2840/WMAT CQ1 T-elos vs Sarah

WMAT CQ1 T-elos vs Sarah
Date of Scene:	18 August 2015
Location:	WMAT Arena - Northern Mountains
Synopsis:	A WMAT qualifiers match between a deadly android and a powerful Runebearer! What could go wrong?
Cast of Characters:	316, 785
Tinyplot:	WMAT 2015

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Sarah (316) has posed:
The Northern Mountains are cold, but it's an arena that Sarah has come to like over the years. The presence of alpine lakes create a small but useful advantage for her, and while she's never been fond of overly mountainous or cold terrain, there is a certain rugged beauty to this place. It's remote and quiet. She's always been a fan of quiet.

That probably explains why she can be found in one of the valleys beside a lake. To all appearances she stares down at the clear water as though transfixed; a slim and almost colourlessly pale woman, laughably fragile in light of the tournament. Appearances are terribly deceptive things, though. This quiet, seemingly fragile woman radiates a power far out of proportion to her weak appearance.

She also radiates a preternatural calm. Come what may, it seems to exude; unconcerned with the audience's excitement on the viewing platforms, or the action about to come. For right now, she's a bastion of calm and serenity in the midst of the tournament's high energy and spirits. Her greatstaff leans gently against the crook of her right elbow; her right hand is clasped in her left, the thumb of her left hand absently rubbing at a mark over the top of her right hand.

For now, she waits, eyes half-closed as she stares into the pool of clear water -- alert, but seemingly inattentive. Some prepare by practising manoeuvres, equipping themselves, or maintaining their equipment.

Sarah of Crystal Valley practises for a pitched battle much more simply, and that is to find a nice, quiet spot and clear her mind.

T-elos (785) has posed:
In complete contrast to Sarah, T-elos has never been to the Northern Mountains before. She did not bother to go to all of the arenas before her matches and this is one of the ones she missed.

She's seen pictures, of course - it may be remote, but years of WMAT use have ensured that there are so many pictures and videos of the area typically used for combat that she could have made a rough map out of what she saw. It's not quite the same, but it will do.

But she hasn't come to like the place. T-elos has no particular opinion of it except that it is remote and, aside from the city visible in the distance and the crowds loading up the viewing platforms, largely uninhabited. The planet she was constructed on had places like this. She'd never been.

In another contrast, she isn't that calm. She's excited. T-elos has not fought this person before, but she's been informed that she drew a tough match. She found herself eager to find out. That's why she entered the WMAT, after all; she had no master plan, no grand strategy. She wanted to fight, and maybe be recognized for doing so. Maybe that makes her simple, but T-elos knows what she enjoys, and she was - quite literally - made for this.

She drops. T-elos had apparently been concealing herself on the underside of one of the hovering viewing platforms, nestled in there; she drops a couple hundred feet like it was no particular distance, landing on her feet, and strolls out with her heels making surprisingly little noise on the rocky mountainside. She is aware this is making the cameramen on that platform work for their pay to actually get her in focus.

"Are you going to look at the lake forever?" T-elos' voice breaks - well, it's not silence. Crowds make noise even if they aren't actively cheering yet. But her voice carries over them, strident until she lowers it again. "I suppose if you'd rather go nature-watching..."

Sarah (316) has posed:
The pale woman shows no sign that she senses the anticipation rippling through the audience, but she does raise her head. The movement is so faint it could be missed, setting her jewelled earrings to clinking softly, turning to face T-elos in the same movement.

Sarah says nothing at first; merely tilts her head, ever so slightly, studying the... no, she isn't human. That much is blatantly obvious to her senses and to the True Rune.

"You would not understand," she says simply. Her voice is soft; almost whispery, without quite being an actual whisper. "I will not bother to explain to you. You are T-elos, then." It's a statement, not a question, one of quiet satisfaction. "I have been waiting for this match. Shall we begin?"

The Runebearer shifts her grip on her greatstaff. It's a pretty thing, wrought of polished ebonwood and bright silver, claws clasping a large crystal sphere at its head. The silver almost forms a petal pattern. It, at least, looks more formidable than its wielder.

T-elos will receive precisely thirty seconds to give her answer. The instant those seconds are counted, Sarah moves with startling suddenness; snapping a command in a language eons dead and stepping aside, swinging her greatstaff. She's too far away to have any hope of striking T-elos, but that doesn't seem to be her intent.

A large shadow falls over the combat android and the Runebearer both.

That's because there is quite suddenly a large wave hurling itself at T-elos from the lake. It's a fairly big wave, too, meant to knock down and crush; but Sarah, curiously, makes no move to get away from it. Indeed, the water parts and flows around her as though a magnet repelling iron filings.

In the midst of the roaring water, the pale woman smiles.

"I do in fact enjoy watching nature. Water has many things to tell us, if we would only but listen to it."

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos doesn't feel human, no - she feels like something related, but definitely not the same. Like an artificial sketch of a human, but one that the designers didn't know how to properly finish, and so just got it into a state that could run. Spiritually, she feels incomplete, an artificial mind with a hollow spirit.

She also has a tendency to stare right back when she's being looked at - stare, and scan, which is enough for her to detect the power of the Runebearer, if not make sense of it beyond seeing it exists. Her lip curls up slightly. It makes her look cruel, not happy.

