Scene #7875: Strength··········

Owner	Pose
Hiromi	Hiromi had promised a place 'without people' for her fight with Evehime, and this certainly doesn't look like it. The place is fantastically built up. It's not to the level of a city-planet, but here in the temperate band, on the coast, there's not a spot of 'earth' to be seen. It's all concrete roads, steel and glass and plastic walkways, and layers upon layers of buildings, like one city built directly on top of another on top of a third, each new layer shining more brightly than the one below it. The nearest star shines from below the horizon, but there's no lack of neon-bright lights and holographic displays. There, an actress shows off her new lip gloss. There, a casino calls all comers to hear the latest singer. Hovering vehicles, their outlines simple blocks and curves and their safety glass tinted for privacy, move in computer-controlled patterns, ferrying passengers like an endless human tide. Lights blink in regular patterns atop communication spires, connected to the invisible swarm of satelites far above. Much of this continues despite the presence of Hiromi, who is comfortably squatting in a crushed-in position high up the side of a glass pyramid. The entrance, about six stories below her, is a long, red-carpeted affair lined with lights and pools of water that endlessly spray upward, before reaching the grand doors of the hotel-casino-restort's entrance. This place, at least, is relatively lacking in people. Squat, many-legged robots have set up barricade tape at 'ground' level (still many stories above any actual ground) and are denying entry to a crowd of well-dressed men and women well-equipped with alcohol and cameras. Their mood is far more jovial than that of the heavily-armored security forces cautiously advancing on her. She hasn't been here long. That's probably why there's only a few wrecked drones in her vicinity, the others keeping their distance to watch for when she comes in view of the snipers, and nothing worse than a cyborg SWAT team advancing on her with tactical shotguns and gas grenades. They've yet to call in the heavy weapons. They've yet to evacuate the hotel, for that matter. They'd need to bother an awful lot of people in the middle of the night, for that.
Evehime Gevurah	The apparent contradiction in Hiromi's promise, and the reality in front of, doesn't appear to bother Evehime. It's questionable that it even occurs to her at all. She may not remember it, or she may just not care. There is no way she will blend in here. She has no intent to hide, despite the tactical advantage of doing so in such an environment. And she certainly isn't here to talk to anyone. Her blood surges in a way it hasn't in an age. Like when she'd first tasted Strawberry Princess' annihilator beam, but far more sustained an intense, now that this opponent will dig in and fight her. She has made no effort to fit in here. She hasn't changed from her mininimal black and white and dull gold attire from that day. The Gevurah wades through the crowd. She is head and shoulders and chest taller than them anyways, and probably five or more times their body weight for it. At first, she is merely striding through the crowd with a purpose, knocking evacuees aside in her path. Her excitement won't be contained however, and soon she starts using her arms to simply sweep down several of them at a time, until the rest have gotten the memo and finally start moving of their own accord. Her eyes are fixed on that crater, unblinking, catching and reflecting the neon light in amplified cerulean. When she reaches the front, she only needs a shallow breath to call out ten times louder than any speaker or megaphone in use with the police. "Archwolf! Do you think to have prepared a field for me in there?! Hahaha! Aren't your kind meant to pursue?! How amusing! I almost want to walk right in and see it, feel it, for myself! But if you intend to be serious, then so will I!" She barely spares a glance back at the crowd. "Leave." is the singular, primally irresistible command, to all but the robots, and the team in front of her; those she charges with "You. You belong to me now. Claim the Archwolf's hide and be rewarded beyond comprehension, or die gloriously in battle and have lived your life for a reason. Either is a blessing more than you deserve." Lastly, she finds the nearest security robot, but she gives it no order; these creations are outside, and beneath, the domain of man to her. She simply reaches out, snags one by whatever available point, and lifts it up without any indication it weighs anything at all. Two steps forward and a lunging third is all she needs to bring it back over her shoulder and hurl it towards the cratered pyramid at lethal velocity, aimed with pinpoint precision for Hiromi's bunker hole. Which, from her, means something else. The robot, visually, disappears. It is replaced with a molten orange streak of air friction painted between the two of them like a laser beam. Its impact is simultaneous with it leaving her hand. The sound is enough to shatter glass for a mile around. The kinetic energy is enough to cleave the building's top half from its bottom, leaving its shorn supports burning in hues of smouldering metal and flash-ignited furniture.
