by hundreds.

There they did hunker, then, keeping to themselves, eating sparingly. It would be difficult to manage and require rationing, but they could make it through the nearing winter if they were careful. The horde, it was hoped, would not be so lucky. Winter came harshly here, and sudden- like as not the landscape would be decorated with icy corpses, come the sudden fall of the frost. And then perhaps the near-insectile plague of humanity would instead provide the very thing it had ripped and torn from the nation, fertilizing those same fields that were reduced to mudpits. All it would take, knew the people, was waiting.

So wait they did. One day, two... a sixday, two sixdays.... a month.

And then, as is wont to happen in places where those who live are crammed together in too little space with no way to rid themselves of their own refuse, their own filth..... someone fell ill.

And then another, and then another. Soon the defenders were dying in scores, the strange sickness spreading through the houses like a frenzy through piranha. Each building became a deathtrap, entry the sentencing to hours of wracking nausea and coughing until a most horrific death amidst a puddle of one's own lungs and bile. It was quickly learned who was ill and who was not, but not quickly enough. Not distant enough. Home after home fell silent, until the air grew loud again with flies. Maggots and rats flourished, swarming much as the nomads beyond the heavy walls had- and in very imitation, the people of the city closed their homes and perished in peace there- or so much as one can while their own bodies tear themselves apart to be rid of disease. Yet, they remained within their home- step out into the teeming masses of barbarians who were even now setting upon each other to feed? Even hours of pain were nothing compared to the thought of being slowly shredded and devoured to feed the horrific engine that had brought about the fall of the state. Besides, leaving meant opening the gates. Opening the gates meant letting that first plague in.

Opening the gates meant letting it move on unhindered. Or, perhaps, hindered by the body-plague that lurked there, but somehow it never seemed to occur to any.

The swarm remained settled about the walled city, occasionally clawing and tearing at the great, rocklike trunks surrounding it to little effect. With no rope, nor thought of tools, the cliff would not be climbed, claiming the lives of the savage people in tens and dozens- and providing food again back to the rot that waited. Waited for the city to open.

Fall drew towards a close.

Still the swarm waited, one or another of their number occasionally sprouting an arrow shot near-casually, as if to say 'Yes, we're still here, and you're not getting in.' The defenders would not give. In the face of their city rotting from the inside out, they would not buckle and let the plague- the true Plague- take their home. The horde was impatient, but impotent. The defenders were stalwart, but dying. It became a question- who will give first? What will snap? Who will continue, and who will die?

[The Willful Wanderer]

And on and on...

********************

In the dead of winter, the land was all a pristine white. No human, no sentient, had set foot on this land in over seven centuries. The forests were lush and verdant in the spring- and now, they were quiet and waiting. Soon, in a scant few months, the deadly chill would lift as quickly as it came. The great dark bruins would emerge from their dens, ursine instincts ending their slumber, and head for the rivered countryside. Trees would burst into leaf, and bulbs would fill to overflowing, bursting as well as if in empathy. The raucous chorus of life would begin anew as it did every springtime. Life being cyclic, the dark cold times would come around again, but the land would recover. It always recovered.

Except....

Wolves prowled the Southern forest, never venturing into the snowy plains- that was the demesne of the great falcons, birds so large as to pluck canines up as a barn-owl might a large rat. The bison were harder, and so they took to the fields, nosing up snow and searching under it for the last, hard bits of greenery. Perhaps a bit of crabgrass. The shaggy beasts meandered where they wished, at the whim of some instinct that drove them to slowly sweep across the midland plains, covering all from the forest to the mountain range in the North.

However....

The great falcons soared whenever it was not snowing, seeking out those hidden morsels. Sharp eyes could tell a white hare from white snow- sometimes. And other times, what seemed a snack would turn out to only be a branch quivering under its load of crystalline whiteness, or perhaps a rock of unusual shape. Still, they could live, soaring more than flying. Finding enough to eat that they ranged about the entire continent.

But.....

There was naught on this land to interest a vizard, no practicioner of sorcerie might come here to seek knowledge. Indeed, knowledge of the continent itself was nonextant. The people here had not had contact outside of their own lands, and when the hordes drew across the area, that ended that. No, none knew of any relics or lore to be found in this place- indeed, the place itself was thought to be a mere part of the Neverending Sea, just more waves in an undulating landscape stretching from the Land's End to the Edge of All.

And yet, here she was.

Colors were hard to speak of, as the marble of semi-translucent green about her rendered her in tones that would be more suiting here in several months when the land returned itself to life. But just as she knew that the landscape around her did not actually hold the viridian tone of her protective force-sphere, anyone seeing her would be certain that she was not simply a green woman. Oh, she liked the color well enough, but it was hardly the tone of her skin, her hair.

Her staff, a length of slightly gnarled and unevenly ended oak, rested its thin end on the bottom of the orb. Two hands gripped it tightly near the middle to prop the young woman up in place, as though her legs might not be able to do the duty on their own. Indeed, so it was- some odd disease of her birth had rendered her bones brittile and fragile, and she had yet to find any way to remove this weakness from her frame for more than a few scant hours at a time. No, she leaned upon her staff gratefully and with good nature. Her hands were bare, as were her arms to near the elbow. The loose blouse she wore held a rich, deep forest green, cut high and with a laced notch out the middle of the neck. The sleeves of it held a conical shape, such that cloth trailed any arm-movements. An impracticality on anyone truly needing active hands, but for her, it made little difference. In a lighter and more even green, her full skirt covered her legs and even most of both of her soft brown doeskin slippers. Most of all, though, there was the cape and her hair.

Latched together at her throat, the voluminous sheet of viridian cloth would drag on the floor if she were to walk on such, and the collar stood high about her head, nearly to the height of her own eyes. Above this rose the arch of her high ponytail of brown hair, the long straight locks reaching back down to fall nearly even with the end of the cape. Such extravagance atop her head- indeed, it should have broken her neck with her frailty, and yet it did no such thing. One might be excused then, for thinking her perhaps a bit more than she seemed.

Though, the magickal sphere bearing her through the air high above the countryside would likely give the impression first.

Quiet indigo eyes watched the occasional tree fly by, no more than a scraggly claw stretching up from the dirt below to recieve its own dusting of sugar-white on each fingertip. The young woman seemed almost impatient, mouth pressed to a thin line amidst her soft, round lips and slightly pudgy cheeks. Still, she did not move other than to breathe, her conveyance protecting her from the dire chill as effectively as any four walls plus roof and fireplace. She was here for something, something her other sense told her was wrong.