"I am T-elos," she agrees. "And /you/ must be Sarah." She seems interested in the other woman now in a way she wasn't before. "If you want to lose that badly, I suppose I shouldn't disappoint. Apparently I have fans now."

The appointed time comes about two thirds of the way through Sarah's wait. T-elos is moving by then, but the water outspeeds her, crashing down as T-elos lets out a surprised bellow. It slams her against the stony ground, carrying her down the mountain as it impacts the ground and spreads. T-elos is nowhere to be seen for a moment.

It can't be that easy.

And it isn't; T-elos leaps out of the water, trailing droplets behind her, as soon as she gets her feet on something solid instead of being washed away. She has her pistol in her right hand and she fires it even as she arcs through the air; she doesn't /really/ fly, as it turns out, but each jump carries her a good hundred feet back up the mountain toward Sarah, and each jump has enough time for her to fire a couple shots, each one causing a pink flash of energy that discharges a terribly solid bullet.

Apparently the sucker-punch (sucker-wave?) made her angry. Even if it was completely legal (and it was; T-elos was trying to get close enough to Sarah to stab her when it happened) she doesn't like being made a fool of, and being washed down the mountainside counts.

Sarah (316) has posed:
Water is the magician's specialty, and that is what she senses -- and what T-elos has in her body is coolant, antifreeze, and stranger things she can't name; things that do not belong in a human or organic body. T-elos feels alien to the True Water Rune's senses; and to the memories of all of its past bearers, spanning generations into the dim antiquity of her world.

"Hmmm." It's a quiet sound of both acknowledgement and mirth, as though the idea of losing so trivially amuses her. She shifts her grip on the greatstaff, even as the water does its work, washing T-elos over the cliffside in a torrent of supernaturally-charged water.

She lifts her chin as her opponent comes surging out from the wave, unsurprised. She had heard T-elos was strong; to have overtaken the combat android so easily would have aroused her suspicions. What she didn't expect was such a quick recovery.

Those colourless eyes immediately narrow at the sight of those pistols. While not intimately familiar with how such machines work, firearms being the specialty of the Howling Voice Guild, she does know their danger in skilled hands. No sooner has T-elos leapt to altitude than Sarah raises her staff, snapping off another command and hunkering slightly behind what appears to be a barrier. Pressurised water, to look at how the light passes through it; fortified here and there with ice, to look at how the rounds crack and shatter against it. Such a barrier must cost her dearly; sweat beads on her forehead as her shoulders hunch, throwing ever more power into the shield.

And then, with a sidestep, a flourish of her staff, and another command in that liquid quicksilver tongue, the shield simply explodes; into shards of deadly-sharp, high-pressure ice.

T-elos (785) has posed:
There's some water in there. But mostly not. T-elos has biological parts... but they're artificially reconstructed, so intertwined with nanomachines that it's almost impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts, and don't make up her entire body. Some parts are missing, simply replaced with something else; other parts are changed, and changed drastically, to do what she needs them to. Some are simply added, things no human has an equivalent for. She does not have the same life processes as a human. You couldn't reasonably call her one, though you could call her alive. But again... an artificial sketch, not quite the same as what it describes, not entirely complete.

It is certainly alien to the True Water Rune.

T-elos lands after one of her jumps - on a tree, which she balances on the branches of for a split second. It's enough to shelter her partially from the spray of ice and water, but not enough; icicles pierce her armoured suit (such as it is; she's a little underdressed for a mountaintop battle) and her skin. Blood, or something like it, trickles from a visible wound on her face.

T-elos reaches up a hand to it like she didn't know it could happen. It gets on her gloved fingers. She looks at it in momentary surprise before her hand clenches into a fist.

"Interesting," she says, but the word covers anger more than actual interest. She's been wounded before, in the Multiverse - but never in a one-on-one battle, for the simple reason that she's never had one. And not with ice.

T-elos returns her pistol to its thigh holster and swings herself on the tree branch. She goes around once, twice - and then throws herself off it, using momentum to get the rest of the way to Sarah. It's not as far as it was before and this time she has the spinning wind-up on her side.

She comes in with a two-footed kick, trying to slam into Sarah before she can bring up another one of those shields. She springs off (either off Sarah, the shield, or the ground, she's not picky) and tumbles, trying to get uphill from Sarah so that it's harder to wash her away. She is less amused now. The crowd can probably tell; she's not fighting to kill (that would get her thrown out of WMAT) but she's definitely pushing a little harder than she was.

Sarah (316) has posed:
Clutching her greatstaff with both hands, Sarah watches her opponent carefully. Agile, that much is certain; and that makes her opponent dangerous. In spite of her calm expression, Sarah is keenly alert, observing every movement T-elos makes. Observation is key in a battle of speed.

Circling warily, she shifts her grip on the greatstaff, watching as T-elos throws herself off the tree. She has only a fraction of a second to react; but that fractional second isn't enough to bring up a shield. The result is that Sarah is kicked square in the gut, sent sprawling, but her fingers grip the staff like iron. She uses the weapon to eventually stop her wild spinning, jamming the spike-shod end into a crack between two stones.

Using the leverage and momentum, she swings herself upright, studying T-elos carefully; snapping off another one of those illegible commands. A torrent of water sprays, seemingly harmless as it lances for T-elos. While it looks like it might not do damage, it's pressurised, the kind of stuff used to cut steel -- or harder things. Mostly because anywhere it touches the rock, the rock is left with a clean and extremely /precise/ score-line through it.

