Scene #683: The Chimera's Revenge

Owner	Pose
D	The blue-tinted forest is about to give way to less spectacular lands by the time Cecily comes across D seated on his cyborg horse. He is traveling in a relaxed manner, his steed's stride so smooth and easy he isn't jostled in the least, but nevertheless the ground flies by at an extraordinary rate. He is alone, for once. It doesn't bode well for him to journey alone. It wasn't so long ago he'd still be moving under Dracula's supervision, or Medusa's, but tonight, there's no sign of any handlers or protectors. If he is trusted to journey out unsupervised...how far gone is his mind? Some part of him remains disturbed by his encounter with Ainsley. He is simmering and brooding and silent, inattentive to the world around him. He gnaws on his thoughts like a dog on a bone.
Cecily	Though concerned for her ally, Ainsley's confirmation that she was away safely eases Cecily's mind somewhat. It allows her to focus on a different primary objective other than ensuring her safety. The cyborg horse's signature should be just enough of a blip on high-resolution short range radar for her to track once she's close enough and towards the edge of the crystal forest's interference. It's not her own onboard wetware she's using, but instead that of her helicopter. Her MH-60 is heavily modified, angular and sleek with radar absorbing materials and noise-reducing rotor blades. The stealthy craft swings low and wide around the tall man on the horse. She's less hiding from him and more his current allies, her wide arc around bringing the craft to land directly in his path. There's no outward show of force, the door guns bouncing on their mounts but the gunnery ports unmanned. The whine of the engines spooling down masks the sound of the canopy door opening and the vixen stepping out, bare feet treading on the ground as she puts herself in front of D. "Stop," she commands simply, looking up towards him.
D	The way D comes to a halt suggests he only does so because the road is blocked. Cecily isn't acknowledged in any way; D's gaze is fixed ahead, like he can look right through the aircraft to see the road beyond. His expression is equally fixed, lacking all emotion except the very dim suggestion he is annoyed to have his journey interrupted. If he recognizes Cecily, he does not make it obvious. Silence stretches on to the point of becoming unbearable. Finally, he answers her in a soft, laconic murmur. If emotion is color, he is as gray as it gets. "And if I choose to keep going?"
Cecily	Cecily is patient. She doesn't have need of food nor water nor sleep. So she stands, and she waits. When that murmur comes, she just shakes her head. "Then I'll keep moving to stand in your way. I want answers." She offers no force, not yet. Just concern and for the moment, concealed anger. But she's content to hold it in for now. "I want to know why. For what purpose. Why you did waht you did and continue to do so. And I won't let you pass until I have answers to what's -wrong- with you."
D	Questions. Answers. His own search for answers had only provoked his temper. Believing Ainsley to be lying in a deliberate attempt to mislead and manipulate him, he had brought his full wrath to bear, and delivered a strike meant to split her in half. Cecily's needling stirs the coals D had permitted to cool, but not go out. The same wrath used against Ainsley awakens in his icy stare like flames beginning to spark to life. It's possible he could bargain his way past Cecily without any physical conflict arising, or let his staunch silence answer her every question until her determination falters, but rather than waste his time he draws his sword in a simple, smooth motion. The pull is graceful, familiar, and done flawlessly, bearing the dark steel without any hitch in his arm or scabbard. "I am not in any mood to entertain fools." One nudge from his heels spurs his horse into a forward rush. Hooves churning across the way like rolling thunder, he rides Cecily down, intending to either spear her with his sword or crush her beneath his horse's hooves.
Cecily	"Is that all I am to you? A fool?" Cecily asks, wanting to see first hand what the man had become. And she gets her wish. She eyes the sword and the horse bearing down on her. A long, slow breath is taken as she steels herself for what is to come. "And is this what you've reduced yourself to?" her voice is soft, undertones of ire rising to the surface. The emotions she was trying to hide start to flow to the forefront as the horse gallops towards her. "So be it," she breathes. She makes no attempt to avoid the blade, only the trampling hooves. She practically throws herself onto D's weapon, letting it pierce straight through her body. Her wings burst from her back, silver forming into feathers, fingertips forming into claws as she pushes and beats the artificial appendages. Her simple aim is to get in D's face and drag him from his mount while digging in with those silvered points. "You fought beside me, and now your only wish is to harm me?" she hisses through her teeth, eyes shining behind her glasses. "You fought to bring salvation to Beli's world, and now you've put her, her people, and her home at risk. For what?"
D	The silvery wings buffet D using physical force well-suited to Cecily's anger-filled words. Like Cecily, he does not attempt to escape the wings, letting each strike deliver its concussive impact. To what purpose is not apparent right away; he even allows Cecily's claws to dig into his flesh, but why? Once dragged to the ground, his shoulders pressed hard to the soil and grass, he makes his plan clear as day. Thrusting his sword forward pushes the long blade the rest of the way through her torso, until the weapon's sweeping crossguard is almost pressed against her metal-like flesh. Wrenching his wrists clockwise turns the edge at an upward angle; then, baring his teeth in a snarl, he rips the blade up and to the right in an attempt to almost bisect Cecily. As close as she'd dragged herself, as close as she'd come in order to pull him from his saddle, his sword is almost impossible to escape. Blood runs from the wounds opened by her claws. "I do not answer to you!"