Other sense... soft chocolate eyebrows pushed down, crumpling the skin at the top of her nose slightly, even as thin nostrils flared a bit. Oh, she had wanted this ability, this sense of magick. But not at that price. Not at any cost such as that. No, she did not begrudge the urge to seek out and change this wrongness, had no difficulty accepting the long time out in the middle of nowhere, out with nobody. She had a lot to adjust to. A trickle of power become like unto a great sea held in a thimble. A simple quest to examine a supposedly haunted mine turned to a fight for life against untold numbers of putrid beings from Beyond.

A friend, a sister, and a love-that-almost-was, ended. Cut short.

A tear came to the young woman's eye as she held herself in- she could not have reached her true power in time, no. Only in the nick of too late did she find herself wielding what was needed to end the conflict. Embittering, it was, but she refused to linger on it. A quick sniff and a brief rub of elbow against her face, and her expression was once more focused. Where.... where was it? The closer she came, the worse it got, and the more she wished she was already there so that it would not become more than it already was. And yet, still, the feeling grew more powerful. The direction stayed the same. She would know it when she passed it, and it was suddenly from behind her instead of before. Seles Un Aliene was not looking forwards to this- puns on her current facing aside.

And then the world proved her wrong.

She knew it before she reached it. Here was the horrible Not Right. Here was the.... tear in the weave. Here was that which was magick, but not as it shoud be. Not as it should be able to be. Not as she could permit to continue.

Here was a huge, aged city still walled in against a cliff. Frost rimed ancient treetrunks- she could see even from miles out that this place was bordered with the remnants of ancient giants. Where to find such plants? She did not know, but suspected she might not entirely like the answer. Nor the proper response to the question of how it had been made. But that was the center of it, still far off. Here... here was something much worse, at least until she drew nearer the source of wrongness.

Down through the air swooped the great green globe, like a child's ball down a toy chute. Down and then leveled off abruptly to skim a scant dozen feet from the low plains. Close down to the icy coatings. Close down to the horror.

Everywhere Seles looked, people. Old, young, hale and infirm. Some milling about. Some digging as if to find something. Some... eating each other.

All unmoving.

The Sorceress shuddered. Wind whistled as the air whipped through the plains, over fields once made to mud- now a slick brown ice. But it stirred no hair, no cloth. No plants. Time and again, things would gleam as the dulled, shrouded sun's light struck them just so. Here, a man's teeth, buried in the shoulder of a woman. There, the back of an older, larger man crushing someone's skull into the once-muddy turf. And over there, what looked like a cross between an orgy and a chophouse... Seles covered her mouth, swallowing back her own bile. These people.... they had been caught doing unspeakable things to one another. Caught- and frozen. And now they were doing them forever. For all eternity, that one gnawing upon another's arm. Till the end of time, this mother's head being chewed off even as her infant fell from her loins. Unceasingly, those two glaring at each other over a clash of some unfortunate's (unfortunates'?) leg-bones in their hands. A man scrabbled endlessly for his spilt intestines while the woman his neighbor would never complete the blow to the head she had snuck up to deliver with a jagged rock.

Faces frozen in pain, in fury, in hunger.... and nothing else. Despite her protection, the Sorceress shivered, clinging to her staff. As disgusting and horrific as it must have been to be involved in such a... mass... of people, she was sure it was made all the worse by being frozen. Preserved. As if to be displayed for all, until the end of time. For so they were- she could tell without looking too closely that this was no natural freeze. This was forever. No length of summer, no heat of daytime air, would ever thaw these plains of horror. The world could rest at ease that the plague of humanity contained here would never menace again. And Seles could still lose her lunch if she stayed here amongst the immobile madness too long.

There was no small sense of relief to the woman as she lifted away from that horrendous spectacle. At last, as she crested the titanic walls, she was clear of that wrongness.

And then she recalled why she was here, and the horrendous itchy gnawing slavering feeling on the edge of her new sense that had led her here. Why it had led her here. What it felt like. And that it was now blaringly, horrifically 'loud' to her. No longer gnawing but chewing and scratching and biting at her metaphorical nerves. It was a strain not to tense her jaw, but so much as she wanted to squeeze, her own muscles would shatter the bone. She could ill afford that so far from any healers or healing magicks. No, she would keep control of herself as always to avoid self-injury. No matter how satisfying it might be to deliver unto herself the pain that she felt she might well deserve for her friends' loss...

No. No time for that now.

The feeling was peaking, and she freed her right hand from the staff. Three short sharp gestures made a triangle drawn with index and middle digit, and then she spun slowly, trusting the impenetrability of her barrier to daunt anything long enough for her to move to a safer place- or at least get away before the field would break.

A few lazy sparks ran down her still-extended fingers as she turned slowly.

"...who is here?"

[Erdawn Il Deus]

OoC: Will take first post, Ac.

[Acradius]

[QUOTE=Erdawn Il Deus]OoC: Will take first post, Ac.[/QUOTE]

You got it Erdawn. I'm actualy in Colorado right now. I'll post if I have the ability to, but it may need to wait until I return to Nebraska. But then again, once I'm in Nebraska, I'm working double shifts like crazy. This will be a tough round for me, but dammit, I'm getting some freakin revenge for the Red Lions last time. Screw using another character. The Time Warrior is coming for you. >:3

[Repster]

He waved, and the sorceress blinked. There was rarely another reaction. One foot carelessly over a figure in one mangle position or another. He had not been there a moment ago. Shirtless in this frozen wasteland, and not affected by it in the least. He took a swig from the flask at his waste. Those loose white silk trousers that might as well have been a mass of folds would never protect from the cold. He look dressed more for sweltering heat then snow.
"Yo. Names Aidan Dreiks my little tasty. Nice place round here ain't it? Shame 'bout them frozen peoples and the horrible acts.. Weird stuff really, not that I can't relate really. 'm quite insane myself. Happens, and such. It's the way of humanity..."
His golden eye glazed over slightly as he looked around. He did nothing to even try and hide the scar that quite neatly sliced him in half. A perfect line from hairline above the left eye to below the right ribs. It even stained the eye patch. Clenched fist he turned his head back to Seles. The gold dragon spiraling around that right arm sparkled. It was no thing of simple inks. It looked closer to the creature having been flattened out and fused to his flesh.