And it cuts /deep/. Ouch.

T-elos (785) has posed:
Agile, fast, and strong; T-elos was built beyond human parameters and it shows.

Not unstoppable, though. Sarah is showing that quite clearly; T-elos is accumulating injuries and damage from the fight. She seems to have the upper hand for a moment as she springs off, and she reaches, preparing to pull another gun.

The spray of water catches her off guard. It's too thin to knock her over; it's not a wave, it's not even a fire hose. It's just a... beam? She doesn't quite ignore it, but she doesn't pay it as much attention as she would something obviously more dangerous.

She pays for it.

The beam catches T-elos in the left hip. It hits the small plate she has there and pretty much rips it off, carving down and to the side; though it misses bone, it's still an obvious gash down her leg. It's enough of a pain to get her to stagger - not fall over, whether by design or chance, but the injury is obvious.

She is starting to realize she's underestimating her opponent. T-elos hisses. "A water witch. Interesting. But do you know how to fight without water? Or is that all you do?" T-elos lunges, ignoring the wound on her leg for the moment; it fails to buckle, though she gets a damage warning every time she puts her weight down on it.

T-elos' left gauntlet/bracer extends a blade, projecting it forward, more an extension of her arm than anything else. The weapon is dark, almost black on the inside, and edged with an unpleasant-looking dark purple; it tends to leave violet streaks across vision as she moves it, slashing at Sarah with the laser weapon. It's not a terribly powerful hit because she's aiming at the staff; she's trying to see if she can jar it out of Sarah's hands, but even if she can't the sheer force of impact is unpleasant - especially because T-elos kicks, too.

Sarah (316) has posed:
The android is slowing down, but so is her mortal opponent. Sarah is looking bruised and battered; where she holds her greatstaff with one hand, she keeps her other arm folded tight against her stomach, where she'd been kicked. She's reluctant to give T-elos the satisfaction of knowing it too blatantly, but that hurts like the dickens.

Sarah's pretty much the epitome of the 'squishy caster.' While she might command awe-inspiring powers, she's still very much fragile, physically.

"Witch?" The pale woman's nostrils flare, in a subtle expression of clear distaste, and she shakes her head. "Hardly. That is an uneducated guess. I see no harm in educating you; doubtless the information is in the Confederate systems already. I am a Runebearer. I am no witch, although I have been called that in the past; and I have never been one."

That momentary annoyance fades, though, buried deep beneath the placid surface. "You are correct; that is all I do. Rob me of that, and I may as well admit defeat."

She's taken quickly; although she twists to avoid being kicked in the gut again (because that's still very much painful), it costs her the greatstaff. The weapon is well-made, and rather than crack in two, it's sent spinning, end over end.

Sarah watches it go, and sighs a reluctant little sigh. She's going to have to go down and look for that, later. "Bother," she says, tone one of disappointment.

But she doesn't admit defeat.

No; what she does do is lift up her left hand, and the sigil of another rune glows in bright yello-white -- the Cyclone Rune, a wind rune, and in the same breath she snaps off another one of those arcane commands, summoning slashing blades of wind to assault T-elos from what seems to be all sides.

Maybe that can keep her busy; in the meantime, she risks a glance over the edge of the cliff, to see how far her staff's fallen. Pretty darned far, and it's not done yet, still spinning violently end over end as it plummets. She'll be able to retrieve it -- but not until she can distract T-elos more thoroughly and keep the android off her for a few seconds.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos can sense weakness - not out of some supernatural sense, but merely because she was quite literally designed for combat. She knows she's hurt Sarah even if she's not entirely sure how badly without popping her visor down, and she doesn't want to take the time to check while she's in melee with the other woman.

She doesn't really care what the other woman calls herself. Witch, Runebearer - she understands there is a difference, but she doesn't know what it is without looking it up. It doesn't really matter. Now that T-elos scents blood (figuratively speaking; literally speaking, she's the one bleeding) she's back into the fight. And the crowd can probably tell; she's eager.

Having disarmed her opponent, T-elos tries to follow it up. The slashing wind slows her down; it tears at her, but she plants her feet and hunkers down. She's heavier than she ought to be; heavy enough that she isn't thrown about, though the blades lash at her, tearing at her flesh. Her hair whips every direction as she retracts the blade on her left arm.

With a few sparkles, and then a flash, T-elos' arm is surrounded in violet light to the elbow. When it fades, there is /something/ there - a gigantic pincer attached to a blocky piece of equipment that covers her left arm from the elbow down.

"You may as well, then. Unless you want to get /hurt/, Runebearer." T-elos' grin is almost uncomfortably eager as she pushes through the wind, using her strength to advantage even when she's caught in her own personal razor windstorm. She swings, trying to use the oversized clamp to grab Sarah's arm, preventing her from going after the staff and crushing with the amplified strength in those pincers.

Apparently it's only strong on the compression, though, because T-elos opens the pincers a moment later, trying for another crushing grab, higher up on the arm. "Or I can crush you like a bug!" She is playing risky - going for offense instead of defending herself from magic, but then again she's not sure /how/ to defend herself from magic without just dealing with the physical effects as they come.