Cecily	It pierces her through, that silvered blood rushing out and soaking ground, steel, and D in the eerily cold sensation of it. She grits her teeth and clings to him, even as it's obvious what he's aiming to do. "Who do you answer to?" she hisses through clenched teeth. "What drives you to this madness that's claimed you?" She feels the sword twisting, cutting, and she yelps when it tears through her and out her side, leaving her grip weakened even as the wound struggles to close itself over with that icy, viscous fluid. "You're not the D I know..." her ears flatten against her head and her tail waves limply. Tail. Singular. Around her, silver forms rise, taking a shape that's not hers, but instead D's. There's eight of them, spread at equidistant points around the grass and dirt, almost staring the two down, judging them. "You're not yourself," one of them speaks, in D's voice. Then so do the others. "You've betrayed your friends." - "You've brought harm to your allies." - "You've brought ruin and devastation those who stood by your side." - "You sold out Beli's home to those who would see it invaded and destroyed." - "You're not the man you used to be." - "What happened to you?" - "Where do your loyalties truly lie?" They speak in turn at first, but soon the words overlap. Cecily's eyes close, the focus of holding so many forms at once with her already substantial blood loss with her 'primary' body taking its toll. "...we fought... together... We saved... so many souls... We. I trusted you."
D	Trickery. It's obvious. The figures speaking to him are as genuine as reflections in a mirror. Why, then, does he find it so disturbing? The words pour over him like ichorous poison. The questions pry at his armor, and seep into his exposed soul. Doubt corrodes his thoughts, and wakes his rage. What else is left to protect him? Ainsley had witnessed the same response. First, his eyes widen, shocked and full of understanding; then, his eyes blaze, and hatred spreads from him as an oppressive force. Cecily is close enough to experience the ghastly presence rising around him. The chill is a powerful repellent, like death itself has surrounded D in an icy mantle. His eyes shed light the same color as fresh blood, and his fangs grow long and horrible and hungry, his pallor growing so pale it's almost blue. His left hand reaches for Cecily's face. Can she avoid him, weary as she is, or will his grasp surround her, squeeze her until the pain and pressure make her crack? Carrying her, or tossing her aside, he nevertheless rises to his feet and sweeps his sword through a dismissive arc, letting the steel taste those illusory creations of Cecily's. "Say nothing else! These empty husks you've raised -- illusions designed to give your words credence, nothing more! You trusted me? You fought beside me? You are worthless to me! I will not be swayed by your lies!" D fixes his full attention on Cecily. His wrath is unbearable to behold, yet not without its beauty, like a firestorm raging. He levels the tip of her sword at her chest, and prepares to run her through. The sense he should show any mercy is lost in the maelstrom she's unleashed inside him.
Cecily	Illusions, maybe. But they have mass, they have substance, they stand with weight and speak with the same conviction Cecily had heard D speak in before. When he was on the side of the Union and its allies. The fox sees the moment of clarity in those eyes, a hint of relief seeping into her being. "You know you're doing the wrong--" and she's cut off when becomes ever so apparent that whatever touch of sanity he had regained is forced away. Like a ship cresting a wave in a storm to see the light of port only for the tide to wash it back into the maelstrom all over again. "You.. can feel it..." she breathes, "...how wrong this is..." Whether or not she actually needs oxygen is up for question, but the way her terribly light body, grieviously wounded as it is, manages to still function... it's difficult to tell. Those creations, however, are cut in a most realistic fashion. As the blade passes through the body of each duplicate D, it keeps over with a grunt of pain. Grunts very authentic to the man who had wounded them. Brief, stifled, and guarded. But they still stand, even as blood seeps from the blade wounds. "Allegorical... you've cut out your own heart..." one of the duplicates mutters. There's images, too. Faint echoes and pictures, video of the battles fought for Paradiso and Inferno recorded from Cecily's perspective. They're just flickers, her power waning. "The lies are your own. You've lost the truth in a clouded haze of hatred and hunger. Come back to yourself." The duplicates hold cohesion even while the fox in D's grasp limply claws at the arm holding her in place. "How much will you sacrifice for this?" comes the rasped breath of the chimaera. Every effort is in trying to bring him to reason, all her real 'fight' poured into tackling him from his horse and forming her 'sister' forms into mirror images from his complex DNA.