When he turned once again towards her, his entire mood changed. He had been calm before, serene, pristine, in mastery of his emotions. Now... now there was nothing but a wild look in his eye. Much the equivalent of a rabid beast. He did as such things did. He snarled, and charged.

The raw acceleration the monk presented proved that he was as wrong as everything else. The was no transition, one moment he was not moving, the next he reached full speed. There was little indication of the leap necessary to clear the the height between the two. His fist crashed into the barrier around Seles. Like such things were meant to happen, he went no further. Aidan was no mere madman, he had reached past insanity to the point where with it came of sort of enlightenment, his clouded mind become clear in it's polluted state.

Foot came after fist. Then chop, knee, elbow, and so on, with speed that should be impossible. With such raw power that muscles should not be able to be able to exert to easily. The barrier held against the barrage, but there was a knowing smirk on the martial artist face. He took a stance, similar to what is known as the horse stance, in mid air mind you, his body refusing to fall. His fist wrapped itself in flames, and he struck. His palm opened as it connected with the the protective spell.

Where raw physical power failed, fire succeeded. The explosion that come forth from that moment of impact pushed the fire wielder back. That, gravity, and his shear will sent hi down faster then he had come up, however mind boggling that seemed. He landed gracefully, and the stone cracked beneath his leg as he heaved himself up again.

Still very much on fire, the flames more intense if anything, his hand opened and he clasped the staff. His second fist went for the middle of it, heaving himself up for the added force. Aidan Rule number 2 of combat versus mages. Take out anything that looks like a focus. He full well expected it to resist... but resist for how long? How long would even the staff wielder last with a hand of fire that could melt steel clasped to her weapon as it were.

He roared as monk flesh connected to wood. The souls of the damned wept at the sound.

[Kargath]

Leaning forward in the dark, Lucas stared at it. He had wanted it for so long, so very long, and soon it would be all his for the taking. All he needed was patience.
Movement. Was that movement? Or merely a trick of his sleep deprived eyes? ... No, it was movement, though on the smaller side of 'miniscule'. Lucas smiled, then frowned as he moved his eyes downwards.
Connected to 2 peers (of swarm size 2)
Total speed: 3kb/s
Source: http://www.lickylicky.ru/Twisted_Intent ... vi.torrent
Estimated completion time: 9 hours
"Bloody hell man, c'mon and hurry up..."
He allowed himself a blink. Yet when he opened his eyes greeted him with the same sight, the same depressing screen. Lucas sighed. It made sense that there would be so few peers to leech from, given Lucas's quite ... "special" interests. That didn't make the situation any better, though.
Lucas came to the realisation that, on the scale of excitement, this progress bar was somewhere around the "grass growing" level. He needed something to kill the interminable time that lay until that treasure chest opened for him. Something ... something ... anything...
It hit Lucas hard, like that woman he'd tried to fondle on the train last week.
3D REALTIME AI FIGHTER BATTLES.
A wild grin spread across Lucas' face. He giggled just a little madly as the rusted gears in his mind started turning. His hands drummed away at the keyboard as he jumped from directory to directory, copying code as he went. An open source engine for the graphics, procedural character creation from a hacked 3D program, physics from a less-than-legal copy of an industrial simulator, functions from here, from there, from everywhere.
All it went into the one huge project, a black and bubbling cauldron of code. Global variables and thread-unsafe blocks, all tied together with kludges that would have induced apoplexy in any normal software engineer.
As for code comments? Only for novices under Lucas' philosophy. Lucas considered himself a top-rate expert, so you can guess exactly how many comments he wrote piecing the project together.
Lucas paused in his Frankensteinian efforts, downing another V and tossing it to the floor. The ratio of carpet to V cans was fast approaching 50:50 and would soon pass it at this rate. As the new caffeine jolt set in, Lucas considered his task. How to control the - aah. He knew his thesis would be useful one day! The CD slid into the autoloader, and Lucas set to work on cannibalising his old Artificial Intelligence project.

----

He awoke with a start. Yet 'awake' may not have been the right term, because he was not sure he had actually been asleep, nor was he sure he was actually awake. Everything was silent. Everything was dark. He moved to sit up - or at least thought he sat up, for he felt nothing of his own body or his environment.
What's happening? Where am I? Am I actually anywhere at all? Do I even exist?
No, I must exist, for if I didn't exist, I would not be able to think this.
Do I have a body? ... I think I have a body, for how else do I know to move legs and arms to get up?
Therefore something is wrong with me still. I should be able to know where I am.
What should I do, and what am I?
LITMUS.
Where did that thought come from? That must be my name. "Litmus".

----

Lucas watched in baffled amusement as the creature on his screen blinked into existence, bent its knees, leaned forward and promptly fell over.
"No way it'd be stupid as that, I got a bloody high distinction for my thesis..."
A few quick terminal commands, and Lucas was looking directly into the brain of his creation, and it was immediately apparent what was wrong.
"Forgot to turn the f***ing percepts on! Bloody hell I'm an idiot."
Two more terminal commands, and the response from the 3D pane was immediate.

----

The light blared into Litmus' eyes. The hard, perfectly flat ground pressed into his flesh. He pushed against it and rose for certain this time, and absorbed his surroundings. He sat on a perfect white plane of a floor, made of something hard that he could not identify. It stretched out for hundreds of his body-lengths, until it met the light blue geodesic dome that formed the sky. Light illuminated all surfaces, but it didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular ... it was just *there*.
He moved his mouth and out came sound, forming from miasma to sharp coherence in just a few seconds.
"aheai oohea ch aaIII am Litmus. I am Litmus. I am Litmus!"
The words rang clear in his ears, whilst the dome above provided a slight echo to his words. Even so, the sound seemed slightly off just behind him. Litmus turned to see a blue skinned humanoid standing just near him. Reflex brought Litmus' fists up into a defensive pose - and the other person did the same. Litmus narrowed his eyes warily - and so did his opponent. The carotid artery bulged on his opponent's neck - and Litmus realised that his heart was beating in time with the other man, and in doing so realised what was happening.
It must be some kind of see-through mirror. There, there's the edge of the thing!
That's a relief.
Litmus relaxed and studied himself. He thought he might be tall, but without anything else to compare himself to he wasn't sure. He was naked save for black wave-print boxers. His body was muscular - not the frame of a bodybuilder, but enough strength for ...
80 PER CENT OF STANDARD TASKS.
That sounded about right to Litmus, though he wasn't quite sure how he knew that information.
His head felt weird on the inside - and the outside looked even stranger. His close-cropped hair appeared to be made of wire, not keratin, and arcs of electricity danced occasionally over the surface.
Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Litmus pondered what to do next. He looked forward again - just in time to see the huge rubber ducky flying straight into him from where the mirror had been. The impact slammed him down to the ground whilst the ducky landed on top, pinning him beneath the flat underside of its toy body.
"What the hell?" said Litmus.
"Quuuuuaaaaaaarck" said the duck before disappearing into thin air.