Sarah (316) has posed:
"I have died twice. Your threats do not frighten me," Sarah replies with a slight bow of her head. It might be a calm and serene delivery, if not for the fact that she's panting like a bellows, and holding her stomach more tightly than before; the tightness around her eyes shows her pain. "Besides which, it is illegal to kill one's opponent in the tournament."

She staggers back in an attempt to gain some distance, shaking her head as she does. "Somehow I doubt that you care--"

She doesn't have a chacne to finish; her arm is suddenly seized by that clamp. She sucks in a breath through her teeth at the pain, and again, when the clamp repeats the process. There is an uncomfortable-sounding crunch, and Sarah's face blanches -- paler than usual, somehow.

Apparently that struck a nerve, or maybe she's just desperate. With a rasp of those incoherent commands, there comes another blast of water. It's wilder, this time, and less controlled; but more powerful for its lack of direction -- a simple and desperate attempt to shove T-elos away through sheer force.

She won't complain if the combat android winds up half-drowned, though, either.

In the same breath, while T-elos deals with the water, she'll take an opportunity to reach out -- and simply teleport her greatstaff to her waiting hand, whirling to face T-elos with wariness in her eyes and a slight frown on her face. "I am no mere insect to be crushed underfoot. So sorry for you that you did not try to look up what you'd gotten yourself into. Allow me to educate you."

And again another blast of water -- mixed this time with chunks of ice; and riding the forward edge, a cloud of steam hissing like a dragon as it bears down on T-elos.

"As I told you," she snaps, voice a bit harder this time for pain, "water is a versatile thing. And perhaps I lied. It does not matter whether I carry a weapon or not," she adds, shoving the wave forward with a gesture. Arms swinging up and then violently down, she raises the entire swaying mass up, and then attempts to crush the whole mass down, right on T-elos' head. "It simply has sentimental value to me."

T-elos (785) has posed:
Sarah's blast of water caught T-elos when she was opening the pincers to try to get another grab - she's trying to get Sarah in a grip steady enough that she can pick her up by it and throw her around. She doesn't think the arm will do.

It doesn't /hurt/, precisely, but it is a sudden enough push to get T-elos to back up a step to avoid being knocked over. The pincers close again - about six inches from Sarah, slamming together with a metal-on-metal clatter.

"I won't kill you," T-elos promises, with an almost purr in her voice. "I don't need to kill you to beat you. Isn't that the whole purpose of this event?" She snaps her arm to the side; the L-DRAKE vanishes in the same lights it came from. "And I'm learning. Oh, I'm learning a lot about you, and people like you." Sometimes it's hard to remember, even for people who know her, that T-elos is so damn young.

The second blast of water is about as effective as the first - more so, in making T-elos move. It's half the impact, half a dodge; T-elos leaps backwards and goes into an extremely low crouch about ten feet back, letting the bulk of the water pass above her. She's still sprayed by water falling out of the blast, and the steam is uncomfortably hot in comparison to the environment; it's not real good for her laser emitters, either, though none of them actually entirely short out. But by then she's moving, sliding forward across the rocky slope, picking up momentum as she barrels back downhill towards Sarah, even if she's moved (unless she's teleported herself, anyway) -

T-elos remains low for the impact. It's a tripping kick; T-elos tries to slam her heel into Sarah's ankle. The heel isn't normally sharp, but as soon as it impacts (if it impacts), there's a flash of light from the gem on either side of her ankle, a small laser blade like her sword but much smaller forms into a short spike.

Sarah (316) has posed:
"No, you will not." Sarah's response is confident, but where T-elos seems to grow increasingly enraged, her regard is more thoughtful -- and just a little harried. She won't die, and the rules of the tournament forbid it, but that doesn't mean that she enjoys being in pain. In fact, her pain tolerance threshold is pretty terrible.

That leaves her with two choices; to try and win this battle of attrition, or to go on the offensive.

She regardes T-elos warily, circling with the greatstaff clutched in both her hands. Despite her long skirts, they don't seem to get in her way; accustomed as she is to wearing them. Her eyes narrow as she watches. The steam seemed to be effective against the android's joints; that, perhaps, might be a strategy to capitalise upon.

And suddenly OW BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO ANKLE.

Predictably, Sarah crumples like a string-cut puppet, with a sharp hiss of pain. At the same time, though, she lashes out with her greatstaff, attempting to ram the spike-shod end into T-elos' gut. Or what passes for her gut. Will that even do anything to her? Maybe not, but she can hope for that, at least, as she goes down.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos is working herself into a destructive rush. She's not a berserker - but she likes breaking things. She likes hurting people. And right now, she's been given a target and allowed to go after it, as long as she doesn't kill them.

It's a pleasure.

T-elos rises. Or, well, she starts to rise; the staff in her gut interferes with that. Her midsection is the only part of her with visible external armour, but - honestly - T-elos is much tougher than her outfit is. It doesn't actually provide that much protection because she doesn't need it.

The spike impacts. If Sarah is of normal human strength, she'd normally have to work to pierce deep - but T-elos was moving, and Sarah took advantage of that. The spike digs in deep enough that she can feel it against her flesh - into her flesh. She snarls, sinking back down from the impact. "Damn you! I'm going to /enjoy/ finishing this."

