11th Nintendoland Battlefield Tournament: Third Round Battles

[Galefore]

Third round begins nao! I expect a great pair of fights, and an even better championship. Here again are our rules:

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 SUNDAY, July 29th at 3 PM Central time.

Lineup:

Alpha Division:
Kargath vs. Erdawn

Beta Division:
Selene vs. Metal Man

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

[Metal Man]

The sun shined in the distance, as the battlefield faded into view. It was a city; not just any city, mind you. Los Angeles. During rush hour. The multi-colored cars flowed through the streets like blood through constricted veins; the occasional car accident brought all traffic to a stop. The air was dirty. It tasted very bad. Indeed, the sky was gray, and it was one of those horrible, humid afternoons which caused most people to take shelter inside cafés.

Yet one person was not doing so. He walked the streets as if he belonged there. The hollow metallic noises his steps made appeared to be in syncopation with the sound of cars braking for the lights. He looked up at one of the lights, its redness seeming to be a small sun to itself. While most people would be sweating and oily from the humidity by now, he was not; for he was clothed entirely in techno-steel armor. It shined an ominous shade of quicksilver--and just like Mercury, this man was extremely slippery.

A man reading a newspaper sat in front of a cafe, sipping his mocha. It was another boring, pointless day for him. He put his feet up to a chair; one could see his worn walking shoes and rust-colored pants. Indeed, he adjusted his glasses when...

A sound of thunder was heard. No, it wasn't a storm... it was that man in metal knocking the chair, heck, even the table over, splattering his drink. The faded green umbrella was stepped on thoroughly by this man; one could smell the displaced beverage evaporating off of the warm sidewalk. The man turned to the steel monolith and shook his fist. "What the hell do you think you're doing? And what is that you're--"

A flash. The steel mammoth of a person turned around and met the gaze of the normal person. He flicked a couple dollars distastefully at the man's feet. "I am on an important mission, my friend; I am sorry if your mocha had to pay the ultimate price... but mistakes will be made, and casualties will occur."

The man of steel walked on, leaving the cafe customer utterly baffled. Indeed, the Metal Man looked around some more, in distaste at his arena. Several towering skyscrapers blotted out the sun from some areas; they shined dimly of steel and glass. Metal Man checked his sensors idly... his targeting matrix flipped through several possible targets.

C:\> SEEKING TARGETS. . .
. . .
01. CAR
02. MAN
03. MAN
04. WOMAN
05. UNKNOWN BEING
06. MAN
07. ANOTHER MAN
08. CAR

Metal Man looked through it, mumbling to himself. "This place has no foe for me... it's just a... ...wait a minute... Man.. Man.. Woman.. UNKNOWN BEING????" He flipped the display to zoom in on this being. Indeed. There it was. His foe. He couldn't make out who it was yet, but it had obviously just arrived. He stared idly, his mind racing. He still felt the cold from his last near-death, the echoes of that robot he hated so much talking at him still stained deep into his bitter mind. However, it had done some odd things to him... in addition to permanently damaging some of his nerves and forcing him to pay big bucks just to see again, it had given him an insight.

Was this what he was? Just like that robot? A heartless killing machine? Was this the way? He shook it out of his head, as his systems showed that he was over thinking it again. Indeed, brain waves were out of control. There was only one way to keep himself from exploding out of sheer anticipation: he had to get ready. He saw a cop giving a parking ticket to an old AMC Gremlin that had been parked next to an expired parking meter. The rusted green paint of the car showed that whoever owned it obviously had given all their pocket change to some sort of loan shark. Metal Man saluted the officer, and spoke to him in metallic, yet heroic tones.

"Sir. A battle beyond your comprehension is about to begin. I suggest you evacuate the area. I do not wish for anyone to get hurt."

"What do you mean, get hurt? Nobody's allowed to--"

A nearby car EXPLODED. Sparks and flames flew everywhere. Metal Man grabbed the officer and saved him from being hit by a flaming tire. He then spoke, more urgently. "Did you see that? I cannot stop the battle now. If you do not evacuate... more people than me will die."

The shocked officer dropped his faded yellow traffic tickets and ran.... he would try to evacuate the massive logjam of cars that explosion had created. Honking horns filled the air, as Metal Man reached to his back and opened an unfolding compartment... he pulled out a very long object. Shiny, silver, it looked old... it had the name "Backstabbin' Bertha" carved into its... muzzle. It was a gun, with a tiger-oak handle, with Metal Man's signature on it. He'd been saving it for something like this... it was an elephant gun. He mounted the back of it onto his shoulder, as it clicked quickly into place. He then selflessly marched towards the being he had identified, the gun aimed, his finger twitching at the trigger. His brow began to sweat.

He tried to forget his heart beating so fast as he called out to his opponent, his voice sounding a bit morose. "Whoever you are, prepare for the most devastating battle you have ever had. If you wish to save yourself... surrender now." *CLICK* *KA-CHIK* Both barrels were primed and loaded. Only a madman would fire both at once. They could rip the arms off a full-grown man. Even though Metal Man was about 7 feet tall or so, and he was burly, AND he was a full-grown man, mustache, stubble, and crooked nose and all, it could very well knock his head and helmet off if he wasn't careful. Those blue eyes, however, were just searching for trouble..

The melange of multicolored cars stopped honking soon. Somebody yelled, and people ran screaming as Metal Man leaped atop a bus and prepared to fire. His joints aching, his mind burning, his heart racing...

He was a crazy man, all right.

[The Willful Wanderer]

So.... which one came first?

Life is pain. Or perhaps pain is life. There are many sayings regarding this, sayings both old and new, both applicable and laughable. Some had 'stood the test of time', becoming such aged aphorisms as to reach a state of cliche, defying the common man to fail to know of them. Indeed, to have heard none of these curious correlations of agony and conscious existence would be so ludicrous that your average person on the street could experience a laughing jag at encountering such a failure at listening. Or perhaps screaming in terror at the alien being staring them down with an inhuman curiosity.

It was a case of neither though- for as every rule, every law had its exceptions, these exceptions would crop up. One quality or another of their existence would bring them to one place, or time. And then a similar or differing quality of another such would be brought so as well, likely through completely different circumstances. All those who were tied to such, all those who were such, learned the truth of the world. Learned of the little things everyone sees but most refuse to acknowledge. The bits and pieces of reality that stand out as if to say that reality itself was but a myth, that sense was about as relevant to the existence of the universe as the price of a bowl of gomoku rice in Japan was to whether or not Slartibartfast had any hair in his beard that was not grayed with age and time. Each of these, in their own way, would come to realize one horrendously great truth, one of the few 'real' truths- and find some way to express it.

As the wizards of the Unseen University, Ankh-Morpork, Discworld liked to put it: "One in a million chances crop up nine times out of ten."

At any rate, this is drawing well away from the topic at hand- so discourse shall once more return to whence it came, in a small loop reminiscent of the grander ones displayed in nature and supernature. That is to say, pain and life.

So far as she knew, pain and life were no different. Neither registered too well for her, except in their presence or absence in others. Pain was a constant- something that could be made greater for brief periods, but never left. This gave her what many would consider a very strange understanding of the concept of pain. Much like her concept of what she could and could not do. Where is all this going, you ask, dear reader?

It is leading, as all things do in the beginning, back into the past.

Some years ago, a group of scientists got together. As so frequently happens in this, our flawed, illogical world, they brought together their talents and their minds for intents other than bettering people. Well.... other than bettering *other* people. And truly, not for bettering themselves either- all it would have yielded for them was a large amount of money- which is, after all, simply a piece of paper with a promise not even written on it any longer.

The amounts and times are irrelevant- at least so far as this small part of the story is concerned- so we shall leave them be. At any rate, with the promise of great riches to be forthcoming in return, the scientists set forth on a grand project. An expensive and long project. A project that they intended to use to leave their mark upon the world (and that other people intended to use to leave their marks upon other peoples' faces and vital organs). A project that they ran with no limitations. No hesitation.

No morals.

Twenty-five children, each already a very healthy and strong physical specimen. Each ripped from their family within a week of their birth, and brought to the site. These scientists and their assistants began work immediately, taking upon themselves one of the most monumental tasks imaginable- they sought to renovate the very human body. Surgeries set to move the anchorings of muscles, to alter the shapes and positions of bones.

Within a month, the sample group was reduced to twelve. Still, those specimens who survived managed to thrive. And the scientists were happy. Not done yet, but happy. More work followed. And more tests. For fifteen years, the hidden bunker's experiments and tests continued. By the age of seven, the children were being weight-trained, and their number was nine. At ten, bodysuits laden with metal ingots for constant stressing of muscle placed upon all seven of the subjects. At the age of twelve, certain organs deemed no longer neccessary were removed outright to test if the results implying their uselessness were accurate. Three subjects survived. At fifteen, neither of the remaining two experiments was alive in the most specific of senses. At fifteen, two lives had been endured the whole way through in pain. Fifteen years of being cut open and healing, five years of carrying around gradually-increasing masses of specially-insulated lead. Three years with spaces in their ribcages empty.

Lifelong agony, lifelong imprisonment. Naturally, as one might stereotypically expect of such an immoral- or possibly amoral- activity, it broke under the weight of its own actions. One of the test subjects went berserk. And that was the end of that.

Sort of.

From the destruction rose not the berserker engine of rage and death that had proceeded to reduce the experiment location to ruins. Only one left that place, and she left with a dull gaze and a heavy.... vacancy. One stronger, faster... one a better soldier, a better warrior, than ever the human race had seen in its own plain flesh and blood. At least... that was the theory.

And had this been a fantasy, this one would have discovered herself to be powerful. Gone on to try to protect those 'lesser' than herself. Become a lauded heroine of the world, protecting its occupants from themselves and from the outside. She would have found a family and been great.

Or perhaps she would have turned her hatred upon those who wrought her flesh into its form. Maybe she would seek to take out her wrath upon those who had inspired the greed. Become a force of destruction, and reduced the planet to a ruins over a matter of years. She would have lost herself, and in so doing find peace in the cause of death.

But, dear readers, this is not Stan Lee writing to you. This is no Marvel of the world. She is no Icon. And she might be in the City of Angels- but she could never find the City of Heroes.

So then... what did happen?

She wandered. Homeless, with no understanding of money and nobody willing to teach her. She learned to cloak her appearance to avoid the stares and sometimes screams. To move slowly and not show any true strength. She did starve out on those streets, but it would not stop her- they'd seen to that.

Because of this, because this was no bright and shiny world of glory nor a foul cesspit descending unto the depths of whatever underworld was cool this year, Metal Man was pointing his deadly weapon.... at a pile of rags under a black cloak.

As the electronics-coated man sprung from the ground to land atop the transit bus, his steel-shod footwear immediately scummed up by the thick layer of condensed smog coating the painted hull of the vehicle, the rags shifted.