----

Lucas chuckled at the impact on screen and nodded in appreciation.
"Collision detection and physics working ... nice. Particle emitters are working. AI's as good as it ever was."
Lucas licked his caffeine-cracked lips and grinned wickedly.
"Time to give the little guy an opponent."

[Scripture]

As if shot out of a cannon Scripture hurtled through the chilled atmosphere of the Russian steppe, snowflakes flowing off him in sheets of water hung beautiful in the air before caught on a gale, frozen anew. Metal Man spun on his heel, his weapon momentarily limp in his hand, as Scripture broke out of his balled form and collided with the opposing cyborg in a shower of winds and grunts and water and ice.

Metal Man’s pole was pinned between his hand and Scripture’s as they grappled, hand in hand, sliding about in the snow like children. His jaw on a malleable hinge, Scripture’s mouth seemed to outline itself in etchwork, a ritual of unlocking, before he could speak. His jaw was a series of large, blocky teeth leading down a dark corridor with severed fiber-optics at its bottom, snapping like electric piranha.

“Metal Man?” Scripture clinked, his voice rising from metal vocal cords, his head seeming to pivot around on its neck, shifting angrily despite its metal carapace. “My name is Scripture, one of two Tin Men.”

For a moment Metal Man was able to examine his opponent as he attempted to push him off-balance, and he noted the single cobalt eye of gem above the thing’s odd jaw, and he saw the white jig-saw pattern of armor down his entire body, bordering between sleek and heavy, and he squinted past the cracks in his visor and snow creeping up on it and saw the cruel wire meshing below the white patterning. A sense of relief washed over him at Scripture's lack of weaponry, infect the shock of standing grounded in one place at one moment and then attempting to overpower a human cannonball come from God knows where the next.

Scripture lost his footing then, and Metal Man nearly overpowered him, but the eight-foot pole hampered his advantage and Scripture now looked up from below him, his leg buried to the knee in the snow but his arms still locked as tight as clamps. Scripture seemed about to say something, in that mocking, shifty-necked manner of his, but something caught his single eye past the visor of his opponent, and he seemed to manage a toothy – for that was all his jaw was, square, blocky teeth, only three in number, and cruel as a dinosaur despite their bluntness – grin before flipping his weight backwards and kicking his other leg up, contorting in a way no man-bot should have been able to in order to wedge his foot into Metal Man’s gut and send him ass over ankles tumbling over Scripture, disoriented and angry in the harshness of the steppe.

Scripture’s torso seemed to spin around of its own accord, the armor liquidly following as his leg seeped out of the hole. His feet seemed to widen then, below Metal Man’s perception as he scrambled in the snow to right himself, and then Scripture took a a quick, jogged step and kicked his opponent in the ribs so hard the cracks sounded like the snapping of dry twigs in a fire. This rolled him over, rolled him scrambling over to get to his feet despite his now-cumbersome weapon, but Scripture harried him in unprovoked cruetly, smashing in his visor and all its oh-so-useful information – such as the current temperature, his heartbeat, his opponent’s heartbeat, and even the time in three thousand different dimensions, on call as per his thought – and at the same time smashing in his nose and teeth, the clutter-feeling of dislodged teeth and the sensation of them stabbing at his gums redirecting the Metal Man’s attention long enough for Scripture to look to the sky, open his arms wide like a tribesman offering sacrifice. What he was doing was shooting nanomachines from the creases between his wire-mesh under-armor into the sky, to give him readings and a certain bearing on the current weather…

Bearing, because as Scripture stepped back a few paces a series of electric pulses connected from Metal Man to the sky, and in the space of a second he lit up like your average man would when afflicted with a bad case of the lightning strikes. His skeleton was momentarily visible as his flesh cooked black, his muscles twitching with such fervor he thought they would pop off his body, breaking his back and snapping what few teeth he still had off into the snow.

Scripture felt the charge in the air, and shivered. It was like candy.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Well, that's one thing no longer up my sleeve.

Seles blinked a second time as the man turned himself into a thrashing, flailing projectile aimed for her. No preamble, just... suddenly charging. Leaping. Then she began to wince- every blow struck like a hammer in her head, she could feel her basic forceshield starting to buckle under the assault. And yet, the man remained there midair. Limbs whirled at speeds she'd never manage a reaction to, being who she was, and then there was a brief pause.

Indigo eyes opened from their squint and she stared straight at the smirk- and fire washed around her. The last remnants of her guard shielded her from harm, but the heat burst through the air and chapped her lips almost instantly. A cough was her answer as she hung in the air stunned- what in the name of the Nine Schools was this man? And then she felt him grab at her staff. She felt his weight pulling on it, set to remove the prop from her side. The man was clearly determined to get the length of sturdy oak away from her.

So she let him.

Aidan plummeted with his own wide-eyed look of surprise, blinking as the sorceress relinquished her staff to him so that her left hand could make a quick gesture. From what he could see it had no effect, but she knew that she needed a new flight spell- the sphere encircling her before had been her mode of transportation and despite protections against harm from falling, the best she'd do without more magick was to drift down into easy reach. Not something she planned on doing just now, thank you. That dealt with her first problem, even as the bigger and third problem fell back to terra firma below. Next for problem two- protection.

Stretching out her right arm, the airborne practicioner of the arts mystical swept it to one side in a cancelling motion, dispersing the sparks that crawled her fingers ready for discharge. Even as Aidan impacted the snow again, kicking up a powdery swirl of whiteness, her hands were forming odd shapes. Fingers bent this way then that, arms crossed here and then there, and some unseen... thing... seemed to settle itself into the air about her. As he got up, glancing at the chunk of tree in his hand with its scorchmarks near where he gripped, Aidan knew that she had put up another protective field. He did not know that it was a much stronger one, geared solely towards soaking up immense amounts of injury to protect its inhabitant- but he would find out soon enough just how tough a nut this one was.