T-elos no longer rises after that kick. She stays on the ground for a moment, then rolls away from Sarah, tearing the spike out as she goes. She leaves blood, or something dark like blood, behind, but when she rises she's stopped bleeding - a corrective system, her cheek isn't doing it anymore either. (This doesn't mean she's healed. She hasn't. She's just not leaking anything from the cuts.)

More importantly to Sarah, the emitters all over T-elos' body are glowing. Three set to either side of her chest, two on each arm, three on each hip (though Sarah removed some of those earlier), one to either side of her head; they're all pulsing deep inside the crystals.

All of them emit simultaneously a stream of light, which forms into a ball in front of T-elos. It drifts forward, toward Sarah, before exploding in a shockwave and beam blast. It's more than just her, too; it blasts at trees around them, sending showers of pine needles, turning some of the water to steam as the lasers hit them.

Sarah (316) has posed:
Fortunately for T-elos, Sarah is of less than normal human strength, and the blow is more of a reactionary movement than a targetted attack. Otherwise, it might have been a seriously threatening attack; a literal chink in T-elos' armour.

"Struck a nerve, have I?" Sarah pants, with a cold, calm smile. "Oh, my, yes. I have indeed."

Lack of blood means little to Sarah; she can tell that there's still damage, and she seems satisfied by that. At least, she might seem satisfied by that if she weren't so busy not being struck.

That glowing probably isn't a good sign, though.

No sooner does she raise a barrier of hardened water than the light converges into a sphere, rupturing in a shockwave of lasers and concussive force; splintering trees and scattering pine needles, and sending Sarah sprawling -- she'd managed to raise a barrier, but that doesn't stop all hundred pounds of her from being sent hurtling through the air and into a particularly stout pine tree. She hits the trunk with a satisfying 'CRACK' of displaced wood, slumping to the ground as though defeated.

Not so. She rolls to the ground and pushes herself to her feet, spitting a gobbet of what looks like blood; possibly from cutting her cheek during the impact.

"Not bad," she praises, spitting again to clear her mouth. "Not bad at all."

Another swing of her greatstaff brings another torrent of water; but this time, it hisses almost immediately into steam, flash-frying and assaulting T-elos in a hissing, scalding cloud, heat waves shimmering above it. Sarah, meanwhile, stands back with her greatstaff planted, panting as she leans against it; ready to run at a moment's notice as she watches to see what happens to T-elos.

Terrible things, if she's lucky.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos is environmentally protected. She is suitable for being sent into space, underwater, or onto any planet known to the Galaxy Federation, from freezing cold to literally boiling. She can do all of these without additional exterior equipment, except for mobility purposes - but for pure survival, she's fine.

That doesn't mean she's invulnerable to them. And the sudden changes are the worst: she can handle a steamy, smoky environment. She could stand on Venus, though she might want some anti-acid coating. But she can't do it all at the same time; the sudden shock of the change is enough to cause damage, tough as she is.

The steam causes T-elos to recoil reflexively. That saves her from getting cooked, but not from getting hurt; water beads on the exposed emitters, her flesh reddens (inasmuch as it's visible through her skin tone; it certainly darkens) and unpleasant things happen in water-filled regions. Like her eyes.

To protect them, T-elos' visor drops down. It covers her eyes, locking into place and giving her a rather different view of the environment; now she's seeing in multiple spectra, with several different scans popping up as she examines the area.

"Clever." Her regard remains on Sarah, the visor giving her the impression of having one large cyclopean eye because of its shape and positioning. Something under the crystal shifts, irising like a camera focusing. "I think we've had nearly enough playtime, though; don't you?"

T-elos' holster literally pops the pistol up as if it was spring-loaded. She catches it out of the air. Now braced for the heat, T-elos walks forward, slowly advancing on Sarah through the somewhat more cleared region of the slope; she fires the pistol repeatedly and consistently. It's a six-shot revolver but she doesn't stop after six shots; the gun starts to smoke visibly around number ten, and by twelve she's had to stop firing because the barrel is starting to hiss when water touches it.

This time, she's not moving fast. But also this time, she doesn't seem like she's going to stop advancing.

Sarah (316) has posed:
Although her abilities lend her inhuman reaction times when operating in a misty or otherwise damp environment, Sarah has little experience with technology this advanced. She's able to shield a number of the shots from striking, but several of them manage to either skim past her shields, or simply punch right through the hardened, pressurised water; one shot slams into her forearm, eliciting a faint sound of pain.

It's not quite a whimper. She's too proud to whimper. But it /is/ unspeakably painful, and it sends her reeling backward, clutching at her arm and hissing in agony. As she's recoiling to protect her arm, another slams into her side, bringing her to reel backwards.

But she doesn't stop. Where T-elos possesses something of a berserker's rage, the Runebearer is a cold, inexorable sort of fury; slow to build and slow to release, but the kind of which can move mountains when galvanised.

"Quite enough," she agrees, but there's a hard edge to, and a catch in, her voice. "I must say, this has been a most educational experience."

Abruptly, a sharp gesture of the greatstaff recalls all of the steam and mist hanging about the area.

More of it begins rising from the ground. Thickly; like a cold, wet winter morning. It boils up, and then, with another sharp command from Sarah, it freezes. With another final command -- it /bursts/, glittering shards sent lancing in every direction. Hopefully some among those hundreds of thousands of shards find their way to T-elos, too.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos's cruel smile grows when she lands a hit with the revolver, and then a better one, but she doesn't rush. She takes her time. She's not playing around but she's not rushing either; she's going more for constant, inexorable. With the gun smoking, T-elos fires it one last time and then puts it back in the holster, where it begins to cool down almost immediately.