Hiromi	If she'd leaped in like Hiromi had, the snipers would be quicker to react. As is, from half a dozen points, confused calls come in to confirm what's happening. They receive back the answer that no, no one recognizes that giant, and that's before she picks up one of the robots. By the time the call gets back out to just shoot her, the top of the hotel is annihilated, and all the glass along the several floors below completely shattered. The armored security troops with Evehime have no effective defense against her orders, and the crowd is simply leaving as commanded. They're not what Hiromi would call 'people,' yet they do have enough minds to be molded by another's will. The Archwolf had promised there'd be some such around. Authority, after all, is linked to Strength, and she's not looking for a shackled, partial demonstration. Relative to their unprotected minds, their equipment might be fairly good, for most situations. But not this one. Those gas grenades are better suited for targets who can't hold their breath all night long. There's more screaming, now, more blaring sirens, a squad of drones orienting on the still-visible intruder even as she approaches the site of destruction. Half a dozen rounds zip through the air from Gauss rifles, powered by the stacked capacitors laying around the rooftop snipers, all center-of-mass on Evehime, herself, all from different directions, by height and by compass. Those kill orders came through quickly. That's hardly anything compared to the force of the Archwolf leaping out of the cloud of smoke and flames, her eyes wide open, manically focused, jaw set, sharp teeth on display only at the moment of impact. There's no build up to it, no explanation of how unscathed she appears, only the leap and the twisting flip that transfers all her energy of motion, plus the far greater force of her body instantaneously uncoiling, into a heel dropping strike that would turn an armored soldier and the few stories of structure below him into rubble and paste. Against one able to take that kind of blow, being dropped straight into the main casino hall is more likely, to find the just-interrupted party, with people fleeing from the stage, grabbing their winnings from their tables, and trying to take their drinks with them as most of them run exactly the wrong way to find an exit. All the robots in this area are of the service-only type, and the same is much the case with the not-robot figures in the bunnysuits. Hiromi isn't even paying attention to the security troops as she follows, though perhaps she should. Her focus is laser-targeted, to the benefit of her speed.
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime doesn't think about the kill order. There's no way she hasn't notice; those reflective, unblinking eyes, which move without saccades, wouldn't fail to notice, and her grasp of tactics is far too sharp. However, for a small mass of mere mortals, unworthy of names, she considers the quality of their weapons (in as much as she considers it) to be above them, and beneath her. A dozen guass slugs straight her directly-- and then shatter to pieces on the dim tidal band of an invisible halo around her, tearing apart like the ancient proto-moon in orbit, leaving a thin ribbon of glitter that spins around her at enormous speed. "Pitiful. Weapon." she replies, in two separate sequences, aiming the latter at one of the security guards to secure his rifle. Turning it over in her hands, Lilian flicks the trigger guard away with a wrenching ping, extends it at the full length of her arm with one hand, and, with a single spin of her body, fires three dozen sparking shots split equally between each sniper. Despite her utter lack of familiarity with the weapon, her kinetic precision is unparalleled, putting tiny three point groupings into the nuisances as fast as the weapon can actually cycle, then throwing it aside, magazine spent. Hiromi appears from the flames, and that is when Hiromi's face lights up in savage glee, her bloodthirsty smile baring her canine teeth. For a split second, it looks as if she's about to just stand there and take the kick to measure Hiromi's worth, but a few words she shared with the other one run through her mind, and Evehime, for lack of another word, 'wakes up'. A 'knife', being a two foot long blade of what some especially solid and heavy silver metal, appears from some dubious place on her body and is thrown straight underhand into Hiromi mid-dive, a mere flick of Evehime's wrist enough to accelerate it to a hypersonic crack. She shifts her stance to put back her left side and brace against the impact, turning her arm outside and grabbing Hiromi's heel in her palm, trading 'absorbing the blow' for the traded active interception, without any particular style. Hiromi's dropkick flares that halo far brighter, forming a ring like a solar eclipse. Hiromi feels some of the kinetic energy disperse into nowhere, as if she were repulsed by magnetism, or fighting upward against immense gravity, but most of it is aimed by a superlative warrior with immense conviction, and that conviction throws up sparks against Evehime's own, like clashing blades. The floor collapses between the both of them. Evehime crunches into the level below, flexing her legs, bicep bulging with the effort of holding it back, but only more enthusiastic than a moment ago.
Evehime Gevurah	"Ahaha! Hahaha! Strength! In the truest and most commendable sense! At last! Wolf that you may be, a worthy adversary you will be! This battle will be worth remembering!" Evehime has just made a weird, vague motion with her offhand. It's almost like a tactical firetime language, only meant to be recognized, instinctively rather than consciously, by the security forces. Though she thinks little of them, she will use every weapon at her disposal here, including other human beings, and her tactical acumen is to have them abandon the gas, aim from above, and throw down whatever explosives and automatic fire they are capable of to upset Hiromi's movement. Evehime herself has little care for undirected fire; her defense is optimized for mass attacks especially. Instead, she drives forward on Hiromi, releasing her heel rather than throwing her so that she's still in range of thirty-odd flicker jabs with her left hand released all at once as a single overwhelming assault, matched with an advancing hook to the side of her head and conversion to a sudden snap elbow strike on her middle, looking to prevent her from being launched out of reach. A stomp won't follow --the ground would collapse-- but an entire sword, silver-bladed and black-hilted-- appears from nowhere next, and is thrust with normally imperceptible speed to try and impale Hiromi to the nearest hard surface instead.