Still, that would be for in a moment. Standing lightly and easily, slightly slouched, the swift-limbed staffstealer glanced at the smoothed branch he now held out of the corner of his exposed eye. Nothing seemed too unusual about it- perhaps its properties only worked in joint with the woman who had been holding it? His main attention remained on Seles as she wove traceries of nothing through the air with her fingertips, gesturing constantly in quick abbreviated motions. For a few seconds he retained that, then looked her dead in the eyes and slowly, dramatically raised his right eyebrow, thereby widening the golden orb.

"Sometimes," Seles said calmly, "A stick is just a stick."

Two sharp motions she made with her arms, the first two fingers on either hand extended. With a brief crackle and then a sustained hum, two small spheres formed near her, orbiting her shield as if the electrons of some gigantic atom. Appropriate indeed the likeness was, as these roundnesses, each roughly equal in size to her own head, appeared to be formed entirely of a blue electricity, arcing and snapping about themselves. Again she began an intricate series of gestures as Aidan made ready to leap once more up to her, to throw himself at her and break her guard across his strength again. This time, though, something was off- the motions of her hands were near too fluid, limbs undulating like waves. What was she preparing? No matter, he'd not give her time to finish it. Crouching slightly, the man flexed his knees in readiness- he'd test if she truly did not care of the staff, by snapping it across her own defenses.

Quickly, indigo circles shifted to one side and then the other, the head they mounted in remaining on its original facing. Like some sort of cinder, Aidan could feel Seles' gaze burning right into the center of his forehead as brown eyebrows gathered slightly. And then the sorceress smiled, and the two balls of lightning launched themselves at the flask-toting man.

Not one to be caught so easily offguard, the shirtless monk weaved aside, dropping the oakstaff as relatively useless. One orb nearly brushed his back, and the other came close enough to his face that a stray arc caught some of his hair- which immediately began to frizz out. Some instinct, some knowledge, told him that the attack was not done, and so he whipped about- and then had to leap to again avoid the two buzzing spheres. So it began, the dance of Aidan and the ball lightning. One man, insane and short of garb, and two clots of voltaic death, whirling and buzzing like angered hornets.

For a brief time he entertained the projectiles, and they him, in a whirling, twisting, weaving dance. His feet kicked aside small drifts and bursts of flakes as he moved himself this way and that. Dug to the earth as he stepped again and again in the same places to shift his balance about without moving too far. Still, he knew that he would not be let be. Seles had been preparing more magic to smite him- and so he shifted, twisted, and kicked up the staff with one foot as the spheres had just passed him.. The length of wood whirled through the air until it impacted one of the electrical orbs. The soft sound of wood whipping in circles through the chill winter atmosphere was then punctuated as the staff met a sparkball-

-and passed through, achieving apparently nothing at all.

Aidan spared a moment for a disappointed pout- that wasn't fair!- and then began once more to shift and weave. He would need only a few more moments to come to a way to handle the lightning. Perhaps he should just let it strike him and be done with? But something was impinging on his attention. Something insistent, that was calling out to him. Something... below him? His brows knitted even as he ducked one sparking self-projectile and he glanced down as he hopped, the other passing through the space between the soles of his feet. Was it his imagination, or was the ground ever-so-slightly higher than it had been a moment ago?

A brief roughness cut the air above the persistent hum of his whirling attackers, inspiring Aidan to look up at Seles. A grim smile on her face, the sorceress waved to him with her right hand, as if in fare well, soft fingers shifting left-to-right. She was no longer mid-casting? What was she doing, then? For an instant, Aidan was able to be puzzled.

And then the ground below him exploded with water, a great geyser of chill liquid launching him into the air atop itself as hundreds of thousands of gallons emerged from underneath. The sheer inertial force of the stuff held him pinned to the apex of the gout, even as it drove higher and higher into the air.

"One-two-three." Seles nearly chirped out, and both spheres of electricity slammed into the geyser, discharging before it could even peak. Lightning crackled as enough power to keep the orbs running for like unto a half an hour spread throughout the pillar of aqueous force, channeling up into the briefly helpless monk.

"Four." And the water cut out, disappearing entirely. Only two signs that it had ever been- the soaked monk, and the burst hole in the ground that he now plummeted towards like a ragdoll tossed from a crib.

[Repster]

Aidan's sight latched on the flyer. Mid air as he was, he took a swig from his flask carelessly. His thoughts were just as careless as down and down he went. His semblance of sanity had returned from it's momentary lapse, but that only allowed a few more thoughts to cross his mind, none of them any use. That had stung more then he had expected it to... Damned mages, with there magicky flying and barriers stopping his fist.

He extended his arm and caught himself at the edge of the gaping hole, more like a wound in the earth then anything else, and hoisted himself up easily. He had learned how to deal with falling a long time ago. Gravity was no threat. He reached behind him casually and plucked the head off a nameless victim being bitten by three children. The neck gave no resistance, if it did it was of no consequence. He pulled back and hurled the thing at the globe floating ever so close, yet out of his reach.

It splattered against the barrier in a shower of frozen brain matter, skull fragments, and the sludge of frozen blood. The monk growled low. Obviously stronger, and he had put far to much effort on breaking the first. He chucked a few fireballs at it, weak things that could not hope to scratch what was between he and her. Distractions mostly, somewhat of a test as well. Maybe... no, he was not resorting to that quite yet. Perhaps... yes, now that was more like it. The smirk overrid the common smile as he crouched, and gathered his strength in his legs. He needed height for this to work. A lot of height. He may not have flight, but he could jump pretty damn good.

Up he went. Up and up and up as the ground exploded beneath his feet, contributing to the strength of his legs for that much more height. He shot past the sorceress and kept going, far higher then could be necessary for anything else then gaining sheer momentum. He adjusted himself head down at the apex, head first he went down. For all the look of it, it seemed he was planning and trying to head butt his way threw. As he was about to impact with the barrier it was apparent that his path would lead it in inch away from touching, Aidan's smirk grew to full size. His hands shot forward fingers curled. Fleshy tips connected with magic, and penetrated.