What looked like it might once have been a hood rose up, bearing more resemblance now to a shredded, newspaper-stuffed garbage bag. Pale-white skin laced with scars covered the chin beneath ghostly blanched lips and that was all there was to be seen of the figure laying in the alleyway for the moment. The demi-mechanical warrior stared down the sights of his weapon at his purported target, ignoring the background noise of hundreds of denizens scattering like ants from under a log turned up by a curious child. Hundreds more camped themselves in their small, grimy apartments. The air was thick with the city's customary heat, sealed in by the overlaying shroud of atmospheric pollutants.

Slowly, the extremely ragged black cloak arose. Oversized ripped sneakers smeared with the fecal logo of some large-name-brand scuffed against the ground as the homeless one moved forwards a step. Other shoes were stuffed into the footgear, bursting seams painstakingly sewn by a young Chinese boy for less than a quarter of a cent per piece of thread. What looked like all the used sweatpants in the world reached down about the tops of the under-shoes, themselves only vaguely visible as peeks of white out from the red-and-black of whatever celebrity's most recent endorsement had wrought.

The figure's head tilted back, and a white face, seemingly albino, peered up at the steelshod warrior atop the city's public mount. Pale yellow eyes watched him uncomprehending despite the faint sheen across the blue fox-head sigil tattooed into the forehead of the woman. Its cobalt shade matched the triangles under the outer corner of either eye, an occasional droplet of sweat trailing its way down her cheek. A few midnight-black bangs remained plastered against ivory skin in defiance of the breeze that blew for a moment, teasing the pit of the Western seaboard with a vague implication that the weather would turn for the better.

And she did nothing.

Stood.

Watched.

Waited.

[Metal Man]

The programs in Metal Man's mind beeped. A red LED unit on his HUD would highlight the dark urchin. Indeed, something was strange about this foe... Metal's mind whirled a bit, taking in the details. His enhanced optics make a bit of a sliding noise as they clicked to zoom in on the target. He analyzed every bit he could see of this being, every visual detail, compiling it in a database as if this person was not alive. He saw them as just another Hershey bar on a shelf, and it had a certain price... this one had a very high price on it, indeed. He thought a bit, sitting there atop the bus, whence people were still fleeing from his antics earlier.

He had endured several tortures in his existence. His peers had been destroyed by most of these. Yet he remained. His family had been a line of hunters; this gun was his father's. Indeed, they once shot big game animals instead of people. But long ago, that had changed; for an unknown dimensional catastrophe had taken everything Metal Man once loved in the world and destroyed it.

His parents had been out hunting as usual; it was their hobby, back in the old days on Earth when nobody knew better. Surely these magical animals would replenish time after time, even as they were being hunted faster than they could reproduce. Indeed, his father, a stout, British gentleman of sorts with a monocle, had just sighted a lion in his triggers. His gun clicked, he fired. It was dead. That was just too easy for him. So, for once... he wished for a challenge.

That would be his last wish. Somehow, somewhere, an inter-dimensional being heard it, and responded with an elemental of pure chaos. This thing destroyed Metal Man's parents before a single shot could be fired--the old man had asked for too much. All that remained was the gun. Yet that was not it.

Metal Man, as a young man, had gone out to find his parents after they went missing. The African Sahara burnt in the orange sun, and the trees seemed to be melting from the heat. It was quite dangerous, but he had lost his fear from a past catastrophe... well. Most of it.

He had come to the trusty green jeep of his father, expecting to hear that the trip had simply taken longer than usual. Instead, a being of darkness had leaped out of nowhere and attacked him instead. Yet somehow, something about his youth protected him--unlike his father, one who killed many animals without remorse, Metal Man back then was simply a sort of kid. So rather than die, he'd been thrown far into the future with his rifle. Luckily, that future had advanced medical technology...

Unluckily, the price with it was conscription into the most asinine and evil job one could imagine: cross-dimensional bounty hunting. Years had gone by since then, and Metal Man's heart hardened from the parade of people he killed and near deaths. Every time he died, he was simply revived again; he wanted to go home but his interdimensional transit device was in THEIR control. His resentment had become dull as of late, though; he had become jaded from his experience.

But he had never come up against a street urchin in combat before. Even though it stared at his gun as if it was innocent, Metal Man's dark mind simply told him what might be the truth--it was a ruse. Every second he had spent thinking back was giving it time to prepare some monstrous evil that would kill him forever. And then those scientists would simply shrug and move on to another basket case.

Most of all, he was old... very old. He had fought hundreds of foes like this before, so much they blurred together. His face was heavily scarred; many told him he was over the hill for this work. Hopelessness had filled his mind; the scientists refused to let him stop. Nor did he want to stop... he had managed to escape before. He always came back... as if... as if he had taken on his father's qualities. He thirsted for the blood of such opponents... was he a monster, too?

Music woke him up. It had been a single second, but it was spent. His foe would likely attack soon if he did not stop this infernal thinking. His mind composed quite some music, too--his horrible past had granted him some artistic abilities beyond what the normal person would have. Indeed. He composed a raging march song, filled with screeching pianos and angry guitars, and played it inside his mind. There had been a difference between him and those who had fallen to the tiger... he had not lost hope, and he believed that if he wished hard enough, he could win this battle and escape his scientist captors... perhaps shed his addiction to destruction permanently.

He saw the urchin. More than that. His gaze focused deeply... a soul-piercing gaze, that of rage, hatred, and sorrow. It was almost as if he was Gerald Robotnik... his life so horrible, his future worse, he was beyond the normal emotions of any human being; he was one with his hatred. The sad feelings nearly choked him up--but a gut-wrenching hatred of his situation, and indeed, now his opponent, burned the anger like burning napalm to a gas station. It was explosive and smoldering, a rage which caused him to see double; his muscles cracked as he furiously gripped his gun.

This gun had been modified; it was mounted onto his shoulder, into which a complex mechanism he had designed fed it bullets. Not any normal bullets, either; these were covered with a highly reactive substance, so that when they hit their target (or missed it), the casing itself became explosive and flammable. Unlike shrapnel, it was quick-burning; he did not want to destroy this city. Only his foe. Only his horrible feelings. Only that thing which began to look more and more like a scientist to him, laughing at his requests for freedom.

The target was locked; the gun's barrel shined in the sun. He held the trigger with his right hand, and the barrel with his left. An orchestra of hatred and disgust washed over his mind as he smelled the exhaust of the bus. It was what he felt inside; that he was burning, polluting this hazy environment with his hatred. The gun clicked loudly as both chambers were readied. A support of sorts thrust from his back, balancing him on the bus. He gestured to the driver, idly tossing a hundred dollars to him. "Set those brakes on, sir, or there won't be anything left of either of us. Although the roof of your bus... ...I'll fix that later."

He then gritted his twisted, bent, burnt, white teeth, making a grinding noise as he locked onto his subject many different ways. Visual; thermal; radar; manual. There were more than enough of these to make sure he would not miss easily. His face became covered in drops of sweat from the mere heat; for truth, his hatred was like ice in his heart... with fire in his belly. At last, it was time to release his anger on this... this thing... which had to continue the horrible slide-show of his existence. The only way out... was to end this.

He made a cocky grin to his foe... one of those evil, fake smiles made by tax collectors. "I sure hope you like it better in heaven. Because there won't be enough left of you to cremate when I'm done with you." He finally opened fire; it had been only about 20 seconds, but that time never seemed to end. Only the fresh explosion of two slugs out of the chambers of that gun could end it. They whizzed through the air, reaching supersonic speeds quickly. They were expertly aimed; they missed several innocent bystanders, and the explosive charges within weren't going to go off just yet.

They flew right behind the urchin and hit the ground. The breeze blew by again; Metal's cooling systems put out the heat on his brow. A tenth of a second flew by.

KABOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

A massive fireball exploded behind his foe, hurling cars, parking meters, restaurant chairs, burning metal, and loose pocket change everywhere. But most importantly... behind the foe. Metal gave no thought to the foe's reaction--they must have something powerful on their side if they could just sit there and stare at him like that, he reasoned--so he simply fired again. And again. And again. And yet again. The force was unbearable; the root of the bus tore some; the confused bus driver hadn't set the brakes quite enough, so it was rolling a little. Indeed, anyone who was left inside the bus soon learned their mistake as they saw giant foot-like dents in the ceiling.

Metal fired the gun like it was a pistol. It was unimaginable, as if somebody had recorded his first shot and then played it back 12 times in a row. The only difference between them was the effect; the first had created a giant explosion sound and was the first burst of fire; these were simply extensions of that event. Cars, gas tanks, and traffic lights flew everywhere, as everything in front of Metal Man's vision was soon engulfed in flames, smoke, and explosions. The force of the explosions cracked and broke windows for nearly a mile; some people had been deafened by the shots. As the cars which had been thrown crashed back down to the ground, Metal likened it to stomping cockroaches.

The cold man's eyes stared at the smoke, his visor shining keenly as it was lit up by fire and destruction. He was the angel of death, and it was his duty to end the suffering of whoever he had seen before the street in front of him ceased to make sense. He was living, all right. All the pain of existence became sensible to him; he had to stop dwelling on his issues, and deal with them. He had done what he could to minimize casualties; indeed, his loud warnings and split-second hesitations had given many people the chance to flee. He promised to do what he could for those who had been caught, though.

Then gun was smoking, and he was obviously at fault for the destruction. He took out a moist cloth and cooled it down while waiting for the inevitable to emerge from the mist. The smoke that resembled the thing which had destroyed his parents and his life. He checked his newly fixed dimensional device for the time... and chuckled.

"Friday the 13th? This day isn't unlucky. Some people just get in my way!"

He laughed a bit to himself, wiping away the canvas of pain he had thought of earlier. Instead, he thought of readying to defend himself, so he hunched down into a lower defensive position atop the bus, which had backed into a truck behind it. It was an old yellow bus, too, and it had the bulbous bumps up and down it. Metal's feet were now essentially anchored to it, the rear-support from his back having stabbed two holes into it for further support. Rather than try to dodge outright, he planned to defend that bus to the end--he wasn't going to have another of his supports ripped out so easily.

The smoke from the destruction continued curling around, as some cars occasionally exploded and a few stores caught on fire. Metal Man stood as if he was a massive decoration atop the bus, shining in the sun as an all-silver clump of a person. He killed his time as another breeze blew away the smoke from the battlefield. Again, his heart pumped anxiously... this was it...

...The Tiger's turn.

[Kargath]

<OOC>
Posting to get this into my User CP.
Erdawn, you want to take first post or should I?
</OOC>

[Erdawn Il Deus]

OoC: Alright so here's the scoop - I've been called away on exercise and will be gone until sometime after next sunday, so either I need an extension of a week or so in order to continue my participation in this tournament or my position will have to be handed off to Acradius in forfeit. Either way I'm going to be pulling 22 hour days drilled on the finer aspects of machine-gun firing and trench warfare, so its up to the judges.