Hiromi	The building was already beginning to crumble, the destruction trending downward from the impact, simply not quite having reached this hall immediately. The ceiling blocks sight, but with its gaps, including the one just created, there's plenty of space for hovering drones to drop in and begin peppering targets with tranquilizer darts, coin-sized projectiles that release a strong electric shock on impact (more dangerous to the robots than to anything else here) and, once things get desperate enough on the controller's end, dropping canisters of billowing smoke that cause sleep, pained tears, or retching, depending on who they hit. These are most dangerous for the guests, though they're still an annoyance to sight, and to the more sensitive parts of the face, to those who can hold their breath. Significantly more dangerous are the larger aircraft dropping toward the site, VTOLs with tank-shredder weaponry looking for a target. They could shoot through the walls, if they wanted to, but they can't see through them quite as well. Amidst a lot of frantic, angry radio-shouting that Hiromi doesn't particularly care about, larger forces begin to move, but slowly. Bored men drifting in zero-g point incredulous expressions at screens. Buttons are pressed, and satelites rotate in place. They're only watching, for the moment. Surely the air force will handle things before the space force can move, even if it's a threat that instantly neutralized a sniper team. The boats up there have little weight, but a lot more inertia. As for Hiromi...
Hiromi	There's no mistaking that negation of her momentum, even if she didn't understand the meaning of the flaring halo. That gets a cloudy, wet breath from, teeth still bared. It shouldn't be cold enough to fog like that, especially in the midst of this destruction. She doesn't give any words in response, but as clearly as those combat handsigns, Archwolf's growl is necessarily understandable, only not 'eery' for how definitively 'natural' it is, even without conscious understanding of why it should be. You defended against my strike? Your belief wasn't mistaken. Or is your belief what drives your strength? Would you be as strong if you thought yourself weak? Show me more. I'll show you more. I'll remember. The only indication she's aware of the silvery knife embedded in her is when Hiromi plucks it out, upon which drives its edge into the path of every flickering jab, with a control that appears far too natural for what it is. Though there's no welcome earth beneath her feet, one kick flips up tables in the way of the supporting fire from the controlled soldiers, and where they should be torn straight through, that fails to happen at all for precious moments. That quick defense against a quick and designedly overwhelming assault is enough to avoid any sign of damage from the followed elbow strike, but not from the black-hilted sword. The wolf coughs simply from the impact, and coughs blood from being not quite fast enough to avoid being struck through the edge of her right lung. The ground probably isn't hard enough to keep her, being merely polished stone, but it would slow her. Carved marble won't obey her Authority. Very good. And yet, I have my own conviction. And you wished to chase, didn't you? The easiest way to remove herself is against the exceedingly sharp blade of the sword itself, which Hiromi does, tearing it off through the side. The critical damage lasts for only a moment, organs restoring and flesh reknitting. Even before then, there's no damage to her legs, which means there's no way to stop her from flipping backward, hands and then feet striking the floor, staying just ahead of even the AI-assisted gunners as she reaches the place a window once had stood. The whine of rotary cannons starts up just as Hiromi leaps again, leaving the casino behind entirely, and avoiding the lines of fire to land on the hovering gunship, itself. She's hardly gone for a moment before the now-obedient pilot and crew are relaying her orders to prioritize fire on Evehime and the 'compromised' SWAT she'd taken, ignoring the mass casualties entailed by firing absurd amounts of kinetic weaponry and rockets into a place mid-screaming-evacuation. That makes a good enough distraction, possibly, for Hiromi to drop back in from above, aiming to return Evehime's knife, preferably in the same way she'd given it.
Evehime Gevurah	"Conviction drives everything, Archwolf. But my strength is genuine. Hard-earned. Forged over more than a hundred years of battle." Evehime calls back to Hiromi, even if she is speaking human tongue to wolf-growl. "Rarely have I ever met competition with it. Why else would one seek to fight the gods in the heavens if for lack of no foes on Earth or in the stars?" Seeing Hiromi block out the combined assault with a wooden table is the first sign of a pause from Evehime thusfar --Multiversally-- although it is but a fraction of a second. Hiromi tearing the sword right out and moving again, taking advantage of the terrain and the wind-up dolls in it, is surprisingly tactical. That combined with the unknown ability is enough to lift the lingering fog around Evehime's tactical mind, rousing it from torpor to begin closely monitoring all the details of Hiromi's movements, scanning her environment, tracking incoming attacks, mentally envisioning possibilities several steps forward. There is more to her opponent than mere feral savagery, that is for certain. But of course Evehime leaps after her. Though she lacks some of Hiromi's agility, her raw speed is the real deal, and she isn't far behind, predicting her trajectory and launching herself up to intercept. Midair, it is, when a mass of guns outside is turned on her, and the more formidable machinery of heavy vehicle weaponry. There's a split second, between missile launch and impact, target lock and gauss fire, that Evehime decides it's still well-beneath her notice, and then she sees Hiromi take off again from the gunship platform. Evehime can't change her trajectory like this, and Hiromi will drop again before she can rebound from the gunship herself. And it seems as if she's trying harder now. To gain the power of flight, and a ready defense-- "Expirasancti!" Evehime's Halo flares to a blinding, solar blaze all on its own, briefly like staring at the sun, without permanent eye damage. The light collapses into a sequence of overlapping rings in split second 'equip time', and Evehime appears clad neck to toe in something like contoured plate armour, thick bands of script-etched gold supporting panes of what looks like deep sky-blue glass, fogged but dimly revealing the shadow of her body inside. Held on one arm is a trinity of overlapping golden circles, at the center of a screen of space that fades midday blue to sunset red-gold, warping and tinting reality visible through it. Like a transparent shield. Which Evehime then uses to plough straight through the immense barrage of missile and gausse fire and into the gunship without stopping or slowing. Shattered metal catches in her orbit. Blossoms of fire and blast waves of force are pulled and twisted into bands of heat and energy that she now owns. The technological attacks are subsumed into the aura of the greater warrior, overriden by transcendent martial conviction. She receives Hiromi's plunging knife strike on that same barrier, not simply crouching behind it, but using it as a weapon in of itself, trading an immense sideways blow meant to destroy the weapon at the same time as minimizing the strain of blocking Hiromi's strength.