Magic was an interesting phenomenon. A barrier of magic was infinitely thin, to be able to be placed where ever needed, but in it thiness it was also infinitely thick to be able to resist anything. Now Aidan knew he could not get his hands on Seles without breaking threw the barrier completely, and he could not do that with much ease. He could, however, get his fingers to dig into the barrier, and latch on to it with an impossible grip. More importantly he had noticed something. The barrier could be moved, whether by the indigo eyes woman's will or not. So he did just that, by forcing his will upon it via brute force, as he carried it with him in his rapid decent. This left Seles with two options. One have her own barrier connect with her face, or fly with it in decent. The third would have been to stop the barrier from moving, but that would have been rather difficult and result in the first. He knew not which she took, and cared little. From his highest point to the a few feet to the earth below, including grasping the orb, took a less then a second. Gravity relevant to Aidan was no constant. Far lesser when he needed it such, and much much much greater at will. It was a shame he could only have it effect him. He lost the greater acceleration as soon as his flesh made contact with the barrier

The monk flipped and hurled the glowing orb into the frozen earth and stone, transferring all inertia, all momentum and all the strength of his body working as one. He then landed on it, his left hand dug in once again it as the protective orb still sank into snow and earth. His fist followed suit meaning to hammer it's way in. He damn near dislocated his everything with that stunt, and still did not break into the meaty center. Back and forth his fist smashed into the shell Seles hid behind. Much the equivalent of a jack hammer.

The human body, Aidan is many things, but deep down at his very core he is still human, has set limitations on it. Subconsciously one always pulls one's punch. A safety precaution as the body cannot handle it's own strength went put against a harder object. Aidan has no concept of safety consciously or not. This effect was simple, where even a great martial artist hand would have been bruised from it's own rapid madning pounding, able to exert much more then the common man. Aidan's right fist was bloody exerting the full extend of his body's limits, and then some. His blood, not unlike liquid fire, slowly trickled around the dome as the pain did nothing to slow him down. He could smell her. He could hear her every breath. He could feel some effect to his every blow. He was going to crack this nut and bite down and the much softer tasty insides if he had to render his arm into nothing but a bloody stump.

His laughter filled the air, thick with crazed madness. It made the clear calm look in his eye all the more disconcerning. This was what he did, just another day of training, another day of work. It came as easily as breathing. His smile grew back into the smirk as he heard the first crack . Inaudible to all but a few, he knew Seles felt it. He was still far off to breaking threw, but that first crack made a clear statement. If he had to get to her by simply wearing her down barrier by barrier, spell by spell, so be it. Mages always ran out of steam eventually, whether it was out of Arcane might, or the toll of said art on they're bodies. He was willing to bet on the second for this one.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

OoC: Sorry for the delay, Ac, bring the best. //

Mist rolled like a carpet through the ruins, which stood like the play building-blocks and discarded toys of some giant child. They were crooked, menacing things made of immense stone slabs heaped one atop the other to form colonannaded stone houses and temples of varying size and oppresiveness. Between these rose great idols, sculpted with little tact or delicacy, carved into the image of crocodiles which stood like humans or Egyptian gods.

Clack, clack, clack...

The breeze buffeted the mist and made sway great, leafy vines which hung from the forest canopy and the temples and houses and idols. Here and there, immense oak rollers gave the suggested of advanced agricultural technologies. The knowledge that these were put to work by armies of beavers for no other purpose than to roll them around would probably drive any self-respecting archaeologist mad.

Clack!

The great ape blew through his lips with rudimentary laughter. He was indelicately holding a Kremlin skull between hugely knuckled, leathery hands. He was moving them in such a way that the jaws of the thing would unhinge, opening and closing like it was talking, and this amused him immensely. Growing bored, he hurled it savagely across the air and let it brittly exploded against the stone of a wall. He looked around, rolling over himself and slapping the ground (and such was his strenght that every slap shook the earth, fractured stone, and reverberated across the island like the peals of thunder). Around him piled more of the reptilian skeleton remains, and he broke these and played with these in neanderthal relish. It seemed that once he had made these cities into golgothas. Here and there, piles of discarded banana peels rotted up to the sky, so high as to practically dwarf the rock statues.

Donkey Kong slapped the ground again, and brought his fists up against his chest, drumming with such force and speed it was like the rumbling of artillery fire.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Madness and Memory

Seles cringed, shoulders raised in defense against some unhappening blow as the madman laid into her forceshield. The pounding and laughter, the calm dispassion of his face- it reminded her too much. Back then, under the mountain.... she had been trapped, sealed under stone and then under force of numbers. Reduced to simply seeking to survive in seclusion in the dank darkness, well aware that any corner hid her demise beyond it. The tall cape seemed to swirl slightly then, drawing about her almost as if it were an appendage of her own body seeking to guard against attack. The young woman's face fell into shadow, and her hands went to the sides of her head to grip firmly with her palms over her ears. It was happening again, someone had trapped her, was breaking through her defenses. The headache intensified, each blow on the forceshield felt as a dull throb deep in her skull. Indigo eyes narrowed as she beheld the ground pressed down beneath the surface of the sphere she inhabited, neck tensing. No... she was being held down... smothered under an assault of dire proportions. Wind howled through the ruins as it had through the strange tunnels of the undermountain, with a cold and lifeless sound that echoed in the ear and mind.

Aidan was in a way fortunate in his choice of method, for the barrier he now railed against was composed of naught but sheer force. Heat would not melt nor burn it, cold could not make it brittile, electricity would not overload it, acid would not melt it. It was not even, strictly speaking, there. He beat at nothing, sought to pound against a responsive press until it would no longer match his strikes. His knuckles split open, trickles of blazing ichor smoothing along the surface of the sphere like tiny hissing serpents- deadly but impotent against the very 'ground' they trod. Or perhaps it was slithered? Still, he was sure he would keep to his attack. He would break this shield, sunder that wall, and reach the young woman huddled beneath verdant cloth and soil-brown hair. There would he find the reward for his efforts, a gleam passing across his golden eye as he sought still harder to reach his target. No tiredness nor self-inflicted wound would bring end to the assault he laid down into the invisible sphere that blocked him.

Not to say that he would be uninterrupted in this. Tilting her head back Seles looked up at him with narrow eyes as she brought her hands together. The look in her face was one of strain, and a thin needling terror was shot through deep indigo eyes. Her back remained bowed and her body shrouded by the cape even as long strands of luxurious brown shifted across the outer surface of the garment. Knuckles began to shift as her fingers danced against each other, print meeting print in a dizzying array of fingertip-meetings. Somehow that frenzied flurry of motion set them both both airborne, soaring high above the broken, snow-covered city in no arc at all- instead in a straight rocketing away from the ground.