[Kargath]

<OOC>
Um ... that was unexpected.
Guess it's up to the judges now. O_o
</OOC>

[Repster]

Kargath, make your entrance, it'll be one thing out of the way in either case.

[Kargath]

Righto then.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Table for one, smoking heavily section.

Like its own little jigoku, the base of the building burned, pouring smoke into the sky. It seemed almost an illusion, the hell wedged into the midst of the block, for the thick gray-black billows that roiled up from the flickering dancing orange nearly faded out as they rose into the sky. Just more filth, more oppressive smog, to be loosed and meld with what already overlay el ciudad de los angeles. Patches of upturned concrete smouldered, bits and clumps of stubborn, stupid crabgrass blackened by the moment.

The building itself did some 'bleeding', then, small fragments of brick and mortar falling from the incidental excavation in the base of the thing. Next door, the shredded, flaming remnants of a canopy declaring only 'Taq' anymore drifted to the broken sidewalk. In a way, sheer blind luck was a friend of the city, at least for the time being. None of the shots had exposed any gas lines, and the washes of flame had seared across only manmade blocks of hardened clay and cemented gravel. Of course, luck is a fickle thing, and it remained to be seen whether or not it would continue to favor the existence of the city in a bowl.

For a few moments, there was no further response. Flame danced merrily upon the side of the street as a nearby fire hydrant creaked- but held, sustaining its restriction of the water that so desired to erupt in a geyser as a sort of little monument to destruction. Bits and chunks of rubble lay still, as did numerous wads of refuse both inflammable and not. Perhaps the streetlurker was playing possum, waiting to see if the metallic man would be satisfied with that brief burst of explosive annihilation.

Or perhaps not. One large mass of black, smoldering in many places, rose first to hands and knees, then to stand. Uncaring of the intense, choking heat surrounding her, the 'urchin' held her place on her feet for a moment, frowning. The cloak was gone, but she still retained a somewhat shapeless blackness to her form thanks to the dire scorching of her outermost layer of clothing. The scavenged cloth was itself still burning in a few places, but that was far enough from her skin that she did as she seemed and failed to notice it entirely. As she straightened her head, her unevenly-hacked black hair shifted into place, no more than a few strands reaching below her own shoulders. A frown pinched her face slightly towards the middle, brow furrowed so as to wrinkle the curious logo in the midst of her forehead. Pale-yellow eyes brightened slightly in color as she stared at Metal Man for a few moments.

Even as the bounty-hunting cyborg held position briefly, noting the few stragglers now dashing from their apartments, pale lips parted.

"Khhh." She said, almost as though testing if her mouth would work. "S'p t...."

The frown on the young woman's face deepened, and she reached out beside her, to where one of the taqueria's tables had landed. The metal smoldered, one leg of the wrought-iron piece twisted back towards the tabletop. The circle of the table itself was warped, bent by a crease running down the middle of it, and one edge glowed. None of this seemed to register on the woman as her wool-clad fingers gripped one end of the fold warping the piece of furniture. Her throat rasped as she crouched slightly, seeming to reduce a bit from her five-and-a-half feet of height.

"...Stop it." She commanded.

Throughout his elongated life, the Metal Man had become familiar with a great many things. Pain was an old friend to a man scarred and broken by battle. Weaponry of all sorts was known, either to be useful, or to know how to combat it. He had dealt with uncountable situations of people trying to kill him right back, with all manner of weaponry. Blows would be exchanged, sometimes projectiles, frequently insults. With the electronics embedded into his frame, he could record and rewatch any of these at leisure, and often did to learn how he might better deal with the bounties- it was this, among other things, that lent him his great skill in combat. That kept him from being 'forcefully retired'. He could remember in disturbing clarity almost every fight he had ever involved himself in. Moments of agonizing pain and triumphant victory. Blows both light and hard.

He couldn't for the life of him recall any time at which he'd had a table smash into his face at terminal velocity.

The thick, broiling air tore loudly as the smoldering girl's arm swung forwards, not even seeming to traverse the space in between 'holding the table leg' and 'pointed at the shiny guy with the gun'. Still, there it was, extended forwards- and there was the table, the eating surface wrapped partially around the cyborg perched on the bus' roof. It was extremely doubtful that the elephant gun had survived the impact anywhere near intact, nevermind in workable condition. Even Metal Man's anchoring could only do so much to handle the abrupt impact of the heavy iron-mesh table, bending with a quick squeal of abused alloy. The impact was such that a heavy clanging sound echoed down the streets for a few moments in the wake of the crack of sundered wind.

For the bounty-hunter himself, the moment was one of surprising pain. Blood welled from his face where the strands of diamond-mesh iron had embedded themselves, and his left arm felt like more than one part might have broken when the five-hundred-pound piece of furniture slammed it across his chest. He had expected any of a number of forms of attack, been prepared for all manner of energy projectiles or cannon. Even a beam of energy or hail of bullets would have been anticipated and withstood with relative ease- despite the low chance of his being able to track such an attack with his vision. A table had been completely out of the question.

Astonishingly, the yellow-eyed girl seemed to consider the bizarrely-improvised attack enough- she looked for a moment at where the table had crumpled a bit around the now back-leaning bounty hunter. She could see where the orange-yellow-hot edge was searing at his abdomen, but that in and of itself did not particularly register.

"....Go 'way."

And she turned to walk down the street, apparently not even noticing him anymore. Her rags burned on, slowly.

[Kargath]

Lucille smiled as she snapped the book shut, breathing in the warm, familiar air. That one had been a particularly satisfying read. A treatise on the proper application of drachnae branch herbs and the procedure for their optimal collection ... not quite applicable information to Lucy's current situation, but still an excellent read. There had been hardly any need for maintenance either - just dusting and the regular preservation misting.
She pressed down her shimmering red dress and stood up from the large oak table she had been sitting at. Her dress was a long and flowing number with a deeply plunging neckline and a form-fitting waist. The dress' very design seemed to rail against the fact that there was no-one around to admire her admittedly impressive breasts and slender figure.
Lucy had wondered occasionally about who had designed the dress, but never gave it much thought. She knew who was ultimately responsible for it in the end, and anyway, the dress came with the position. Her original title she found hard to pronounce, given its fifty-syllable length. She just thought of herself as the Librarian.

She picked up her book and a small pouch off the table, slung it over her shoulder, and nudged the back of her chair forward until it touched the table. She knew that she didn't really need to push in the chair, given the table would soon disappear until she wished to use it again. Still, habits were habits.
Her heels clicked on the polished wooden floor as she strode between bookcases, navigating her way with a sure, brisk stride. Left ... forward ... forward ... right ... and stop. Her manicured hand reached out and gripped the shelf just above eye height, and pulled the shelf straight downwards in what seemed an impossibly fast movement. Shelves rushed down past her in a blur, blowing her honey-brown hair about her pretty face and then simply disappearing into the floor.
"Un, deux, trois, quatre ... ici."
Lucy's hand shot out with a precision born of endless practice. Two fingers caught onto a shelf, and the blur of shelves stopped. There, three books to the right, the empty spot she had come for. She placed the book on the shelf, slid it in carefully between the tomes already there, and smiled. Lucille felt good when she completed work.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped back to admire the sheer size of this place, and just how well done the design was. The bookcase in front of her was at least fifty metres long, and as for height ... Lucy might get a crick in her neck from looking up, but she certainly wouldn't be able to see the top. Lucy thought about the books that she had pushed past herself, and how they were now no longer the bottom shelves but the top. She'd never had the time nor the inclination to actually count how many books this or any of the other bookcases contained.
As for the number of books held in the library ... there really wasn't a specific number as such. "The second infinity, uncountable", she had been told when she was appointed. An unbounded number of books on each shelf, infinitely many sections and infinite shelves in each section. In the long and short of things, Lucy was never short of work to do. Books needed sorting, cleaning and preserving. Sometimes pages or even entire books needed restoration from memory. Other things lived in (and off) this library too, and though they would never come anywhere near Lucy lest they arouse her wrath, infinity was indeed a rather large place. Some books needed binding - not their spines (though this sometimes took place during restoration) but their leaves, to ensure that they stayed unread.

Yet despite all of this, there was one book that needed far more attention than all of the others. It was to this book that Lucy strode, and its alcove appeared in a nearby wall as if it had always been there. That was just the way of this place.
The book lay on a stone pedestal, resting at about Lucy's navel height. It was a large book, as long as Lucy's forearm and just as wide, and three times as thick as the herbal treatise she had just replaced a few minutes ago. It was bound in not-quite-leather and inlaid with almost-gold in seemingly random patterns, but as Lucy knew well, there was nothing random about the Book.
As she came to the pedestal, Lucy saw ashes amongst the usual leaves and debris around the pedestal. Some creature lost a limb or two trying to take the book for themselves. Lucy made a mental note to sweep here later.
"Allez, Lucille" said Lucy, and she crossed the threshold. Where anyone or anything else would have been incinerated upon the invisible barrier around the pedestal, Lucy instead felt a plane of intense pleasure pass through her, front-to-back. Lucille had no need for money or even food here, but the job still had its own particular rewards.
Lucille took hold of the book's cover, and the library disappeared, leaving only Lucy, book, and pedestal. She was not at all surprised, of course, because she had not opened the book yet, and how can you partake of the world of a story without opening the book it is contained in? For this book was not just any book, it was the Book, and it contained all of the world-stories that formed existence. Though the book was of finite thickness, you would never have any luck counting the pages, for each page upon closer inspection was several pages flat together, and each page's subpages again split into more subpages, and so on until it felt that you were holding air rather than parchment. In this way, all the infinite histories of the infinite worlds were recorded. Even Lucille was in the book, which lead to an interesting series of almost-paradoxes that can only Lucille had the capacity to really understand.

As Lucy opened the book and moved her hands over the sides of the pages, endless worlds and universes swirled around her. Every hue and shade presented itself in a swirl of locations and imagery, with the simple grey pedestal sitting like an anchor between the many flashing scenes. Still as this parade of places passed by, Lucille was not really paying attention to what she saw, but what she felt.
"Rien ... rien du tout, euh ..."
It was said once that stories have a life of their own in the telling, but the person who said that had no real idea of the literal truth of that statement with regards to the Book. The stories were all written at once when existence came into being ... or maybe existence came into being when the stories were written ... but that's not really important here. What mattered was that the infinite set of universes were all determined from le début. The many themes, the innumerable characters, the endless sequels of generation after generation, even the great deus ex machina of water, wind and earth were all planned ahead of time, in fact before time itself. Yet still, things tended to get lost or changed in the telling. Inflections and accents by that great speaker Reality, transpositions, substitutions, attempted improvements by Reality in the heat of the moment. Yet as a single pebble might derail an entire train, deviations from what was set out could have dire consequences.
It was therefore Lucy's job to ensure that fate stayed fate and that existence did not come to a crashing halt.
"Deux quelque peu mauvais, et ... merde!"
Now looking quite annoyed, Lucille flipped to a page and began running her finger along the minute characters, and the scene changed accordingly around her. As her hand slowed, a world came into focus around her, shapes and forms turning into something teasingly simple. Finally she lifted her finger, and she was standing in the middle of a dusty plain.