Evehime Gevurah	The force that flows through Evehime seems to somehow displace itself, running over but not into her, blowing the gunship beneath her into so many unfortunate fragments. 'Wings' of bright fire flare from the back of her armour for a moment, allowing her to spin in midair, and shield bash Hiromi before the two of them even fall; a 'shield bash' being something that should put her through several of the nearest skyscrapers in a row, punching them in and spewing their glittering guts out the exit wounds. Even a greatshield is used as a weapon, without particular style or technique, but rather as part of the overwhelming assault. Evehime gives immediate, direct, unswerving chase, through the air until she can touch down on solid ground again, calling out to her adversary. "Your estimation of your worth; that is well-placed! A century has passed since I have used a shield! But it is your strength I lust to see, Archwolf! Anything goes in battle, but surely you can show me something other than these ambush strikes! Fight me tooth and claw like the wilderness that spawned you has taught you! I want nothing more than to test the Three Precepts of Invulnerability against it!" Oh. She's caught the rotary cannon from the dismantled gunship. The entire remaining ammo belt is poured in Hiromi's direction, and then the cannon hulk itself is turned into a molten javelin, piercing through another megalithic building and instantly disintegrating into a spray of liquid steel. A silver and black spear, appropriately scaled to immense size and crisscrossed in dull gold, is summoned out of nowhere to Evehime's hand, braced over the edge of the shield as she advances, used for an avalanche of powerful rapid thrusts, each accompanied by their own blast wave and vapour cone, alongside opposessive thrusts, bashes, binds and pins using the shield.
Hiromi	It's easy enough for the gunships to hit Evehime, even if 'damaging her' is another matter entirely. Even with all that, Hiromi's strike doesn't find the purchase she's looking for, and the weapon disintegrates. When that wall strikes back, it tosses the Archwolf straight through one building and into another, weak buildings giving way to the clash of strength against strength. It's to a wide and flat area that she finally lands, hard enough to take her reduced impact. It's not empty. In fact, it's rather cluttered, aircraft placed in neat rows, wings folded up, jet engines cold. Hiromi grabs one by the landing strut, lifting it with a slight crunch as the relatively thin metal begins to break, and then somehow holds the entire vehicle's weight. Casually, she tosses it into the way of the cannonfire, where it dances in the air from the continual impacts that eventually result in its explosion beneath the javelin that is the cannon's remains, all over in the moments before the combatants close. My strength can break your shield, your armor, but would it break your conviction? The way this wolf laughs is with her mouth open, her chest shaking, even as she takes those spear thrusts with bare hands, but without sound. She takes them directly on her hands, trying to grasp each one and pull it to her, her wounds immediately healing because she willed it so, but not quite fast enough to take Evehime down that way, with that shield still in the way. It would be an insane way to fight, or a desperate one, if someone had a limit in how much flesh they could restore in a limited time. Between these moments and those earlier strikes, the ambushes that had done no more than forced a determined defense, one might reasonably expect frustration at clawing such a seemingly invincible wall, but that isn't the expression she holds. Her eyes are constantly moving, searching for openings without sign of despair, nor exhaustion. Some of her wounds aren't quite healing, or else, she's decided they're not worth bothering with in the moment. Don't think I'll settle for only showing you my strength. A demonstration isn't the same as seeking victory. I'll show you a fight. It isn't Hiromi who breaks the ground. She doesn't expect it will be enough to trip Evehime up, so she hasn't gotten to the point of trying it, though it was on her mind. It's the orbital killsats zeroing in on target and firing their weapon arrays. Every other vehicle not already destroyed or pulled apart to be a shield or weapon suffers immediate, fiery destruction, the ground buckles and breaks apart, and waves of directed energy cross the ground from swift orbital paths, near-invisible but smelling like lightning and feeling like a too-close sun. A ways to the side, the cloud cover parts as a gargantuan battleship descends through it, creating new air currents in the process. Hangar bays open, interceptors launching, 'smart' munitions priming. There's no new SWAT team to appear, but the first ground troops to catch up are -- not robots, but hardly human in appearance. Brains in tanks hidden inside spider-like bodies that climb walls and search for targeting solutions. But they, and those other interruptions, haven't quite reached. Dancing through the lines of orbital fire, Hiromi's touch would be almost gentle, though it remains very insistent, flowing around Evehime's defenses, constantly searching for that opening she spoke of. What she grabs, if not pulled back quickly enough, she pulls or breaks. It's a constant stream of danger from an opponent willing to be impaled in the process, if it lets her fingers get a grip. Her feet are as dangerous as her arms, inviting an intimately close embrace that doesn't 'end' with bone-breaking, armor-crushing submission holds so much as takes it as a mid-point, to be continued into greater things.