It's probably a mistake. Sarah does have time to react before T-elos gets there at a steady pace, and react she does. Mist starts to rise; T-elos walks through the winter fog, letting it swirl around her legs, then her torso as it rises. If that's the best she can do now, it's hardly worthy of her time. Sarah can't hide in it; with her visor down, T-elos has senses that can penetrate it like it didn't exist.

Unless, of course, there's more water magic involved. That's always a factor.

The ice, though - that shouldn't be a surprise but it is. T-elos realizes it when rime starts to form on her metal plates; thigh, hip, bracer, holster. It's /cold/, and she snarls, starting to move faster so that some of it is dislodged. "Enough of this - "

The ice explodes.

Sarah doesn't have to worry about hitting T-elos with the shards. It would be hard not to, given some of them are forming on her metal; they rip into her, some spikes penetrating and others tearing across and ripping but not lodging.

There's so many of them that T-elos is almost pinned in place for a moment, as the metal sides of her boots are freezing to the ground. She shatters herself free with a sound like a frozen river cracking when someone walks on it, then a thousand tiny tinkling sounds as smaller pieces of rime and ice fall. Some of them are red-stained.

T-elos has never fought a wizard, a witch, or a Runebearer before. Magicians surprise her, and she doesn't like being surprised. Taking two steps, T-elos begins to skate across the icy rocks, leaning back slightly so that she slides on her heeled boots. Her balance is incredible, even injured.

"Do you think that's going to stop me?" she roars. T-elos has a new gun in her hand - actually, on her hand, formed around her left hand and sleekly continuing from the elbow. The weapon is as big around as her upper arm is, and when she fires it, the shell detonates in an explosion. The recoil is enough to stop her forward skate, her heels squealing as she ends up locked in place for a moment. If the shot hits a tree instead of Sarah, the trunk explodes into splinters, sending branches flying - it's not a weapon of mass destruction, but it's not weak, either.

Sarah (316) has posed:
A flick of the greatstaff clears some of the ice shards away, once the damage has been done; Sarah strides forward through the maelstrom, calm and inexorable as a glacier. She is looking worse for the wear, considerably so, but she has no intention of admitting defeat.

'I have died twice,' she had told T-elos, and she had spoken truly; not simply that she had come close, but that she had in truth fully ceased to be, and only through the mystery and strangeness of the multiverse had she come back from that threshold. A little pain doesn't frighten her, not in the scope of that.

Besides which, this tournament has become a yearly tradition. Even if she doesn't win, she will do as she always has, and conduct herself with dignity and elegance. She is the bearer of a True Rune and, although there are times she may have wished she weren't, that has to count for something.

So she strides forward through the ice, untouched by the maelstrom, and she meets the combat android with her head held high.

"No," she agrees, voice soft as ever. "I do not. But I think that it will slow you down, and that is all I require--"

Whatever else she has to say is swallowed by an explosion, and only quick reflexes saves her from becoming as splintered as the trees around her. She calls up a shield, cowering momentarily behind it; wincing as debris is sent skittering and glancing across its surface. The mere act of calling up a shield is exhausting, but it was a choice between draining her already-flagging energy reserves, or winding up like that tree... well, she'd rather exhaust herself.

No sooner does she throw the shield aside than she immediately counters, summoning another lash of high-pressure water. This time she targets T-elos' hands and arms, trying to disable her, and disarm her in the most literal sense.

T-elos (785) has posed:
The L-CANNON probably wouldn't have done that to Sarah. (Probably.) It's not exactly never-lethal weaponry, but it's certainly well within the range of things people are allowed to use in the WMAT. She's not trying to kill Sarah, not really.

She /is/ trying to hurt her, though; that's a little different.

T-elos leaves the L-CANNON active, which at least means that Sarah is not likely to get stabbed immediately; with it in place, she can't pop out the L-BLADE, and though she has the little spike emitters on her feet, she doesn't have a bracer on her right hand that could possibly hold one.

She's apparently decided to hold her ground on a particularly flat chunk of rock nearish a cliff that rises behind her, one that's surrounded by the odd tree and a lot of scree. She doesn't even move off it when Sarah lashes out with high-pressure water. "You're not going to slow me down like /that/ - "

Well, she doesn't go far, at least. T-elos does try to evade without getting off her flat 'platform', and is at least slightly successful; she ducks, hunkering down to protect her arm and using her shoulder plate as a shield. Sarah starts to pry it off with the high-pressure water, but T-elos gets to keep her arm - even if she can't always keep the plate in place, and Sarah tears up the area around the plate several times as T-elos tries to reposition to keep herself safe.

In her kneeling position, T-elos also does something that is a little hard to make out. She fires the L-CANNON after switching its loadout - not directly at Sarah, because she's tired of that shield, though it may look like that when she first takes aim. It's actually aimed at the ground near Sarah. The shell hits scree and broken rock and does absolutely nothing, which T-elos is hoping Sarah reads as a miss and a dud.

About three seconds later, /then/ it explodes, sending a pillar of broken rock and debris into the air like a fountain. It starts raining down moments later, shards of rock impacting over quite a broad distance.