There was nothing around. Nothing at all that Lucille's eyes could see anyway, save for a lone, dying gum tree and the skeleton of an old wire fence near her.
Book and pedestal stood beside her, the great anchor of worlds, stood beside her, the red leaves and black ashes on its slab of a base contrasting sharply with the powdered brown of the land.
Lucille stepped over the threshold, and onto the dirt, inhaling sharply as she felt that flat surface of bliss sweep through her again. Looking around, Lucy wondered what could have deviated here.
Idly she stroked her fingers through her hair, taking time to think, to feel.

[Metal Man]

The table hit the Man of Steel, and indeed, he was surprised. He went over it in his head--his ballistics tables indeed, were missing an entry for unconventional objects--and of course, it had to be a table that hit him. He groaned as he reached with his right hand, delicately prying the thing out of himself and the arm, wincing a bit in pain as it had pierced somewhat deep. Snap.. snap.. snap... it slowly came loose. The table had been deformed by the impact, and he had a bit of a hard time prying it loose.. however, once it was loose, he sighed with relief, like a thorn the size of a truck had been taken out of him.

He bent his left arm into shape... SNAP! That was painful, all right. That pain radiated all the way into his shoulder, and then some, like a million daggers into his flesh. He nearly made a sound at that one! However, he continued gritting his teeth. The dented Man of Steel then stood up, still supported by the strut. He angrily kicked the table off the bus and onto the ground, and then began hastily putting away the elephant gun while speaking in a raspy tone of voice. "You cannot make me go away no more than you can destroy justice by hurling a table at it. I will make you pay for that one..."

He pulled free of the bus, sliding the gun into his back compartment and now looking fairly normal, as far as a cyborg could go. He moved to jump, making the whole bus sway. Finally, he made a giant, Mario-size leap off the bus, and landed ankle-deep in the concrete. Indeed, he sent some concrete flying around; the bus was rather torn up, too. Metal Man dusted himself off and then became aware of a stunned passer-by with some sort of drink in his hand, staring at the destruction which Metal Man had caused earlier.

The Man of Steel looked at him as if he was some sort of wimp. "Hey, this happens all the time. You should stop worrying about your car and go home. Oh, and I need this." He took the drink and gluttonously swallowed it all in one gulp, replacing the empty drink in the still-stunned man's hand. "Blech!!! You put too much sugar in your coffee. You need nothing but black coffee if you want to become big and strong like me!" He then turned around, to see his opponent still walking away. "Hey! Come back here!"

Metal looked around fervently, as his opponent crossed a street, still smoldering. It was a traffic intersection, fairly untouched too. Another fire hydrant, a mail box, the works. Metal made a note of this and quickly took out... some pocket change?

"If you're going to just run away, then you shall have to face the wrath of... GEORGE WASHINGTON!!!" He took out one of those fancy new dollar coins, the kind with Washington's image on it. It shined gleefully in this dim place, a sort of golden contrast to the area's dull concrete appearance. Metal sprinkled some strange metallic powder on it, and then threw it as hard as he could at the urchin he was facing.

The coin rolled a bit... unfortunately, it landed on its side, and rolled past the girl, into a car ahead, which burst into a typhoon of flames from the coin's incendiary release. Clearly, Metal was playing with explosives. Again. "Dah! Why did it have to hit that? I was sure it'd work this time!" He continued throwing.

A few minutes later, just about everything was on fire except for the heavily-clothed girl. Metal shook his head as he saw the utter failure of his coin attack. "Just like George Washington... bring a big fight, and then fail at the last moment..." Metal chucked one over his shoulder... just as his opponent crossed an intersection...

The little coin landed on the ground and began rolling. It nearly hit the urchin, but then hit a bump and veered off to the left. It had a hazardous path to cross: Several burnt cars and their many parts were flung around the street. Miraculously it managed to randomly roll through a clear patch. All the while, that girl kept on walking. Metal acted as if he'd missed, as the coin hit another bump and changed direction... crashing into a single plate at the bottom of a street signal. It made a tell-tale dinging noise as it entered, as if Metal had put it into a slot machine and won the jackpot.

Metal's back was turned as the coin blew up inside the traffic light. The light itself had a long, tall light going across the intersection horizontally; lower down, it had a shorter set going across the other way. It was this short set of lights which was cruelly snapped off by the explosion: it flew off, the metal hissing and bolts shattering. But what it hit next... was another story.

Metal had actually been calculating this from the start; a strange, yet deadly coincidence of his planning. It had looked like he was missing the whole time; when in fact every coin landed where he wanted it, which was mostly away from and around his foe. Why? Simple. His foe had no clue that the signal that just blew up would be such a menace. The short set of lights landed atop the sidearm of a fire hydrant, blasting it off and causing it to shoot its full pressure at the urchin from the side... and on the other side was a shop, complete with glass windows and glass stuff inside...

SMASH!!! Metal's foe would be thrown inside by a jet of water, and the shop would quickly flood. Then the remaining part of the street signal sat there, burned some, and then simply teetered over like a massive domino. It crashed through two power lines immediately above the China shop, and then into it. Between the light itself and the snapped power lines, all that water had become electrified... with that girl in it, and with the room constantly full of water and sharp glass pieces flying everywhere.

Metal Man ordered some real coffee as the chaos ensued. He spoke with the frightened barista. "Well, you see that over there? That's what you get when you're the scarecrow and you ask the witch to play with fire. Yup. You get shot into a China shop and electrocuted." He took the coffee and drank that in one gulp too, paying the man, who nearly fled--the dread face of George Washington was on these coins too, and he thought they might explode. "Oh, sorry. I used all my exploding money against the dread sweater demon. These are all real."

Then Metal Man walked back out into the chaos, and sat on a wrecked car, waiting for his foe to come out again with all the layers of clothes and everything... perhaps a little shocked. "I can't imagine all those clothes of yours being that useful, especially when they're soggy and wet." He chuckled. "Unless you have a couple of rain coats in that mess... you can see why a metallic suit is the best way to go." The Man of Steel belched as he saw something in the background explode. The smell of smoke, fire, water, and ozone was in the air... and yet, it hadn't taken a Black Mage to summon all of those at once.

[Kargath]

<OOC>
So, what have the judges decided to do about my opponent situation?
</OOC>

[Galefore]

I will extend the tournament by a week. Judges, no deductions.

[Kargath]

<OOC>
Right, thanks for the info.
Wonder how Erdawn will eventually respond to seeing a librarian as an opponent
</OOC>

[The Willful Wanderer]

Flush it all down...

As he sat there, perched upon the corpse of a once-overexpensive vehicle (now nothing more than a smoldering and useless skeleton of a machine), Metal Man began to... hear something. He always heard things, largely on account of said things causing vibrations in a shared medium that then conducted themselves to whatever audio receptors he had- whether they were ears or microphones of some sort was more or less irrelevant. However, he wasn't quite sure where the sound was coming from.

After a good twenty seconds of listening, his gaze and attention mostly on the destroyed china shop, he finally identified it. It was a curious and bizarre phenomenon, but not something he would call dangerous or even vaguely threatening- so he made no move in response to the growing, whispered chant.

The rasp scratched its way out of dozens of radio speakers, a slow almost throbbing of hoarse sounds. It seemed almost to be the heartbeat of a number of gaudy, overpriced stereos in the nearby apartments and studios. Had he been focusing on it at all, it might have occurred to the machine-man to wonder why or how all of the speakers in the area had been connected to the precise same bandwidth. What could have caused them to all spout the same thing in unison, over and over. But, to be quite frank, he didn't particularly *care*. Wasn't his business and the likelihood of its being relevant was so low as to be nearly nonextant.

Besides, it suited the steel-clad bounty hunter's mood.

Hate hate hate
hate hate hate
hate hate hate

He blinked a bit as guitars started in- they failed utterly to obscure the sound of shifting within the shop. There was a wet tinkle sort of a noise, minding the man of crystals dropped into extremely shallow water upon a stone floor. He knew the strange street-urchin had survived, then- much as he had estimated. Anyone capable of wrapping an iron table around a man from a solid thirty feet plus of distance would only be slowed by the electricity conducted by mere street-lines. Especially as it was spread through the water flowing still into the store in a long spray from the side of the fire hydrant. The flicker of the power going out for quite some distance off to his left was likewise overlooked in his attention to the current place of his foe.

Hate hate hate
hate hate hate

Somewhere, drums began, and these held a greater tension than the warm yet curiously metallic sound of the guitars. A greater power, underlining the steady procession of notes. As if, perhaps, this were somehow being orchestrated around the fight, the dark shape of the girl began to move slowly into view with a motion that could only charitably be called a stagger, and might well offend walks by being grouped in with them.

Some say the end is near./

She moved with a sort of slow, plodding determination. Rag-and-rubber-wrapped feet slogged through ankle-deep water unerringly, one foot placing itself before the other in a half-beat to the music. Rhythm, this was, rhythm of motion and battle. Perhaps this time, combat would be a thing of grace, unlike the brutal thrashings last experienced by the Metal Man.

Some say we'll see armageddon soon./

The girl (he estimated her to be about five and a half feet tall, give or take a few inches) moved into the light gradually. Her pace had picked up slightly, cheeks drawn tight with muscle tension, almost as if she were still experiencing the electrical shock brought on by the conduction of electrons through the mineral- and chemical-laden water. Brightening yellow eyes were narrowed as she moved, hair kinked in some places with obvious burning- dampened down in others. No longer did her copious garments smolder with the dying embers of pyroclastic fury.

I certainly hope we will./

Arriving at the raised base of the window-display area seemed to be a cue to the young woman, her pace immediately picking up to a slow jog. That same tight grimace remained on her face as she drew closer to the Metal Man. Even as he rose to his feet atop the blackened hulk that remained of the luxury vehicle, he could see that she was thinner- much thinner- than he had attributed her. The 'urchin' seemed to have shed more than a few layers of clothing, likely due to their disintegration into shreds and scraps. What she wore now seemed to be some sort of operations outfit.... Dark-gray cloth of some undefinable nature, apparently immune to scorching from electricity or fire, swathed about her. Though it seemed like it clung tight to her form, it appeared also to be very thick- it gave only the shape of her, and no line to muscle or bone.

I sure could use a vacation from this/

Now she was running towards the destroyed two-door, right hand pulled back. An audibule growl issued from her throat as she approached the Metal Man with the clear intent of one vicious overhand blow. Two long swaths of cloth followed her spindly form in a slightly-fluttering trail of deep shade. As the cyborg bounty hunter braced himself to deal a counter-punch, he could see her eyes narrow still further, the yellow color thickening yet more, now a rich lemon shade.

Bull.../

Both hauled back with their right arms, fingers clenching into fists with a creak of black, fingerless leather glove and a skreech of metal on metal.