Evehime Gevurah	"Breaking this armour, even I would find difficult. But if you can shatter this shield I'll surrender on the spot! I would never have forged so fragile a trophy to celebrate that victory against the divine trinity if it hadn't been so bloody a campaign; so fierce a battle! Be honoured your strikes are worthy to be repelled by my treasure!" 'Openings' are something Evehime has little of. The combination of the sheer overwhelming ferocity of her tireless assaults, the precision with which they're delivered, and the way she aggressively subsumes and moves through enemy attacks rather than stopping to subvert or defend, makes her an opponent beyond supremely difficult to try and find a fault to pressure. Fighting even an ordinary regenerator, it seems like she could keep this up forever, until they're ground into a bloody paste without being given the opportunity to fight back. But Hiromi can try again and again with the strength and speed and determination it takes to finally catch the spearpoint at such an angle that it skewers awkwardly into her arm, and then twist and shatter it, or else take it from her (eliciting a fearsome grin from Evehime, already moving to fill that hand with something heavier. Orbital strikes, if nothing else, aren't really within the realm of Evehime's expertise. The first one actually strikes her directly, and Evehime plunges into the depths of a hellish crater, blasted by superheated gas and molten shrapnel, as the fire from space explosively flash vapourizes everything around her, leaving her at the bottom of a wide and shallow, slagged and melted slope. The effect it has on her is grossly disproportionate, in that the weapon is surely a thousand times more powerful than any of those missiles in objective terms, but registers as 'ten' times, at best, leaving the surface of her armour rippling with steam and haze, the upper half her face lightly burnt, and the ends of her hair, tinged deep blue midway down by her transformation, to a glow like heated steel wire. Evehime's particular resistance to weapons of mass destruction is doubly dangerous for the fact that her scorn for hoping to defeat a greater warrior with 'a bigger bomb' materializes within the Halo of Conviction, now burning a steady radiant red-gold around her, limming her with a permanent solar eclipse, and shrouding her in a rippling haze of heat. The subsequent strikes are caught against the shield, now held over her head. The directed energy isn't so much absorbed as it is shattered and shot away sideways, wiping out the airfield with waves of splashed heat and radiation, cooking off fuel tanks and munitions, and scattering beam fragments into the surrounding buildings. The translucent sky-colour of the barrier has turned the same fiery colour as her Halo, coruscating with contained power, like a thousandfold-hardened fragment of that same substance. "Was this your doing? This is more an interruption than a tactic, Archwolf." Evehime replies, bright blue light-streaks tracing the motions of her eyes in the smoke as she picks out the interceptors and 'borg soldiers individually. "But a moment, for the Ten Thousand Shards of Falling Heaven." "Raiyakaze!"
Evehime Gevurah	A second explosion of light engulfs Evehime, this one in the form of a lightning bolt from a clear sky, crashing down on her in a pillar of thunderous white and golden yellow light, pale violet-pink at its core. Her hair streaks yellow and is bound by pearl combs and needles of crackling gold, her outfit changes again in an instant, now flowing white silk and cherry-coloured patterns anchored by black and gold bands and straps and plates, evincing asymmetrical archery attire that matches the twelve foot tall bow now grasped in her hand, made of what looks like bleached coral polished down to mirror smoothness and shod in rings of gold and floating orbs of water. Arrows come to hand a moment later, each not much smaller than the spear she was just using. Evehime takes aim, and a rippling mandala of spectral arrows takes aim alongside her, flickering crazily with searing lightning. They're released alongside her shot, the snap of the bowstring kicking up a hurricane wind along with it, blowing away smoke and debris and fanning flames. The hail of energy shots are to overwhelm the aerial interceptors, shredding through their number with blasts of divine lightning. The physical arrow is aimed all the way for the battleship, and given the bow must be strung specifically for Evehime's strength, it should be no surprise when the projectile is, itself, like lightning firing up into the air in reverse, the kinetic strike to the ship certainly far beyond the level of weaponry it is rated for. And it's followed by more, because Evehime doesn't just stop at one, ever. Arrows are strung and fired with dizzying speed, outpacing the automatic weapon she was just using, and stitching vapourized holes and gutting craters through the craft as she walks down its length until she finds an engine. Every shot is accompanied by fresh waves of companion bolts, which soon begin arcing back down and seeking out the crawling spider soldiers too, piercing them from above in a wide area shower of fire. Of course, it's landing on Hiromi too. Evehime even sights back down and snap fires two more arrows at her in the midst of her approach, shifting her stance and shooting them off at point blank range, even though they might simply go all th way through. She seems to have no fear of grappling, despite the ranged weapon. This is because when Hiromi does grab her, she is forced to suffer the captured heat of those previous weapons circulating throughout Evehime's gravity well. The Halo of Convinction assaults her with the shards of bullets and shrapnel, the fire of directed energy weapons, and even the wasted kinetic force of so many blasts.