Sarah (316) has posed:
The pale woman approaches with the inexorable finality of a glacier; laughable, perhaps, for someone so fragile-looking. A stiff breeze looks as though it could send her tumbling end over end. Fortunately, appearances are terribly deceptive things, especially in the multiverse.

As a noted Confederate once described her, she is All the Water of the World; she carries on her right hand the very embodiment of water in its purest, most elemental form. If one might draw comparisons, it is one of the twenty-seven founding elements of her world; comparable, perhaps, to the power of a god, although she is still human. Mostly.

With the satisfaction of shredding T-elos' shoulder armour, Sarah allows herself a moment to breathe -- although she immediately throws another shield into being as the L-CANNON is fired once more. In the half-second it takes to confirm that it doesn't hit anything, she lets that shield down.

Too soon.

To her credit, her reflexes are good. She brings the shield back up to keep the worst of the debris from hitting her, although several moderate pieces still manage to cut deep. The shards leave streaks of red across her pale, pale skin; shredding into both skin and layered dress alike, drawing a hiss of pain as Sarah sucks a breath in through her teeth.

That is exquisitely painful.

No sooner has the debris settled than Sarah conjures another blast of water -- but this time, it's enough of a wave to go roaring through a canyon; all the power and fury of white-water rapids, bounding and rolling and leaping as it surges over the valley and towards T-elos, seeking to overwhelm her with raw power where finesse has failed.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos can be clever, especially when it comes to fighting. In a lot of fields she's inexperienced, but here she is in her element. That her trick worked pleases her; she straightens from the half-crouch she'd been in, rising to her full height.

Which actually isn't nearly as tall as people assume; she's about five and a half feet, and that's with heels. Pretty small, for a war machine.

Either way, T-elos raises the cannon arm again. She's sighting on Sarah, hoping that the showering rock is a distraction, and she fires - but the shot goes wide, thanks to a sudden blast of water.

'Blast' is kind of an understatement. It hits T-elos and slams her against the cliff she'd placed behind her; she manages to grip against it with her hands (unsummoning the cannon to do it) and bracing her legs, but that only means that debris picked up by the whelming wave slams into her, battering her. One of the rocks cracks her leg in a way that should have broken it.

T-elos can't even speak because her mouth is full of water. But she's heavy, heavier than a human would be, and she feels comfortable dropping into the wave and digging her feet into the ground to stay in place. She still has to crouch down to present less area to the water, and she keeps getting smashed up while she does it - but she /is/ doing it.

From the white-water rapids comes a spray of bullets. It's not the small gun this time; T-elos has summoned an almost ludicrously large vulcan-type gun that appears to be three three-barreled rotary cannons stuck together in a triangle shape; the ammunition box is about the size (and length) of her upper leg. It takes her about five seconds to go through the entire box, which ejects automatically afterwards.

Sarah gets a slightly easier time dodging it because T-elos is underwater until the rapids clear, firing out of it; as a result she's sweeping the ridiculous gatling, trying to hit /something/, rather than focusing her fire on one target. The bullets that aren't going towards Sarah tear into trees and ricochet wildly off stone; there is a momentary pause as T-elos shoves another ammunition box into it and repeats the process, sweeping the opposite direction this time.

Sarah (316) has posed:
All that shielding is starting to add up. The Runebearer is beginning to look more than a bit ragged around the edges and a thin trickle of blood from her mouth is tracing its way down her chin; her nose also seems to be bleeding, a little.

Shields take tremendous power to call into being, and they take even more energy to sustain under pressure. Where she lacks the energy, the True Water Rune will demand its price all the same; from her own body, if it must. Never mind that conjuring such volume of water also exacts its price.

No sooner does the water sweep away T-elos than there are bullets spraying forth from the water, which Sarah is pretty sure isn't supposed to happen. Once more she calls forth a shield, but not before several rounds find their mark, grazing past her, chipping stone around her, or finding their mark in her unprotected arm. That draws her to bare her teeth in pain, hissing again.

The shield holds, though it seems to cost her almost more than simply taking the bullets might have; the trickle of blood from her nose and mouth grows visibly, and there is a hollowness beneath her eyes. Her eyes themselves seem bright; almost fever-bright, as though she were holding herself together purely through willpower.

Well, that's not entirely a lie. She may seem weak, but willpower counts for much, particularly for the bearers of True Runes. A weka-willed person would be consumed by the rune; unable to resist its pull and its lure, or perhaps drawn into conflict and war that the runes draw about them like iron filings to a magnet. Sarah weathers the storm of bullets, though, and though she staggers once the bullets stop, she manages to keep herself upright with the help of her greatstaff.

And then she starts to speak.

Whatever words she may be saying are lost to time; the twisted, liquid, quicksilver tongue of the long-dead Sindar. Roamers and wanderers, drifters and dreamers, they were the unquestioned masters of magic and runes in her world, so potent in their craft that even thousands of years later, some of their creations have still survived... and the pale woman, the fragile soul with the might of the ocean behind her, is descended of them.

Whatever she's doing, she's planning something big. Words spill over themselves, here soft as silk; there sharp as steel, and always in a tone of command. The sigil of concentric circles at her right hand flares in blue-white light, even as she pauses in her incantation to cough blood to clear her mouth.

The sky darkens.

Abruptly, the sun is swallowed by sudden clouds, leaden and looming with the promise of a storm. The wind rises, cold and pitiless.