****.../
three.../
ring..../

Closer still the two drew, time almost seeming to warp. Were either inclined to feeling awe, they might well have stood back and gasped upon seeing themselves preparing so to unleach mayhem. Instead they began to move. The elder of the two lowered into a bracing stance, and the younger stretched her legs still further, moving with unerring straightness despite the fact that her calves seemed to be near her ankles and not her knees.

cir.../
-cus.../
side.../
-show of/

And then they met.

Freaks Here in this/
hopeless ****ing/
hole we call LA/

Only one fist flew, smashing into nothing as the yellow-eyed vagrant abruptly shifted from a downward knuckle into a flying tackle. The air was briefly blown from Metal Man's lungs as his opponent slammed into him much too quickly for oner of her light mass. The scorched spot on his abdomen screamed agony into his mind as her shoulder dug into it through a brief arc- and then his back slammed into a wall. Parts snapped, steel crumpling much as an aluminum can against the forehead of a redneck named 'Bubba'- only, this one had not been drained first, and the man of steel could barely hold back a welter of blood trying to erupt from his mouth.

The only/
way to/
fix it is to/
flush it all away./

Without even pausing to try to catch breath, the semi-electronic man slammed down his extended right arm, a satisfied thud of metal on meat signifying that he had managed to catch the girl a heavy blow. Knocked down from him, his assailant's legs collapsed out of the way as she hit the concrete. This saved her having a chunk torn off her scalp as the ironclad foot swinging up separated the air that had rushed to her head's former location. Still, this would not stop her, a low growl emitting from her throat as she kicked off with both feet.

Any ****ing time./
Any ****ing day./
Learn to swim, I'll/
see you down in/
Arizona bay./

Again, she surprised the cyborg, who quite simply could not have anticipated a butt-to-face attack. Call it the benefit of no set method, if you wish, but the fact of the matter was simple- her rump slammed into the man's chin as she started a handstand. It met his face with a loud crack, and he felt his jaw shift wrong as a secondary impact sounded from his skull/helmet against the wall behind him.

Fret for your figure and/

Metal Man's head dug into the wall, creating a small hole as the spindly woman curled up, too-thin forearms crossed over her chest.

Fret for your latte and/

He pulled out of the side of the building just in time to catch one tough leather-clad heel atop his head, his black-haired adversary continuing the flip and curling that foot under herself.

Fret for your lawsuit and/

The other foot came down very quickly, set to smack into his now-exposed neck, but his left arm came up, catching the blow- and bending wrong again as she'd struck it just there.

Fret for your hairpiece and/

The vagrant fighter scrambled, having met her resistance too high, and failed to get her foot under herself fast enough- Metal Man's arm pushed up hard, causing her to spin out and land atop her head.

Fret for your prozac and/

She slumped down to the concrete quickly- too quickly- and the cyborg went on the offensive, moving forwards and punting her like a football, steel toe cracking one of her floating ribs.

Fret for your pilot and/

Oddly, she managed to alter her flight, rolling to land her feet in the facade of another apartment complex- yes, in, the soles of the buckled leather waffle-stompers that seemed a part of her larger garment digging into the crumbling plaster.

Fret for your contract and/

The steel-suited man opposed shifted forwards from the housing he'd been slammed against, taking two quick steps and pulling out a gun of some kind. As he raised it to aim, he realized that that face was much, much too close.

Fret for your courage./

There was a meeting of skulls then, the experimental woman slamming her skull into her antagonist's nose, crushing the cartilage and steel of the feature into a flattened lump. His face indented, Metal Man staggered back a step, the weapon coming loose in his hands- but not dropped.

It's a
Bull/

Rolling over, she dropped a heel onto the top of his head, stunning him again and compressing his vertebrae dangerously close.

****/

Even as his knees weakened, her left fist slammed into his right cheek, studs on the back of the knuckles cracking his cheekbone.

three/

Index, middle, and ring finger of her right hand jammed themselves into the man's left eye socket, popping the ocular orb with their fingernails and smearing it into the mess of his nose with the softer tips of the digits.

ring/

Even as a brief grunt of pain escaped his still-forced-shut (and hairline-fractured) jaw, he gripped his weapon and used it wrong, slamming it into an already broken rib.

cir/

She didn't even cringe- what the hell? Couldn't she feel that?- instead her left hand came up in a rabbit-punch, wrenching into metal over his right kidney and shoving the twisted mass into his abdomen a bit.

cus/

He'd had enough, and straightarmed her in the face while her right arm was stretched across her torso, and the left fist embedded in his abdomen.

siiiiideshow of/

Her head rocketed back with a crack of impact (but no crunch of bone?), quickly followed by the rest of her- he'd put enough force into the punch to force her away, easily.

Freaks Here in this/
hopeless ****ing/
hole we call LA/

The gun came up, and gave off a series of broken sounds like spears striking earth. Each heralded a brief explosion near the airborne woman- one at her back, one off to one side, one off to the other.

The only way to/
fix it is to/
flush it all away./

Again, she seemed curiously unperturbed by ache or pain, twisting to land on all fours beside a car. She snarled at him, then, ferally, and he snorted back, re-aiming.

Any ****ing time./

Her left hand stabbed out, and there was a brief protest of metal. Intrigued, Metal Man paused to consider this.

Any ****ing day./

Right fingers digging into the tarmac and boots spread wide, she lifted the rusty '98 Taurus by the frame around its engine block.

Learn to swim,/
see you down in/
Arizona bay./

Metal Man had just enough time to think 'Not again-' before the boot of the automobile slammed into him, the rest piledriving along behind to leave him dug into the middle of a hole in the building. Shards and bits of red-brown brick whizzed by, interspersed with chunks of pipe and bits of electrical wire.

Some say a comet will fall from the sky./
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves./
Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still./
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dip****s. And/

He managed to black out for an instant there, but when he came to, he was sitting in a La-Z-Boy. Which wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't had a four-door coupe in his lap. On the other hand, the dense engine block was in the other end, so at least it wasn't trying to crush his legs.

Some say the end is near./
Some say we'll see armageddon soon./
I certainly hope we will/
I sure could use a vacation from this/

A screech of protesting metal announced his prying the irritating improvised projectile off of himself, rolling it onto its side. The rifle (boomstick?) he'd held was more or less unified with the rear undercarriage, and the way it was wrapped around the assembly meant it wouldn't be useful for much right now.

stupid ****../
silly ****../
stupid ****/

Slowly, he got up, on the alert. She'd managed to make him lose track of her, which was not good for the bounty-hunting cyborg. If she'd gotten away- well, you can't collect on a bounty you don't collect on, so to speak. She had seemed, at least at first, more like she wanted to go. With the kind of strength she'd been demonstrating, he doubted the girl was slow, either.

One great big festering neon distraction,/
I've a suggestion to keep you all occupied./

Emerging onto the street, he peered about, engaging his scanners again. There seemed to be no sign of her nearby- just the marks of their combat. Here and there, one or another citizen of the Californian cesspit emerged from their home- usually to run like mad away, hauling whatever gewgaw, shiny, or overpriced bit of paycheck-waving they were most attached to.

This guy was ****ed UP. And that crazy chick wasn't much better.

Learn to swim./
Learn to swim./
Learn to swim./

Just as he was deciding he'd have to widen the scope of his search, a warning blared at him.

INCOMING PROJECTILE.
WARNING: MASS EXCEEDS SAFETY PARAMETERS.

Which was all he got before the city garbage truck landed on him grill-first, a gray-clad figure crouched atop the crumpled four-axle.

[Metal Man]

The man's mind was a blur as he analyzed the garbage truck atop him. Ironically, he had thought to throw cars himself, but to copy his opponent now would not do. He then did what he'd always wanted to do: dramatically punch through something that'd crashed on top of him.

Indeed, the girl would see a silvery fist punch through the hood of the garbage truck, hurling pieces everywhere. A second fist punched through like a piston. Soon, the other fist punched through again. This continued for a few minutes, creating a clattering, clanking mess that sounded like a jammed blender. It was quite a horrendous noise, for sure. Loud cursing followed, as the man emerged from the destroyed pieces of the garbage truck's engine block. He idly cracked his face and jaw; causing more damage, of course, but he had this strange vanity which demanded he do that.

He didn't mind how much damage he took, but he hated it most when somebody disfigured his face. And this person had come rather close to breaking that taboo. His last foe had paid in lightning for that kind of offense; however, he didn't quite feel up to that grandstanding yet. His face still bloody but now in one piece, he looked forlornly at the other car, where his gun had been broken, and shrugged. "I guess the past doesn't hold up like it used to. Oh well. I'll just have to write the future on that psycho girl's corpse."

He cracked his joints and turned around to face the gray figure atop the truck, who had probably watched with great satisfaction at the man's injuries. This deeply offended Metal Man, who was obsessed with morals. He nearly made a motion for his elephant gun, but instead dialed a strange code into his right arm. And out popped a 3-foot strip of metal with a sharpened point. Odd... what purpose could this have?

At the same time, the Metallic Man popped out several speakers of his own. They began playing a heavy jazz beat of his own. This man had grown up listening to jazz; he contrasted the harsh music of his foe with his own smooth beats, those of Sing, Sing, Sing! He swayed in time to the music, and then continued his fight.

He locked onto several points in the area in time to the rhythm, and then announced his plans to his foe, like any foolish superhero would. He spoke, annoyingly enough, in a way which fit with the music. "Now, villain, you shall see the true power of my experience. No mere vehicle will stop me! For I have... The power of a helicopter and lawnmower... COMBINED!"

Then the song broke into its main beat after his ridiculous statement. Loud trumpets blared as the main tune filled the arena. Metal's recently summoned combination helicopter blade and slashing weapon threateningly spun at the girl. Of course, the man's weapon of the moment was inordinately dangerous to use for lawn mowing, but he never believed in safety measures anyway--those ballistic missile chips in his mind were still active and derailing his thoughts to the tune of jazz moment even as of this moment. He turned his left hand and clenched it in a claw-like fashion, as he cackled and made a strange gesture with his blade-arm. The blade stuck out another foot... and began spinning. The trumpets blared yet again as he readied himself to attack.

Of course, it was dangerously close, Metal could cut himself by accident with this--but he'd seen this once in some video game and couldn't resist doing it himself. He held his right arm over his head and floated up like a mad balloon. His opponent was most likely baffled now--this man was out of his head, of course, and it appeared he was going to give the Mad Hatter a run for his money! The music ended another measure as Metal floated up to the urchin's level and sat there. He thought for a split second--what was he going to do next? He was up there, and yet his right hand was busy keeping him from falling. The deafening jazz music beckoned him to do something. And quick!