Hiromi	They're not my pack, nor my tools. Hiromi answers Evehime's question about the killsats with casual ease. She did have one advantage, in that she'd known they were there. She'd known about the battleship, and vaguely about the soldiers. That had been part of her hunt for information, in seeking out an arena for battle. Clever tools, some. Isn't it funny? There are no people here to use them, yet they keep making weapons. They're not my favored type, but... Hitting Hiromi with the arrows isn't that hard. Getting them to be more than glancing blows is more difficult, with her beginning to pay attention to how many strikes she's taking, but even the shockwave of one attack is something to be felt. It's something to be moved by, if one were more easily moved. But it's not until Hiromi does grab onto Evehime, and the Halo of Conviction strikes her with that full array, that the blood streams, flesh burns, and skin peels away blackened, only to refresh itself like flowing water. Almost, but not as quickly, not as well, and it shows. Even where the flesh knits together, the blood remains. Hiromi grins. You liked them enough to use them. I hoped you'd find these works of dead Man entertaining. Isn't it more exciting, to not know what might happen next, in the chaos of battle? Consider that a small gift. It hurt her, but it didn't dissuade her. Once she's made that grab, it shifts right away into an embrace to pulverize mountains, past which Hiromi kicks off against the ground, shattering the very last of the platform to fall away into the lower levels of the city, and launch the two of them to the now slowly descending battleship. Its main engine might be on fire. It has a score of holes clear through it. But it has, still, a great deal of resistance to being moved, and a great deal of distance to fall. It falls just slightly faster when Hiromi impacts its upper deck. She doesn't expect that to deal much damage on its own, but given how much damage she can deal just by keeping 'anything' in the reach of her grip, any unbalancing factor helps, like the tilting deck and fire from defensive systems, as she twists in the direction of a complex series of joint locks showing far more familiarity with the structure of human bodies than 'a wolf' would normally have.
Evehime Gevurah	"Your 'pack', is it? I had thought it strange, that a wolf would fight me alone. And yet, that is the way your kind challenge leaders, no? But you are right. Entertaining, they are; I may take some for my own. And dead things that were once men, certainly. You spoke no lies to me. There are no people here." A ranged attack form isn't the ideal for being attacked with a determined intent grapple. There's only so long Evehime can dance around Hiromi, doing her level best to blow her body apart as many times as she can, before the unwieldiness of her armament and Hiromi's bare-handed skill catches up with her. The sheer technological fury caught up in her Halo certainly seems to have been the reason she'd held out like this for so long rather than switching forms again, because the way she receives Hiromi's grapple is by throwing herself right into it, clashing head to head, shoulder to shoulder, hand to arm to hand to arm, so that she is stuck in as tightly as possible, rather than countering it in a way that would open up an opportunity to escape. Using all of that energy as an offensive weapon and defensive shield appears to have been part of the plan from the start. And yet, Evehime is clearly nothing if not overwhelmed with joy when Hiromi tackles her against the falling, flaming battleship. The hull crumpling between the two of them is an afterthought. "Did you know, Archwolf? They say that even an amateur can land a lucky blow in striking, but that results of grappling are defined one hundred percent by effort! Do you think this your element? We will see who has sweat and bled more for this along the path! Hahahahaha!" Her booming, mad laughter follows only into not just giving Hiromi a 'credible' ground fight, but an utterly brutal one. Though it seems Evehime has no especial school of grappling or ground fighting in mind, the sans-style way in which she moves and fights translates even here, preempting and countering Hiromi's movement each time as she tries to shift the balance of power, throwing her own offensive into the effort, rolling from top to bottom to top again in sequence, shifting from pin to straddle to choke to lock. As well, matched in strength, the difference between Hiromi's divine regeneration and Evehime's trascendental toughness makes for a significant difficult in utility. Evehime's physique is beyond absurd on both offensive and defensive axes, and so it takes every ounce of Hiromi's effort to feel sinews strain, joints pop, and skin abrade. If she can pulverize a mountain with her strength, she is wearing away at the moon. By contrast, her regeneration is what allows her to engage in the suicidal act of grappling in the first place, even whilst her flesh is flayed apart in atomic layers. Wherever she gains ground, Evehime is waiting for the exact moment that her regeneration doesn't quite keep up, to ruthlessly take advantage of the most miniscule of mechanical failures, and gain it back again. Given the heat enshrouding her, it feels ridiculous that she could sweat, never mind that her breath could fog, and yet she does both, fighting the strain of Hiromi's strength on those joints that shouldn't normally be possible to condition. And while they do, the pair of them slowly melt through the top deck, and crash to the floor below. And then that one. And that one. Each unpredictable lurch is another opportunity for Evehime to wrestle out of a bad position. Each one brings them closer to the bottom deck. And then, freefall. Which was also, it seems, the point. "Now, Nemarrigan!"