And with a triumphant note in the woman's voice, chaos erupts around her. The sky opens, and with it comes the torrent of a thousand-year flood; no lightning splits the sky, but wind howls and torrents of water are thrown in the face of her foe. Water turns to hail, and soon turns to hailstones; great lumps of ice thrown from seemingly every direction to buffet T-elos and attempt to beat her into submission.

Through it all, Sarah stands untouched, braced against her greatstaff and still chanting -- audible, somehow, even over the roar of the storm.

T-elos (785) has posed:
T-elos starts to wade through the horrible flood as it recedes. She does not reload the F-GSHOT a second time; two barrages are enough, and she releases it, letting it fall and vanish in whatever pocket she keeps her spare weapons.

"I see you, Runebearer," she says, almost sing-song, since she's no longer breathing water. Her visor slides up again, revealing her actual eyes, tinged slightly with madness - she sees the end of the battle at hand. There are probably crowd members who are looking on eagerly to see the explosive conclusion!

It is almost not explosive at all. Even inexperienced, T-elos can tell Sarah is doing something big, and she tries to clear the distance between them before she finishes. But fast as she is, she doesn't teleport or fly, and the darkened sky is all the warning she gets.

The downpour stops T-elos' approach dead. She's caught midleap and battered to the ground, sending her rolling through the very scree she blew up with a cannon shot not all that long ago and leaving chunks of armour and some flesh behind. The hail doesn't help, cracking down on her with the force of bullets. Some bounce. Others leave dents on her helmet. More would leave bruises if T-elos could bruise, or broken bones if they weren't all reinforced.

T-elos roars into the storm. Her voice is carried away by it as wind whips her hair, sending it billowing when the torrent isn't plastering it to her body. She forces herself to move through it, pushing against the onslaught, always pushing. She's hitting her own limits: they weren't kidding when they said that Sarah would be her equal, and possibly then some.

But T-elos does not like to admit defeat. T-elos will go to almost any measure to avoid it - including ignoring some of her own danger warnings.

T-elos forces her way to Sarah even as she chants. The last few meters come in a rush, and T-elos has her blade out for them; she stabs at Sarah's midsection, trying to get a solid strike with the weapon. Sweeping slashes can be intercepted by the staff; that happened once. Stabs... it's harder. Not impossible, but harder to deflect, especially with her strength behind it. She knows she's stronger than Sarah, physically; if they arm wrestled it wouldn't be a contest, that's not where Sarah is strong, and T-elos knows that well enough to try to take advantage of it.

"Yield!" she screams at Sarah, mid-stab. It's not what she wants to yell, but it's what she has to.

Sarah (316) has posed:
Yield, the combat android demands of her, but the Runebearer can't respond. Breathless and still chanting, she watches T-elos with lowered head, spitting every so often to clear the blood from her mouth. It stands out starkly against her pale skin.

Frail and quiet as she may be, Sarah is just as stubborn; willing to absorb pain and injury to avoid admitting defeat.

At the limits of her strength, Sarah doesn't even try to avoid the blade seeking her midsection; it bites deep, for she wears no armour, and the force of the blow knocks her back, but the blade arrests her from actually making a getaway. Although she tries to summon up a response to T-elos' demand, she can't; all she can do is cough up more blood, baring red-stained teeth in silent defiance.

Rime crackles and creeps up the staff she's holding. A thick coating of white cracks and creaks, sounding like breaking glass as it creeps its way up the weapon; when Sarah twitches it in T-elos' direction, more ice breaks. The storm still roars around them, but now it changes to ice -- crackling and clashing as it falls; raking and clawing at all that it hits, except for its mistress.

As the staff moves, the ice swirls in more thickly, seeking to slash and scratch and stab at T-elos. Blades of her own, it seems -- even if Sarah carries no sword.

But the storm gutters, and finally fails; blue sky shines through.

Sarah takes a staggering step forward, before crumpling in a pool of her own blood.

She manages to crack one eye open, looking up at T-elos... before coughing wetly, and managing a shaky half-smile.

"Well... fought."

T-elos (785) has posed:
There is a lot of ice.

T-elos withstands it. Not by much; she's on the verge of collapse herself even if she is not going to admit it, even if she doesn't want to accept it. It freezes around her - on her, coating what was soaked with a thin layer of rime. It crackles and pops as she moves. It seems like Sarah's final storm is going to be enough to freeze both of them - T-elos with the weather, Sarah due to impending unconciousness as T-elos drives the blade in.

But, this time, stabbing wins out.

T-elos retracts the blade. If this was a real battle, and she had the time and opportunity, she might finish Sarah. Or maybe not; sometimes her motives are a little obscure. But this is the WMAT, and the decision is out of T-elos' hands - at least, if she wants to avoid being disqualified, and also not dogpiled by every fighter within a hundred miles who can walk, run, or fly to Sarah's side. If that even kills her anyhow.

So she simply lets Sarah fall. She nearly drops herself, but forces herself back upright, ignoring the damage to her leg, her torso, her arm - everything. Not forever; she can't ignore it forever. But she can ignore it long enough to raise one arm in victory, well enough for the hovering cameramen - and the crowds on the antigravity platforms - to see it.

She does not respond to Sarah, not directly. But she doesn't kick her or anything of the sort, either - and she does not interfere with anyone coming to check on her.