Despite the rapid motion there was no lurch, no jerk to send the fiery monk flying- and why would there be? Any such would affect the sorceress as well, and she had no desire to suffer whiplash, nevermind brittile, fragile bones broken by sudden pressure. Instead this was a smooth lift, slow at first and then gaining speed until suddenly it inverted, impetus reduced gradually until it leveled off. Buildings seemed to crawl downwards until their broken, jagged roofs passed in a swift blur that made it all to clear that there was something there, something... watching amidst the gaping mouths of the structures. Open they were, as if to howl at the sky in protest of their situation. But none of them topped the wall in sheer height, and the two had already begun slowing by the time they rose beyond the tops of those ancient, rocklike trees.

Over nine hundred feet into the air the two came to a halt, and Seles began once more the swift sharp motions of her hands. For a few instants nothing, the mad monk still pounding on the barrier with the incessant piston of his arm, and then a brief wind seemed to spring up only for the spellcaster. Naught but the steady external breeze stirred Aidan's hair and silken trousers, but Seles' cape flared outwards set to turn to a pair of immense green wings. The long skirt rippled and blasted backwards, briefly defining the forwards edge of the woman's shins and exposing the tops of her brown slippers. As if bursting from her back, ten shining oblongs sprayed out behind her, then curled around to leave serpentine trails of glimmering white-green. The first slammed into Aidan's forehead, rocking his head back with a blunt burst of force, but that was all. Three in quick succession struck his shoulders, breaking the rhythm of his steady pummeling and forcing him to lean back to keep balance. Then the remaining six, as one, caught him in the gut, and a blast of air and spittle sprayed from his mouth.

With no actual material there to get a grip on, he was knocked loose from the sphere with his back bowed from how he had been struck. Even left to hang midair, Aidan continued to smile cheerfully. He'd get back up here, yes he would. And then he'd have at again. And again and again until the lady wore out.

A few small trickles of sweat, a cold sweat, ran down the edges of Seles' face as she focused, not sparing any thought for the relief from the pounding on her guard/in her head. That had brought back too much, too many memories from when she had found her greater magick. She had to keep him off, to keep him away from herself so that she would not suffer that again.

Another series of hand motions began as Aidan once more fell, this time flipping to bring his feet under him. Seles began pushing towards her limits, moving her arms much more quickly as she enacted the motions to shape and prepare the magick. Still there was plenty of caution in the moves. Not only could she still snap her own bones, but if formed wrong, even slightly out of shape, the magick could leave control entirely and there was no way to say for certain what it would do- only that it would likely be bad. The spell completed while Aidan reached the halfway mark towards the powder-coated ground, feet already under him and staring up at the woman who was his target. Abruptly, his view was obscured as a tremendous gray boulder, practically a natural slab of granite several meters to a length, appeared immediately above him. Naturally, this grand rock then followed course with its nature- which is to say that it fell.

Seles took a deep breath, not granting herself a moment to rest, and then spat a word that was its own sentence, a clear precise thing that echoed power into Aidan's mind.

"Cheth'kremortul-vistarbinanjedethilimatt."

Hands raced again, twisting and weaving about each other, and a small sphere of flame formed below the sorceress, gradually increasing in size. Hopefully, he'd be occupied long enough to suffer the fireball she was preparing- one that was already clearing orange-red color to turn a brighter, yellower flame. Ere the monk even reached ground the heat of the thing brought it towards a pale blue, and it could have encompassed a small keg.

Normally, the sight of such would brighten Aidan's smile, but he could not see it even if he could feel it. No, that boulder was not so happy a thing for him, plummeting along set to crush him or at least make him vaguely uncomfortable. And so it would likely do.

Particularly as he'd just landed waist-deep in sludgy, sucking mud.

[The Willful Wanderer]

PLEEZ DELET

^

[The Willful Wanderer]

Baleet this 1 2.

((I say unto thee: Argh.))

[Repster]

Aidan struggled slightly with his leg to free it as he looked up at the source of the shadow that engulfed him. Not enough time... Down his throat went more of the thrice distilled whiskey from his flask. This was going to sting. He brought his bloody broken fist back, and focused. No damn rock was going to get the best of him. Flesh and bone met rock.

Rock cracked slightly and did as it tended to do in this situation, won. Aidan however, had no been focusing his energy into that particular hand, he pulled back his hand. Broken, chipped even, bones being open to the cold air, flesh tore apart by raw blunt force and now the uneven stone. It might as well have been made from pain for all he felt of it. His left hand, on fire as was always apparent in any incarnation of either raw magic or ki that flowed from the monk, struck open palmed that tiny set of fragments created by it's brother. The boulder cracked, split, broke, and shattered to pieces. Thousands of stone fragments fell around Aidan. Both hands worked quickly to deflect and toss aside what was left that could impede him. Pebbles and small stones pelted him. Once finally cleared, his forehead was mass of blood, he was bruised all over, but considerably better off then if the whole would have struck.

He placed his hands on one particular stone that had remained large enough no to be engulfed in the mud. Up on it he went. His left hand went to his right and he forced his bones back into place. Then his shoulder. His elbow followed suit. That had did more damage then he had thought. He stretched the limb slightly. Back in working order, he used to to unclip his flask and take a swig. Now then, for the wee girl in her shell. The was a brief look of annoyance in his eyes as he went threw the motions to leap back up again. Boring as the same routine this was starting to be was, up he went.

He stared at the finished fireball as it careened towards him. He had ignored the actual process with which it was launched. It mattered little really. He chuckled as he collided with it. There was no flash of light, no explosion, not even a "poof". Aidan's hands shot forward and tore the thing in half, the fire stuck to them as he kept going. Aidan was quite amused at Seles' expression as spun and threw the left handed incarnation of her own magic right back at her.

*Boom*

The sheer raw force of the explosion's shock wave nearly stopped Aidan from reaching the glowing orb. Not to mention did quite a number on it. The monk turned feet first, spread his leg and them smashed them together as he ran out of momentum. Or rather, would have if the barrier had not been there. Suspended by the pressure of each heel on the resilient sphere, Aidan sat up. Golden eye met a pair of indigo as the monk chuckled, and spoke. The crackling of his voice rose above the slowly shrinking fiery force in his damage hand. Smaller, yet far from friendlier.
"Lesson number one. The Aidan's mastery of raw fire is beyond yours. Point blank explosion a few moments ago? No burns? Really... pay a wee bit more attention..."
He rose his hand open palmed, released the pressure and let his leg slipped away as he slapped down.