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime effuses with blinding, radiant moonlight, washing off of her in glittering marble droplets, summoning forth her third primal treasure of the last ten minutes. Compared to the last two, she is barely even dressed in this form. Neither bands of grey leathers, white furs, and black feathers, nor orange cords and knots, copper medallions, volcanic glass beads and iron pins, give very little purchase to leverage in a grapple, but only expose even more of her faintly scarred muscle. Her hair is gone wild compared to its default semi-orderly wave, shot through with gradients of green, as if slowly overgrown. Twin flames ignite over her head, pointed like wolf's ears. Twin shadows spread from her back, like the shadow of raven's wings, and accelerate the pair towards the ground with a single supersonic clap, dissipating into insubstantial feathers. A glassy, transparent stream of water lashes out out from behind her, like the tail of an eel, solid enough to wind into Hiromi's grip with unerring precision. Enough to get Evehime's fingers free, nails sharp and green. The weapon matching the form appears as the tail disperses. An enormous axe, handle ostensibly of thick and faintly curved ivory bone, shod in greened cooper, its blade a hooked and claw-shaped monolith of polished onyx or jet black iron with an acid green edge, has just the length and curve of haft and unbalanced weight for Evehime to attempt to establish control of the drastically accelerated fall by pulling it as a bar around Hiromi's arms and up to her throat, adjusting them with claps of briefly summoned wings so that they impact the ground at meteoric speed, with herself on top. And as if told to do so, the earth cracks, explodes, and releases enormous vents of volcanic steam that certainly weren't actually there before, bubbling up molten lava and green water in equal measure. Despite the way her muscles shiver with strain, Eveheime clearly has plenty left to go. Hitting the ground so hard that she had bent the warp and weft of creation to do that is no mean feat.
Hiromi	This much determined resistance to 'being crushed in her grip' is definitely something Hiromi has never experienced before, even to the point of Evehime's armor not so much breaking as having been discarded for the sake of further demonstrating her transformative treasures. It's not obvious how Hiromi treats this mystery, beyond that she continues the attempt. Getting into her grip has never been a good idea for any opponent she's previously faced, not just for her strength, itself, but for her willingness to sink claws and teeth given the slightest chance, the similarly powerful strength of her jaw, and the natural way she logs her legs and twists her full body gain additional leverage... which still doesn't tear off any of Evehime's limbs. It really is a mystery, and not one any of battleship's marines can get close enough to take a stab at figuring out. She's certainly 'bled,' but can't deny Evehime's 'effort.' Hiromi might be the only one with the ability use her broken bones as improvised weapons, but that's of niche benefit in a battle at this level. And then they fall through. The interceptors can't catch them, now. The killsats don't have sights on them. The small troops would best stay away, but there are enough fools who won't, who still don't understand what's happening, it being too far beyond anything they've experienced. Some still think one lucky bullet could end what's happening. They're not the ones who see the lava flow up. If they watched Hiromi twist herself in the air, using Evehime's own legs as a platform from which to aim a leap, that sends both into an uncontrollable spin, they might stop believing what their own eyes, even before reaching the point of seeing the lava reach up and pull Hiromi under, slipping around to aid her escape. It's not 'as if' it was told to do so. You've shown me many things, yet I didn't think I'd show you this, here. There is no moment for stillness, yet what came before was a localized storm compared to what comes after. The ground quakes and cracks. Skyscrapers sway and bend with eery slowness. Lava doesn't bubble, but bursts, one geyser after another of pressure that comes from nowhere, that rise high into the air, edges still too hot to begin hardening, then curve down and aim for Evehime, specifically, in an enclosing array of pressure-born heat and rock that only becomes heavier by the moment. Hiromi doesn't burst out from the rear, this time, nor does she descend from above, nor does she reach for her opponent's ankles from below -- though the ground does soften, there, denying footing just as the living terrain lashes the airspace. Rather, there's no way to mistake Hiromi's presence, for one with both senses and a tactical mind. She's the center around which the movement of the under-earth flows. Its speed rises like a storm, gaining strength by its own motion. Hiromi doesn't break the surface. It's the earth that carries her forward, already in the middle of the motion of her strike. From ankle to hip to shoulder to wrist, but even beyond that, from the foreign land itself, all is condensed to the points of her claws, aimed break through and grasp Evehime's heart. Being any less than a lethal attack wouldn't satisfy her promise to show respect to the challenge.