D	Video footage, now? Glimpses of the Hunter in glorious action play out before D's incredulous eyes. He watches as the flickering images portray his sword flashing like moonlight in the darkest reaches, his consternation mounting into a second wrathful burst. His first reaction is skepticism, not only reserved for what Cecily shows to him, but for Cecily herself, too: "You mimic my body and voice nearly ten times over, and you think your films will convince me? Where is the proof these aren't more falsehoods? The /extent/ you are willing to go to sell your deception -- what have I done to be cursed by such obstinance and dedication?! Are you all obsessed? Are you insane? I could kill you here and suffer no regrets, but still your friends would come after me, seeking...what?!" Part of him knows. A great chasm inside him as been opened anew between Ainsley's tale and Cecily's attack. Inside its abyssal depths, D's doubts writhe like a nest of serpents so entangled it seems to have no end and no beginning. It dwells in him like a sickness, enflamed by the poison Cecily continues to heap over him in the form of his own body, voice, and proof of his action. For an instant, he can feel Inferno's heat, and smell the sweet air of a distant fruited forest. The memory slides away before it can be grasped, but it was there, clean and true, something more pure than the hunger and wrath pounding through his veins! D releases another shout laced with a bestial growl, and thrusts his sword forward, letting the dark steel once more drink in Cecily's cold, inhuman blood. His every breath is a snarl rejecting the torment she stirs.
Cecily	"We're... obsessed over the loss of our friend... of our loss of -you-..." Cecily's words come weak. Much like the struggling beat of her somewhat superfluous heart. "...we seek to restore the man we knew..." she closes her eyes, very normal, very human tears leaking from the corners of them. She tries to grasp with both hands at the arm clutching her and lifting her, but she's running out of strength and will. She's defeated in more ways than one and there's little she can do but take the blade as it comes. As it drives into her, she jerks and spasms, falling lifeless on the blade as her fingers tighten on D's sleeve. The claws retract, the 'default' setting of her form taking over. Taking over all around. The eight swordsmen fall like marionettes with their strings cut, melting into formless silver blobs that turn right back into a single-tailed Cecily. The scent of tea and honey is almost overwhelming, perhaps a punctuation on things D may yet recall. But for his rage and bloodlust, it's a simple reminder of the damage he's caused again. All around, the eight foxes maintain enough cohesion to remain fully formed, bodies scattered like torn pages with the one dead center hanging from that sword. Her silver blood paints the metal, giving it a sheen that it shouldn't possess, briefly covering up the black in a cosmetic reflection of what the hunter once wielded. But for all intents and purposes, for the time being, Cecily is gone. Her systems lock down into full recovery mode, bodies entering stasis and mental functions consolidating across the personal area network her wetware generates to the most intact body to wait out a rescuer.
D	D withdraws his sword. Cecily's body is left wherever it falls. Satisfaction warms his senses and spreads a soothing balm over the wounds opened by Cecily's words and tricks. The chasm he'd felt himself slipping toward is covered over by a numb and remorseless layer fed by bloodshed and the darkness of night. His cloak fluttering behind his every placid step, the Hunter turns his back on Cecily as he had Ainsley, her grief and misery put out of his mind just as simply. Even though her silvery blood yet streams from the edge of his blade, and even though she yet murmurs behind him, he stops for nothing. He climbs into his saddle and rides away as if unaffected by the violence he's just enacted. It is not so easy to set side the agony in his chest, or the raw feeling left in the wake of his anger. And nothing will silence the questions still pricking at the edges of his thoughts, or the memories drifting up dream-like from the void. He will be well away before Beli arrives.
Beli Klum	Beli probably would have wondered at the fact that D bothered enough to remark over Heaven or Hell's radio that Cecily was nearly dying, but little in her mind was properly working beyond a very strong awareness that she needed to /move/. Like an animal possessed by a deep-seated primal urge, she sped from Purgatorio with frenzied haste, wings spreading from her back and carrying her through the air as fast as they could. She doesn't stop or slow down at all until she comes close to the valley of crystal, where she shifts into a speedy dive carrying her down to the sight of battle like a hawk spotting her prey. The rephaite crashes down beside her wife like a great bird of shadow and light. Six broad wings beat a swirling gust of wind as they surround Cecily from Beli's crouched form, kicking up a brief storm of crystalline dust and dirt. The unconscious chimera is the focus of the hybrid's attention at first, her hands hovering uncertainly over Cecily before she carefully, gingerly slips her arms around the fox-woman. Despite her gasps for breath and the storm of thoughts making her body tremble, Beli only slows her efforts enough to make sure that her lifting of Cecily is gentle and careful. At least the strange chimera is light; she doesn't need to worry about much extra weight in the flight back. There's only a brief moment before Beli's wings beat once more and carry her back to safety. A moment to clutch Cecily close to her, to still the shaking of her own form, to clench her teeth and hold back the enraged roar that threatens to burst from her chest in a torrent of panic, fear, grief, and anger. D is gone, and Cecily needs care as soon as possible; what good would releasing her wrath do now? The rephaite flies off in silence, clutching Cecily close to her as she speeds away to safety.