There was no sound. Not at the impact point anyway, as animals of every kind for miles ran the exact opposite way. Predator and prey alike. Aidan vaguely wondered just how resilient Seles's eyesight was, his own retina completely shot for the moment. That was one, of about nine last count, sense gone. Some of those were redundant, but different they were.

The monk almost forgot himself long enough to wonder why he had yet to impact. Then he remembered the rather large crater he had made, and hit it dead center. Scorched earth, a rather large potion of it one form of glass or another, for a rather large radius. Crumbled buildings and shattered corpses as far as the eye could see, not his mind you. Much of the "city" was still intact. Shielded by layers of itself.

The monk got up, and his right hand went a blaze, as did a portion of the forearm. There was no real choice in the matter, with no flesh left on it the flames would do. He moved his bones, missing the tips of three fingers. It would do. His senses reached out for Seles. Found her, and he moved forward, charged really. He would allow no rest on either side. He kept up the relentless pressure. He would not allow the sorceress the time to think .


Ooc: I blame the d2 ladder reset for any slowdown in posting time on my part. Then again... I'll probably only sleep less.

Small note to judges, just in case you either forgot or never knew, There is nothing special about Aidan's whiskey, besides the near endless quantity. Well the horrid taste might be something special, but that's the result of getting the highest concentration of alcohol he could with primitive distilling techniques and caring little about the taste.

[Metal Man]

For a moment there was silence. Silence punctuated by the sound of sizzling and wind crossing the Russian Steppe. Then... a joint creaked. Metal Man's pinky twitched.

This was a very bad sign.

The man who had just been pinballed to his ostensible death stood up, despite a broken back. But of course; he'd broken this back repeatedly. It wasn't all that held him up, although the armor which aided him was also fried. At this point, it was mostly his rage. He leaned on the ax, staring at Tin Man with his eyes, now easily visible through the shattered visor.

Eyes... so furious they appeared to be portals into the depth of hell itself. He spoke calmly, spitting out a gob of teeth, blood, and spit onto the ground, as if he was about to orate his opponent's funeral.

"Dirty tricks and brute violence... not bad.... but I'm afraid you're going to regret smashing my anger inhibitor. I hope you remember what I look like... it'll be the last thing you ever see."

Indeed. The puny capacity-shaped component in his helmet was no more. As such, the limitless anger of Metal Man's past, present, and ostensible futures raged in his veins. He had been so cold in the previous battle because of his armor; but that was basically no more here.

He stepped forward one, and then another. His endurance outpaced his other statistics... there were many backup systems amongst him, even with the destruction of several important primary ones. Yet he was so slow in getting up... what hampered him?

The anger, as well. It was overwhelming his mind. Rational thought soon ended as he knew what he had to do. He lifted the axe high, creaking and glinting like a crumpled ball of tin-foil in the dim light, and swung. WHOOSH.

...THUD. It hit the ground. It had missed. His opponent was probably confused. Was this simply his armor controlling a dead body? Had he taken severe brain damage and survived anyway? There was that person... no! It couldn't be. The axewas a pivot.... ....and Metal Man flew off from it, flying above Scripture, blocking out the sun. Of course. Scripture had all sorts of time to dodge. This would just be more injury for Metal Man.

Except Metal Man didn't care about the lightning anymore.

*BAM* The sound of lightning struck. It did, indeed; it hit Metal Man, energizing his mostly fried systems. The electrified, still ungrounded man somehow managed to use the force of it hitting him from above to fly at Scripture like a massive cannonball. And indeed, this was one heavy hunk of flesh and steel...

*SMASH!!!* His foe buried into the snow, several snaps following as the violence of the crash snapped many of both Scripture's and Metal's joints, breaking them like they were made of toys. The electricity would also move through Scripture before hitting the ground, lighting him up like a disturbed, flattened Christmas Tree.

But Metal had only begun. He stood up, his bent and busted systems buzzing at him. He left two big footprints in Scripture's back; Scripture's next response would most likely be to stand up, but the man of Steel never forgot his promises.

"So. You aren't made of a flexible material. That's going to cost you, buddy boy..." He saw the eye, and did a move he'd learned from his foolish former opponent. He ripped off his right hand and chucked it at Scripture; the metallic hand would grip with a massive crushing force, intending on crushing the thing's skull. Yet Scripture would easily throw it to the side, maybe even destroy it. What gives?

The piranha's flesh gives before the spear of the hunter, of course. And indeed, there was a spear... Metal Man's right arm. Straight into that eye, but the man did not care for his safety and drove it as far as he could, intending to savagely shock the being's insides and then fill it up with the flammable oils which operated his pneumatic hands.

Once he was satisfied by that, and also most likely kicked back by his still more healthy opponent, it was time for his trump card. He'd been handed a beating by this thing, and if he didn't make this thing a pile of scrap quickly, it'd be his turn to die. His thoughts raced as he analyzed the situation--the visor was gone, the visor was gone, he thought. He worried about this endlessly. But then he suddenly got an idea... a completely insane one.

The being against him was about to attack, but with one desperate leap, Metal Man flew slightly over the being--damaging his legs in the process--and took a cable out of his damaged right arm and stabbed it into the thing's back, where its spine should have been.

"I'm not so keen on you manipulating the weather against me... toy..."

Indeed; this was a computer link. But he wasn't going to steal this thing's information. Instead, he linked it to his completely bonkers interdimensional device, which if unchecked would drive the thing insane by flooding it with data about not just one, but hundreds of thousands of dimensions everywhere at once. Indeed, the computer it was connected to was useless for this same reason.

At the same time, it would overload any CPU it got access to... basically, the machine would feel as if reality itself was falling apart; if that stab had blinded it, all it would see now would be hundreds of thousands of Metal Men staring at it... it is unsure if a machine could feel fear, but something very terrible was going on here.

But naturally, the cable snapped as the foe's nanomachines either disconnected it or the foe pulled away. Still, the effecst would linger and damage anything they got a hold of. The man, unimpressed, took his right hand and held it up to the thing, standing 5 feet away and knee deep in the snow.

His armor was all dented, melted in places, snapped, his knees full of small rips, he was bleeding, his mouth was but a few teeth, and he had no visor. His back remained broken, or at least near it--he was obviously moving around more than your typical quadraplegic.

Yet he smiled, holding up his cybernetic hand.

"Well... Tin Man... the Steel Man tells you to talk to his hand. What is your response?"

Lightning boomed, not too far off. A Wolf's howl could be heard as the Man of steel's actions were finished... for now.