But then Metal snapped his left fingers repeatedly to the music. Always a bad sign. That meant he'd thought of something... something devilish. He looked over his shoulder at the same time another set of trumpets blared, first moving his rarely-noticed orange scarf out of the way of the helicopter device--he wasn't about to defeat himself--and then he flipped a panel on his front with a loud 'SNAP!'. Many people believed that there was only flesh under this man's smooth exterior, but the secret was that he had no real beer belly--rather, a compartment for a suspicious black gun that looked like a Nerf weapon.

This weird thing glinted in the sunlight, pure black in color. It had 'DVD LAUNCHER 2.0' inscribed on its side, and it had the rear stock of an assault rifle. Except instead of a barrel, it had a CD-shaped head with a spinner motor... and Metal Man took out a couple of cases of DVDs and casually filled it up with all the greatest: The Brain from Planet Aros, Gigli, Eragon, and Star Wars: Episode I. He'd personally disliked all these movies, and even though they were ancient relics to him, he wanted to destroy them. They made no sense; he couldn't understand how people would like to see such fake and foolish images, when reality had plenty of exciting ones.

He spun the device up, and pointed it at the girl, who undoubtedly was not going to stand there to be shot. She had too long to watch, and Metal Man had done everything but screamed "FALCON PUNCH!!" at her before doing this. She simply leaped to the left after Metal nearly fired the device. But he saw that and fired it anyway, as the music was nearly finished with its mid-song drumbeats. A spinning DVD, its label now a blur, flew out and whizzed out of sight really quick.

But that was his intention. It boomeranged and hit his foe in the back of the head... though it was off angle, so it exploded rather than cut. Still, to the girl who had flung a grown man around like a kickball, this was irritating. She moved again... and again... and again... leaping everywhere with her insane speed. Metal Man smiled and opened fire with one DVD for every note in the main trumpet sequence of his song. He had a preponderance of ammunition, and laughed as the DVDs gave the girl paper cuts, some gashes, stab wounds, and various bruises all over her body. Once she flew at him, but he simply shot one in her face. That caffeine he drank earlier had kicked in at last--the urchin's super-speed meant nothing to him now. The song continued blaring loudly as it looped yet again.

His foe, less than impressed, picked up a VW bug and hurled it at him. But he was not miffed... rather, he laughed again. "Not that old trick again! I'm too smart to fall for that." But that's what he did. Fall. The Doppler effect caused his music's pitch to change rapidly in response to the fall.

He turned down the overworked and inefficient helicopter's speed down a tiny notch, and fell several feet at a speed fast enough to simply move under the car. It flew over his head... but he got another idea. He flew after it... and stood atop it as it flew. Here was where he was going to do something more than annoy. He put away his toy and turned on the magnets in his hand...

The vehicle was crushed somewhat flat as it crashed into the bistro Metal had earlier ordered from. Metal appeared to have been crushed under the car, but in reality, he was behind it. The girl went to take a look, curious to her foe's condition... bad idea. The car suddenly flew off the ground and crashed at her. ...And then came back up again. Indeed! The titan of steel had used rare earth magnets in his hand to control it. Greedy with this moment of victory, Metal Man brutally beat the strangely-clad experiment of a girl with the yellow old-style VW bug, to the tune of his loud Jazz music. CRACK! CRACK! BANG! DENT! SMACK! ZORT! Benny Goodman has never been so painful before. It was the first time someone had used a VW bug smacking someone else as an instrument, too--the sound of melodic crashes filled the air.

His brutal beating cracked part of the girl's skull. With another smack, her left leg became numb. A rippling pain shot across her face as the vehicle's bumper hit her there and then was ripped off by the collision. A pointy antenna was ripped across her left ear. And to add more injury to this melange of vehicular slaughter, Metal Man hurled a Jack-in-the-box antenna thing that had come loose into her face, embedding it into her forehead. He laughed and smashed one of the car's broken windows into this foe, before then kicking the car off his hand and into his foe, who then collided backwards into a big café... "Joe's Café", to be certain. He then pulled out his DVD launcher and took aim at the colossal red sign that said "Eat at Joe's".

"Eat at Joe's? I think I'd rather win at Joe's." He shot the sign with a high-spinning DVD. It cut through the thing like a tree, and flew into a window afterwards. As the sound of plastic hitting glass and exploding was heard, the sign fell atop part of the brick restaurant's wall so hard it knocked the bricks off of its top and onto the crashed debris. But the Man of Steel was not done. He took out another quarter and laughed. "Give my regards to the constitution!" He flung it at the debris. A drumbeat built up behind his attack, seemingly amplifying what was about to happen next...

There was a sound of thunder.

The entire car-and-girl assembly blew apart, as the torn up experiment was revealed again. She quickly hurled a brick at her attacker, denting his shoulder. He brushed it off. She hurled the VW back at him... he punched it mid-flight and blew it apart. She hurled the sign at him and it hit him in the head. "Ow!" He rubbed the big dent and cursed at the blood, before he brushed the dust from its impact off his right shoulder. With fire, death, and madness all around them, Metal Man marched at his foe. And his foe walked right back at him. Those annoyingly repetitive trumpets issued their challenge to Metal's foe again.

The girl did another unconventional attack, leaping at Metal's right eye with her hip, in another attempt to trick him into taking damage. However, Metal Man had his own crazy response: He whipped out a golf-club from a quick-release compartment and hit a Birdie with it--unfortunately, he hit the girl's elbow (and funny bone) instead of a golf ball. It was enough to make her miss, at which point he yelled "FORE!!" and brutally broke it at her back. CRACK! That vertebra wasn't going to be the same again. Bass and Trumpets wailed in his foe's face as he got a quick punch to the gut, but he detached his left hand and picked it up with his right, and then smacked the girl away with it. She fell back and then tried to leg sweep him, denting his left ankle. While she moved extremely fast... Metal moved in tune to his music, throwing off the timings which had caught him before. He also used the annoyingly loud music to unnerve his foe... knowing she liked things alien to this. The man moved quickly and took out a butter knife from another hidden compartment near the back of his head and stabbed it into her ankle in retaliation. The trumpets blared again!

The knife was only irritating... until the girl felt a chilling sensation. The knife was full of dry ice, and it had just injected its payload into her leg's veins, freezing them cryogenically solid. Metal Man grinned like a maniac as he pushed her away and took his butter knife back. "Don't play poker with the devil, kid. You'll get hurt." Drums echoed as he took the knife, wiped the blood off, and replaced it into the sheath. His foe hurled a parking meter at him and hit him in the head as he did this. "Ow!" He shook his head angrily. "Do you ever learn? I guess not."

The man, now at wit's end about this, took out his cell phone. He dialed a few numbers... ...and opened fire on the experiment with bullets?? Wait a minute... there was a gun component to his cell phone? He paused for a minute. "Oh, yes. On my world, the cell phones merged with guns. I still think the old ones are cooler, but... you forced me..." As if to be a contrast to Metal's futuristic technology, the recording of Sing, Sing, Sing! crackled on another loud beat. He shot some more, shooting small bullets which sent cracks into several of the urchin's bones and some of which hit her mouth, denting and cracking her teeth. Indeed, her whole body would probably feel as if it'd been paper cut a thousand times; no one wound felt deadly bad, but the entire works felt like being steamrolled by sandpaper. Metal Man's mind warped again, and suddenly it was serious time: He put the gun-phone away and stood taller. The music continued to annoy his foe... until it cut from its third repetition. It was like somebody disconnected Metal from his insanity, for what happened next...

He stared solemnly, looking somewhat remorseful for what he'd done. "Hmph. If I knew I was going to lose my mind to the tune of Jazz music today, I'd have brought less of my guerrilla weapons." He shook his head and pointed at the girl. "You may have shoved a car atop me, but I cannot hurt you any further. You must prove to me that you are more than what I keep seeing... I cannot knowingly kill someone who could not threaten me with the same force. Although some bounties may ask for such, then I will never do the killing myself." He coldly adjusted his right arm, and his helicopter blade turned back into a sword. He got into a defensive stance. "Show me what you've got." He put away his speakers, having annoyed enough people with his strange tastes in music.

He felt guilty for the damage and pain he had done... this just wasn't the same as pumelling an evil robot. Would the girl show herself to be the foe he had been told of? Or had he made some horrible mistake? His answer awaited 5 feet away from the end of that oddly striped blade of his... his slightly swollen right eye focused intently, as he listened only to the sound of his breath for what might be the last moments of peace he'd get in this fight... the peace before the storm.

[The Willful Wanderer]

I can't wait no (no) I can't wait oh when (when) are they gonna open up that door?

For a brief moment, there was a sort of an Old West style of standoff- if, by 'Old West', one meant 'technopunk/goth cross'. The now one-eyed cyborg gave a bleary but focused look at the staggered young woman a scant few meters apart from him.

With a rather irritated (only?) expression, she reached up to her shoulder and pulled out the remaining one of the DVD's that had embedded itself in her flesh- using her right hand. The strike at where her funnybone should have been was intended to render a biting numbness along her forearm, but she was using the fingers with full facility. What was worse, she was supporting herself on her frozen-blooded left leg with no visible difficulty. Gradually (for him), the Metal Man began to realize that while she might have the anatomy of a human, she apparently was not actually using said anatomy- at least, not in the usual way.

Come to think of it, as he eyed the rogue experiment, her wounds barely bled at all. What little ichor there was looked a right nasty substance, a thick blackish red goo as if half-clotted already. Curious, because she'd registered as alive- so he was fairly certain she wasn't undead, despite the apparently inoperable status of her circulatory system. While the girl's combat thus far was relatively uninteresting and fairly annoying to the bounty hunter, the fact that she was standing at all, nevermind superhumanly powerful, was becoming progressively more incredible. He had to wonder if there was some form of mysticism at work here or something to that effect.

Dropping the badly-soiled plastic disk to the street with a dull clatter, the yellow-eyed vagrant crouched low. Her hands hovered, the fingers hooked into 'claws', as she leant forwards with her feet more than shoulder width apart. In an appropriate response, Metal Man shifted his blade into a more fitting defensive position- only to be granted (again) a bit of a surprise as she leaped back across the street. Landing in front of a store faced with racks of flowerpots, she crouched again in the inset doorway.

Eight fingers stabbed down into the concrete sidewalk at a steep angle, creating a dull and slightly protracted crunching sound. Metal Man braced himself as both of the girl's arms wrenched upwards at the elbow- and she fipped up a block of the stuff, two 'squares' by two. The mass of cemented gravel rotated slowly midair for nearly half a second, time crawling as the walking surface turned to face the steelshod bounty hunter. Watching, he was curiously able to see where someone had scrawled five or six illegible letters in the mass with a fingertip before it had hardened a few years ago. But that was not what most drew his attention about the massive chunk of streetstuff temporarily in freefall. No, that honor went to the fact that it was suddenly (as many other things had this day, and as he had no reason to believe would stop happening) rocketing towards him.

There wasn't enough time to give the sigh he wanted, but the steel-suited warrior still managed an exasperated expression as he brought his blade about in a swift arc, cleaving the piece of sidewalk in half from top to bottom. Really, this was getting rather monotonous. Couldn't the girl do anything aside from throwing heavy objects?