Evehime Gevurah	In the chaos of combat, the maelstrom of true battle, that Evehime has created with Hiromi, a few more bursts of fire are nothing to consider. A merely lucky bullet won't have any sway in a contest Evehime has declared to be one of pure and unadulterated effort. And so it is made. In the first place, it would be an extraordinary feat if small arms were able to even hit the two, without their munitions vapourizing the instant they cross the event horizon of Evehime's Halo. The Archwolf disappearing under the flowing lava is one more major surprise, but one Evehime receives with laughter that could hardly still be called merely 'entertained', but rather something far and away exceeding all the causes for joy that laughter is known to, verging on the edge of madness. "I knew you must have some such power within you! I haven't fought like this in an age! Yours is the strength of one who has transgressed into the foothills of godhood, is it not?! To have trascended a beast, a monster, and become a titan!" "Ahahahaha!!! Very well then! I will show you in return what lessons, what feats, I have learned from those who shaped our worlds! This suits me just fine, to show you the God-Shattering Blows of Creation!" Molten lava surges around Evehime from all sides. Though it is something of her own creation, it owes no particular allegiance to her, and burns all the same; such is always the way of the formative vanguard of shaping things. Without the slightest of true protective merit to her 'armour', Evehime is left to fight the tectonic storm with skine and bone and muscle alone, blowing away crashing waves with sheer strength, wading through uncertain footing with sheer determination, even should her skin redden and blister and the fumes scorch her lungs. But her third fighting style is so named for the attribute it emphasizes in that stead. If anything, unencumbered save for the enormous weight of her weapon, it seems as if Evehime's strength only grows in proportion to the pain she feels, pumping lethally potent adrenaline into her system, doubling her wild pulse, accelerating the flow of energy through her body into an inexhaustible stream. One decidedly, transgressively divine feat hasn't been enough. Her strength crosses the threshold of making possible all kinds of world-forming, even in miniature. Tremendous stomps of her feet crack something deeper than the physical earth, and raise jagged mountains as she goes, elevating her above the storm. A clap of her hand booms impossible thunder, and catching and compressing that bit of sky between them, she drags the weave of the air into a thunderhead of her own making, pouring wind and rain onto the sea of fire. An ill-advised breath all the way to the bottom of her lungs is exhaled again as the breath of winter, turning into a localized blizzard, only increasing the primordial chaos around her, but with hers clashing against Hiromi's, storm against storm, giant against giant, god against god. All for the moment where Hiromi surfaces. The moment where Evehime leaves it far too late to dodge, block, or parry, just so that Hiromi cannot change course. The moment where she fixes her with the savage glee in her transformation-slit-pupiled eyes, where she shows the excitement in her bared pointed teeth, and where her flame-ears twitch in anticipation. Nemarrigan swings at the exact same instant, defying all laws of mass and torque and acceleration and inertia; defying all reason. The titanic blade intersects with Hiromi horizontally at the ribs, sliding just under her extended arm, trading one blow for a single direct hit of overwhelming offensive might.
Evehime Gevurah	The air, the earth, shatters where the strike lands, and the rain and lava with it. 'Reality' cavitates like water, and a spherical shock bubble of annihilating power blows away everything before it, shattering, shredding, tearing things that can't be broken in any of those ways. A three-dimensional explosion of jagged, spiderwebbed cracks reaches all the way out to its borders, spilling polychromatic light from some deeper substrate beneath 'air' and 'space', cracked and exposed like bone marrow, cloven through with her axe blade. For just a moment before, Evehime stands with Hiromi's fingers buried in her chest, slick with her own blood between her breasts, where the spear hand has been force to miss her heart by an inch by the explosive contortion and ripple of everything between them. For the moments after that cataclysm, Evehime wipes away that bright red blood, and laughs at the sight of it. With deep, rumbling verbal fry, she says "If you had wished to touch that badly, all you need have done was ask Archwolf." That's humour. Dark, lascivious, and sarcastic, but humour nonetheless. From the Gevurah.
Hiromi	Hiromi doesn't have any need to dodge. She only needs to hit. If she hits where she'd aimed, it's her victory, because she knows one more thing she's yet to show. She doesn't. It was just off. Would it have been enough, if her aim had been true? She hadn't seen whether Evehime could do what she can, in that regard. There's no way to know these things, without trying them. Worrying about it, instead of trying, is for cowards. She didn't get this far by not reaching for things that had thought themselves beyond her grasp. Hiromi's aim is forced off by the breaking of reality, and within it, in that moment with her hair flowing behind her, earth rising to meet sky, in storms of fire and lightning, the axe finds her. It takes her from the side, and meets her hand, and there's nothing to be said for regenerating through what follows. It meets flesh harder than stone, but what would turn aside the crashing of a battleship still parts, in that moment, for the blade, carried on by titanic force. Palm and thumb are shorn, and her chest reached. More and harder muscles, far harder while tensed, nearly stop it, before they become the blood coating it. A column of bone is reached at the center point. Organs broken and crushed. Nerves are touched and torn. Only there does the blade stop. The light is gone from Hiromi's eyes when she falls away. It's unclear whether her ears caught those last words. A handful of moments pass, as the lava flows down to the ground, and the city crumbles. Hiromi breathes in ash and fumes, every part of her returning to where it should be, to the unbroken form she knows is hers, leaving only the splilled blood and the scars. A new one, now, there on her side, not nearly so large as the fatal wound that had made it. When she stands, again, she's perfect. She doesn't know any other way to be. And yet, she lost. This time. That's happened before, though not recently. Not since long before she became 'mulitversal.' "One hundred days." Does she sound less sure, now? Reluctant? There's a little of that sense of soreness, not for having just seemingly died, but for the realization that followed right after it. She knows 'how to survive.' And it requires not pushing herself even farther, here. The grating sense of it disappears when she thinks about trying all of that again. Then, she smiles.