The splitting, crumbling chunks of concrete diverted away from each other as well as the line of impact. Even as they smoothly arced down, clearly moving to smash themselves along the street and grind rubble into the face of the building behind the swordwielding technomarvel, the 'urchin' seemed to fade into view behind where the rectangular hunk had been. Naturally, Metal Man's eye didn't widen in the slightest, and he brought his sword back up in a stabbing motion at the young woman's chest, aimed perfectly to spear her heart.

Much to his surprise, she allowed this. Her momentum slid her clear down the blade, the tip and then much of the length erupting from her back in a small fountain of gore and blackened blood. Apparently unperturbed by the impalement, she then slammed her right fist into the center of his visage. The flattened mass that had been made of his nose was further impacted, indented with the prints of four round knuckle-studs with a single blow, and he could feel his brain rattling in his skull as his face became somewhat concave. Her righ tknee came up and crushed the wad of impacted metal before his kidney still further into his abdomen, and then her left hand came about and clamped down on his right bicep. Like some pneumatic vise, it tightened and tightened and tightened, crushed and moulded metal severing muscle and wire by sheer pressure.

Clinging to him tightly by that, the armor and bone of his upper arm, she proceeded to jackhammer her right hand in to his face, a mass of gristle and bone somehow rendering an utter mess out of supposedly more resilient metal, as well as the flesh beneath. The front of Metal Man's jaw cracked, shattered, and then even powdered, the muscle slumping into a drooling loop below his smashed and toothless palate. And still she kept hitting, a snarl on her somewhat lacerated face, each blow stronger than the last.

Wham.
Wham.
Wham.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.
WHAM.

On the final blow in the stuttering chain, the young woman wrenched with her left hand as well, splintering the armbone as the two separated with a tearing of metal- quite forcefully indeed. The steely bounty hunter being the heavier, his arc was short and terminated in a brief skid that landed him at the base of a restaurant's facade. The yellow-eyed experiment was launched much further by the thunderous impact now that his weight did not anchor, and she crashed through a wrought-iron rack of potted rosemary and the window-display of the small emporium.

For a few moments, there was a crashing in the building, and one might well have heard several power tools being accidentally set off. Then, all was quiet briefly.

A rather consonant-lacking groan sounded from the slack fleshhole of the bounty hunter as he clambered to his feet, unbalanced by the loss of most of the weight of one arm. She'd just crushed his face! Nevermind the arm, she'd de-jawed him (and his remaining eye barely opened at all now)!

Straightening up despite the blood flowing from the crushed foreparts of his skull, the Man of Steel glared at the... hardware store? A moment's thought was spared to notice that there was a gas station the next lot over, and then he was back to glaring past the 'Grand Opening' banner into the poorly-lit interior of the building.

A green, rolled up outdoor sleeping bag whistled out the broken window much too fast for his liking, so he sidestepped it as it smacked against the brick behind him, exploding into a burst of duck feathers. Quickly following was a flashlight- of the five-pound hand torch variety- and he dodged back the other way to let this powder itself in the process of knocking a brick loose in two parts.

There was a brief hail of almost uncountable pliers seemingly unaimed from the store, most batted aside by his remaining hand, though one needle-nosed pair stabbed itself into his left thigh handles-first. An uneven spinning noise heralded the arrival of a hacksaw, which he caught by the handle, raising one gorey eyebrow as he noted the monogramming on its blade. The five coils of garden hose that followed were weaved about with an irascible expression on the remnants of his face. He seethed as he started slowly advancing across the street. Why was she just throwing crap?

A series of socket wrenches stuttered forth, vibrating his parrying hacksaw completely out of his grip, and a large purple sign he didn't bother to read was deflected by a brief magnetic surge. Which was when things got hairy- It seemed like the girl was throwing the entire contents of the store at him piece by piece in a withering hail of utility.

Allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters,
trash compactors, juice extractors, shower rods and water meters,
walkie-talkies, copper wires, safety goggles, radial tires,
BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers,
picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters,
paint removers, window louvres, masking tape and plastic gutters,
kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables,
hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles,
pesticides marked 'fumigation', high-performance lubrication,
metal roofing, water proofing, multi-purpose insulation,
air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors,
tire gauges, hampster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors,
trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers,
tennis racquets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers,
soffit panels, circuit breakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers,
calclulators, generators....

An absolute plethora of random objects, in a phrase. They came flying at him in near-uncountable numbers, causing him to suspect that something was seriously wrong with the store itself, forget the girl. The building behind him had been nearly pulverised by the veritable flood of utility objects and as he finally dropped the mangled and sheared-off shower rod he'd used to parry much of the storm (aside from a few smaller objects now embedded in his armor), he gave a gurgling sigh and stepped into the hole in the sidewalk.

A set of matching, cow-patterned china salt and pepper shakers shattered on his forehead, exploding into a powdery hail of shards, and his left eyebrow twitched.

What.
The.
Hell.

In a way, he was actually happy when the girl emerged from the shop, even if it was with the intent to bludgeon him with a ten foot long, six foot tall set of aluminum shelves. At least it meant she was out of random **** to throw at him.

Ducking the leading, horizontal swing of the improvised weapon, he noted that his right arm was now missing entirely from sight. His opponent seemed unnaturally unperturbed by the rather significant void in her ribcage, even if the severed muscles were making her movements stiff and her breathing was kind of moist.

This, Metal Man figured, could get rather long.

The shelves came down with a loud crash on the spot he'd just backpedaled out of, crimping together from impact even as they dug into the underlaying soil. A few more horizontal swipes were taken, forcing him to scoot back a bit further as he decided how to handle this particular situation- and then she simply tossed the things over her shoulder and back into the shop with a clattering crash of metal and glass. Darting forehands, she brought the fight around again to barehanded melee (as much as one could call a cyborg and someone with studded leather gloves barehanded). A driving right punch was parried by the one-armed man, but his attempt to stab her in the shoulder with his severed and pointed stump was foiled by her abrupt spin into a completely ungraceful but rather ridiculously powerful roundhouse kick that launched him through the air to land embedded in a metal guard-gate, a rather sizeable dent in the left side of his ribcage. Whatever the shop was, it had apparently been abandoned and was not yet rented again- which was fortunate, because here the yellow-eyed girl came again in what looked like it was about to be a body slam.

[Metal Man]

So it's come to fun with fonts, has it?

The man uttered something that could not be heard. He pointed his left arm at the yellow-eyed being, and muttered some more... but it was no use. He shook his head, and stood there... an ominous quiet surrounded him. His tattered orange scarf blew in the breeze as he saw the girl fly at him with her next attack. He stood there as she hit.

CLANG!!!

She hit him full on... ...he was still standing there. So full of rage, so... angry... so full of adrenaline, that he had near twice his normal strength. The girl flinched slightly in surprise, and went to counter-attack... ...but the man shoved her away. He then cracked his neck into shape, and noisily pulled out a strange gun. It was like several tubes of coins stuck together; an impeccable confusion of currency with weaponry. It was a brown dullness, a paper gun. Was Metal Man just like that? Not even a paper tiger, but a paper gun? He smoothly pointed it at the girl. Once again, he mumbled something, but because most of his face and jaw were gone, nothing was heard. His wraith-like breathing increased, and his remaining eye squinted. He pulled the cheap plastic trigger.

BANG.
It was a dull thud, of coin stabbing into flesh. It made a ripply cut, and dug slightly into whatever his foe had for skin. But, otherwise, it was nothing much to worry about. Then again... before Cora could react, another one shot just above her right eyebrow. She went to remove the one which had stabbed into her left shoulder, but Metal Man fired quickly enough that a coin stabbed the back of her right hand. This girl expected Metal Man to attempt to talk again, to perhaps speak of honor; but there were no words as he advanced on the girl, firing an entire bus payment box's worth of coins into the fleshy, squishy foe he had.

He silently reloaded as the sheer pain from each blow caused his foe to drop onto her knees; and painfully at that, as he had shot several into those, too. Indeed, there were coins jutting out of every single place where this thing that pretended to be human should have had veins. But this being was no human; it stood up, and made to leap. Metal Man did nothing, though. He just stood there as she ran at him with a stolen bench.

She was going to decapitate him, he thought. He scratched where his chin should have been as a girl and her table flew at him at record-breaking speeds. It was red; it had chipped paint; it was made of wood. Metal bolts held it together. He thought it was a bit poorly made, as it flexed from the amount of acceleration that Core was giving it. Indeed, he picked his left ear with a messed up left arm. The table soon came within an inch of what used to be his nose.

BANG... BANG.BANG-BANG-BANG...BANG... BANG...

BANGBABABABABABABABABABABABAOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM..
FWOOOOSH!!!!

The girl was blown backwards, with her bench... by the entire front of her body, and the arteries the coins had pierced into, exploding. The coins, set to explode starting with the weakest to the strongest, created a rippling effect; the most powerful had been shot deep into her body, creating flesh-rendingly bad damage. Two, positioned near critical bones which held the front of one's face together, had basically collapsed those cheekbones. Rather than detach her jaw, though, a crucial set of coin-bombs in her chin and at the sides of her neck drove it (and the teeth attached to it) inwards, to the extent it was choking her and stabbing the roof of her mouth.

Her collarbone vanished in the explosion; her rotator cuffs were knocked out of joint. Her fingers had exploded, with her thumbs all but ripped off entirely. Each one of her ribs detonated in order, alongside a cascade of blood vessels. Indeed, her hips were ripped asunder, as was her kneecaps, her shins, her Achilles tendons, her bloody toes too.

Metal Man had basically disassembled the experiment. For it, was a broken tool, which he had been sent to destroy. He didn't want to do this, but he had tried to give this being adequate warning. But without a mouth to warn of "impending disassembly" he had no liability for "accidentally" taking this one apart. He walked over, blowing the smoke off of his gun. He knew this thing would soon be up and try to use it against him, so he hurled it at Cora's head while she was on the ground.

He made another noise, but this, too, was obscured by his facelessness. Indeed, he had the look of some inhuman monster now, metallic implants in his face showing and keeping him alive from that massacre of an attack. But he had no more silliness to impart today. He took out a black overcoat and put it on, to help hide his disfigurements. In the ensuing moments, he took off his battered helmet, and put on sunglasses, as well as a handkerchief over his missing mouth. Thus suitably disguised, he picked up the bleeding, melting, shattered thing off the sidewalk by the neck, and looked at it.

Assuming she hadn't lost consciousness, Cora would see heartless, soulless eyes staring at her like a chunk of meat. Metal Man rarely used this look, but his blue eyes were so violently contracted that they could nearly be seen through those sunglasses. If one had a name for it, it could be a "Stare of Judgment." Metal Man thought silently... in her eyes, he saw the scientists who had tortured him. Beings similar to himself, but worse; in his eyes, a look of being trapped could be seen, whereas hers seemed to be laughing at him. He walked to a ruined, rusted white semi and shoved her into its grill so hard that it partially impaled her midsection.

The man turned away, disgusted, and then collected his missing arm. It was only partially flesh, and he could put it back on, but he had a new use for it now. He turned, and hurled it at Cora like a harpoon. It stabbed her in the midsection as the truck had; indeed, it would be staying there. The man then turned around again, silently. He walked up to the tall, 15 foot semi's door. He ripped it off, hurling it behind him. It crashed into the wrecked mess of the café, knocking coffee machines everywhere. It seemed to bleed brown with glass flecks.

He sat in the old red cushion and hot wired the truck with one hand. Its computer worked enough for him to do a complex series of calculations.. indeed. They flashed before his inner mind like all the other calculations in this fight. While his foe tried to move again, he finished his programming. All he had to do was cross-wire the computer to the ignition... but he hesitated. He wondered if it was truly right to kill something, even if it had the intent to do the same to him. Indeed, he nearly came to an epiphany... but then a shiny piece of metal caught his attention. It had been sterilized by the fire, and... looked half-decent.

He ripped it from the truck, and jammed it into shape with his one hand. It was painful, as all reality is, and if anything added to his mouth damage; but he could speak, barely, and his face was less deformed. Still, he redid the handkerchief after the operation was done. No teeth and a cut up mess of a mouth looked bad, even though he had a good idea of surgery.

He then went back to his thoughts... but the epiphany was lost forever. Something else blocked it. He thought... then the anger came back. This girl had committed the unforgivable sin of damaging his face. She could chop off his arms, stab his brain, break his neck, and back, even behead him... but to damage his face meant horrible, terrible death.

He ripped the two wires from below the truck's dash and stuck them together. He turned the clutch and put it into gear, breaking off the clutch in the process. It was large, and straight, so he jammed the gas pedal with it and broke the pedal off the brake pedals. He took it with him as a souvenir and quietly ripped off the passenger door and left the truck.

When he turned his back, the truck roared to life. The girl had nearly gotten free, but the hot water of the radiator was burning her now, and the truck drove suicidally at a brick wall moments after she ripped the arm of Metal Man away. It landed to the side with a hollow clunk. Ironically, she had saved it, at the cost of her own safety. She went to jump... but only managed as far as at the brick wall. And then the truck slammed into it... and...

KER-BOOOOOM!!!!

Metal Man drank a stolen bottle of whiskey as it rained flaming truck pieces... the flaming experiment landed somewhere nearby, face-down, on fire, through the roof of a cheap office building. The man of steel saluted the crash with another drink... the crystal container of the whiskey now half-gone, he hurled the remnants up and into where his foe had fallen. It exploded, and the smoke from the building she had crashed intensified. Metal Man cackled to himself as he left enough money to not only repay the whiskey, but buy the owner of that shop a brand new car.

Knowing that break time was over, and that he'd probably lose a few more parts of his body to unfortunate plier-related incidents, the man simply stepped away... odd... he was completely drenched in something. He stood before the building where his foe had crashed, and kicked in the brown press board door; it crumpled, revealing a flaming mass, ceiling tiles, and wildly swinging light fixtures. He stood tall, and then lit himself on fire with his lighter, facing his opponent as if he was flaming demon. Having controlled the fire on himself effectively, it did not burn any of his flesh, but instead harmlessly burned atop his armor.

He pointed at his foe, and not only did he speak, but he did so angrily and with a harsh, metallic grating.
"You cannot grab me while I'm on fire, soulless monster!"

[The Willful Wanderer]

This is Madness.

"You say."

The voice was still hoarse, slightly grating. But it was also still there. Despite the cramming of her jaw up against her skull and destruction of much of her skeleton, the girl still stood up. The shredded, scorched mass of her flesh could not possibly have drawn itself upright, but it did so anyways. The marble floor was cratered under her feet, crumbled like so much carrot cake from the impact and smeared with clotted ichor and gobbets of flesh.

And still she stood up.

A ghostly, ethereal glow seemed to be coming from her now, like foxfire from a marsh. In a way, it held match to the flickering, biting flame that surrounded the Metal Man as he stood, remaining arm outstretched. Despite all the damage, in defiance of the ruination that was her body, the young woman stood upright, taking a much taller stance than she had before in the brutal brawl. And her eyes glowed a brilliant gold, startlingly unmarred by that which had desecrated the remainder of her body.

The cyborg frowned as best he could with his own mangled visage, as the bioelectric field the vagrant had- just as any other living being- amplified. Glowed. Solidified.

"You are not human." He stated, advancing again with a steady walk.

"I have always been human." She returned, taking one step forwards.

"You have never been." The mercenary grated, now running straight at her.

"Blind idiot." Her mouth didn't move anymore, but the words still came. She took another step forwards.

The Metal Man glared a bit more than he already was. For an instant there, like a layer of film slipping its reel, the experiment had seemed to be a solid fifteen feet off to the left from where she really was- and then she was back. She was playing with it- with the fight. She thought he'd be taken in by tricks! He reached out his left hand towards her face in a dashing grab-

For the briefest moment, the office building was inside out, and the two stood facing apart from one another in the sky, her hair and his arm dangling down towards the ground as they floated inverted. The air tasted very squishy. There was a burst of static and-

-He was flying out the front hall again, shattering glass with his back as he tumbled out into the street. He had been on fire, set to sear her flesh into charcoal, and she had grabbed him with fingers that were no longer there and spun. So quickly, the motion, that he had no time to process it, the girl using the bounty hunter's own momentum against him. Ghostly white tendrils of what seemed like flame but did not burn clung to him as seaweed to driftwood- but only for a few moments. Torn free by the speed of his motion, the bits of luminescence dissipated into the air.

KLANGGGgggg....

A new indentation ran the length of the Metal Man's scalp, and his vision blurred for a moment. When it cleared, he found himself on his back, staring up at the painted octagon as if the stop sign had leant down to get a look at the one who had come crashing into its support. A moment was spared to consider the thing- a white-rimmed eight-sided shape of steel, with red throughout the main face, excepting the white text. Only.... he had his black-and-white filter on? For some reason, the sign spoke only in gray- paler or darker, but gray alone it used to say....

!

Ignoring the sense that something was wrong with that declaration, he set about getting himself up again.

---------------------------------

She stalked forwards. The enemy had been sent out through the glass, destroying it and sending the small metal doorhandles flying. Her body was a mass of pain- even moreso than usual- but that would not stop her. She would not let it. She hadn't let herself die when they'd kept cutting her open (why had they continued to do that? Wasn't she a good girl? Hadn't she done enough yet?). Nor when they'd wrenched open her ribcage and removed that strange pulsing thing from her.

The dripping creature repulsed her, with its four mouths and throbbing shape. She was glad it was gone- they had all smiled at her over that. They didn't give her anything, but she didn't need it. Just to know that they were all happy.

Reaching up with one hand, she brushed a few locks of cobalt-blue from her face. (Blue? Wasn't her hair black? And why was it moved by a mass of glow? Those should have been fingers.) She moved forwards again, first a slow step-by-step. He was still there, she knew. He wanted to destroy her. He wanted to make her stop being.

That was Not Permitted.

There was a brief burst of 'snow' as from a television screen.

REALITY COMPROMISED

It was not said, it was not written, it was not thought. It was there, all the same.

THE CLOWN(?!?) HAS BEEN ENGAGED

**khhhhhhk**

She had no idea what it meant. She didn't *care* what it meant. He had attacked her, had tried to kill her. She wasn't going to die. Was going to stop him. She knew she was going to keep hitting him until he stopped getting back up.

CORRECTION: THE CORA HAS BEEN ENGAGED

Another burst of snow cleared the odd shifting lines from reality.

And she was out the door. The glow that limned her, the brightness that glared from her eyes, did nothing to her vision at all. She paid her body no mind- it would keep working as long as she moved it. Fingers no longer flesh, feet no longer bone, lengths of bone shattered to spillikins and joints rendered into ground chuck- all of these moved, functioned as if still whole. She knew no laws of physics, nor of her body, and thus.... surpassed.

Across the street she skimmed, hashed lower limbs not flailing, but running- coherently- along the tarmac. The half-ruined cyborg was spotted and the world went slightly slaunchwise, redirecting her from 'off to the left a bit' to 'head on collision course'. Even accounting for the motions of her legs and body, the entire world seemed oddly... jittery. The edges of reality were surrounded by a million translucent butterflies shifting this way and that as direction bent.

Cora's fist slammed into the small of the Man of Steel's back, as she somehow was charging from behind him without once changing direction- or even traversing the spaces in between. The girl paused then, brilliant-gold eyes blinking. Clearly, she was every bit as surprised by this change as he, though she was not similarly arcing through the air towards the face of an office building. Shrugging it off, she ran straight for him, catching up moments after he impacted- with an elbow rush.

Brick, already crumbled, simply powdered outright, and a somewhat roundish hole was punched in the building where the bounty hunter had traveled through it. Several interior walls began crumbling even as he sprawled out on the far street, flaming form streaking melted blacktop across its back. Almost immediately, he flipped to his feet, glaring at the golden-eyed experiment through the space in the building- and then, suddenly, not.

The briefest of flickers preceded a step-that-wasn't, a single motion of one foot that somehow brought Cora from one side of the structure to the other through the holes, in total defiance of her length of stride or speed.

Raising his [strike]hand[/strike] assault rifle (?), the cyborg unleashed a hail of hollow-tipped death, punching dozens of holes in his adversary and throwing her back against the crumbled brick and plaster of his exit. The clip failed far too quickly, perhaps jamming, and he hauled back the weapon to fling it when it simply ceased to be.

Rising once more, heedless of the gaping void in her ribcage through which her severed spinal cord could be seen, Cora drew a deep, grating breath. Metal Man's mind twisted slightly at that- he could see the remnants of her lungs- leaving him open for a moment as-

**ksssshhhhhkk**

-and she stepped into the blow, the left side of her scalp peeling off from the cyborg's punch.

SKLTCH

Her return strike stabbed her left fist through his right lung, bits of bone and armor spraying out the back of his torso along with a rather unhealthy amount of blood. He convulsed slightly for a moment, an automatic reaction that he would have wished to control, to rein in so that his fist could once more rain down- but the limb (now composed more of that odd, smoky white glow than of flesh) retracted immediately, and a boot-that-wasn't slammed into his face, knocking him clean across the street (again) and in through the display window of a gun shop.

Grasping, his hand found an AK-74 which

the film slipped again

wasn't there. Another grab produced a pump-action shotgun, but it was ripped from his hand as fingers now more concept than reality dug into the front of his skull.

And then he was airborne again, flying out of the shop, across the street and into-

flik

-out of the window of the building and across the street and-

flik

-over his opponent's grasping translucent left hand to plant himself facefirst into the upper face of the hardware store building. For a few moments he stuck there, then the plaster crumbled and he was dumped onto the top of the awning.