Scene #7920: Sparring with Spaghetti

Owner	Pose
Staren	The Shrine of Adversity! Staren is dressed casually, regular labcoat and sneakers, with her hair in a ponytail, still has the glasses though, and smiles and waves to Ozhira. "Good to see you! This way." She leads new friend over to an empty simulator room. "Honestly... while there's a lot of arenas we could fight in... I feel like the more complexity I add the more I'm just going to get ambushed... Do you mind if it's something simple?" If Ozhira's cool with it, Staren brings up a console and just loads in a martial arts arena, like used in the MECC and the WMAT before it. There's a big, square 'ring' of stone with a grid etched into it, and a large area of grass around it, inside a stadium full of watching people. (The audience are just 2D sprites, why waste processing power?) The sky is a deep blue, early morning sunny day with a few clouds. "Now, just a moment... 'Load program.'" Staren sort of seems to blink out of reality, and something appears in her place: A humanoid robot just under six feet tall, his armor has distinctive, round indentations near the shoulders and knees, and while the lower legs and arms look like robotic boots and gauntlets, the red-painted upper arms and leg plating more closely contours the parts of the body it covers. The right 'gauntlet' has the barrel of some kind of beam cannon attached to either side of the forearm, and two micromissile launch ports in the back of the forearm, while the left gauntlet is styled differently; brass-colored, it's segmented with five armored wires running up from the base of the gauntlet to the knuckles and four micromissile launch ports between them, bracer-style plates on the back of the arm and hand, and a flickering black-red crystal eye situated behind the wrist, about where a watch would be. The torso is an odd mix of styles, looking part robot and part 'armor' and overall appearing less flexible than it really is; the 'belly' plating is painted red. Five small forcefield emitter discs are attached to the breastplate, three in front and two in back. On the back, behind each shoulder is a three minimissile launcher that can rotate on top of the shoulders to fire forward. Staren's neck is the only visible bare skin, and the helmet that covers Staren's head has a transparent, tinted full-face visor, allowing people to see his face underneath if they look closely. There are points on the helmet for his ears, and a segmented, armored 'tail'. Holsters for his laser pistol and beam sword are built into the right hip. His trusty magic bag is in an armored carrying case, secured to his right side, on his back is some kind of energy rifle. In his left hand is a metal staff tipped with closed 'petals' as of a metal flower. Staren blinks. "Uh, what?" And then looks kind of surprised at his voice. "Oops, wrong program. Hang on, I need to change the default..." He drops the staff, which clatters on the stage as he starts typing on the holo-console again. "You're free to examine this design later, though."
Staren	After some typing, he hits a 'confirm' button with a slight fluorish, and a ring of light sweeps down over his body: Still painted red, with the upper arms/legs painted a sea green, compared to the previous design this one is much more petite at around 5' tall, and clearly feminine in shape. The eyes look more like some kind of lights or reflectors than conventional cameras, but the nose and mouth are sculpted to resemble a human's -- and in this simulation, they move, lifelike. Mechanical ears swivel in the appropriate spots atop her head, and some other kind of armatures on the back of the head evoke the feeling of a twin-tailed hairstyle. Though clearly a robot, now Staren doesn't lean into the made-of-cylinders thing; the torso and upper arms/legs being shaped in imitation of an organic body, while the lower arms/legs are bulkier, like a reploid's, the arms incorporating bulky metal-looking vambraces that must contain some kind of gizmos, although just what is unclear besides some Ominous Panels and holes that could be missile launch ports, or cooling vents, or just Looking Cool. Staren's scarf is the only item of 'clothing' on her body, blowing dramatically in the wind. She dismisses the console with a wave of her hand, and drops into a basic martial arts stance, feet ready to push off in multiple directions, with her left fist in front of her face to block, and her right to the side and slightly back, ready to be used for a punch she can put her entire body's strength behind. The scarf blows dramatically in the wind.
Ozhira	For all intents and purposes, the person accompanying Staren looks Completely Ordinary. A slightly taller black-haired girl with red eyes, clad in an unassuming black blazer and plaid red skirt. Like an errant student, or an office lady judging by the dark lines under her eyes that make her look so very tired despite the neutral-to-cheerful expression on their face. As the sparse environment manifests itself, she glances up and then around. One could discern it as 'amazed', although in actuality the Devourer is searching for the exact thing Staren was concerned about: Points it can retreat to, ambush from, lay traps, and the like. Reading Ozhira's mind is...difficult, though. A sea of voices speaking about a dozen different things. Like trying to discern a conversation in a crowded room. Discerning the Beast's actual intentions is not going to be easy. If one mind is a star in a vast expanse of the universe; Ozhira's mind looks more like a galaxy. A cluster of stars packed together, each with their own soft glow. The girl turns a full circle in slow steps before her gaze rests on Staren once more, now in the mechanized suit. It's only now that her mouth opens, a little slackjawed in amazement as she leans to one side, "...We see. A mechanical body, now. Is this you; or is it armored clothing worn by you?" Ozhira has noted the combat stance, but doesn't respond in kind. They simply stand there, arms tucked behind their back in a more observational posture. However; something rumbles. A deep, heavy baritone growl that rattles through the arena floor and reflects off the projected walls. The actual timbre is distinctly not mechanical, but rather more like the growl of a beast many times larger than the Devourer's current shape suggests.
Staren	Staren looks back, expressionless, at the question. "...Hmm. I should really adjust the aesthetic to allow better facial expressions. Not like I'm some masked hero..." She turns to let Ozhira see her from all sides. "Technically, this is a projection made by the Shrine. My actual body is hidden and unreachable, but my senses and the conscious signals from my brain are linked to this projection. It's a program for helping train people, that could let me control whatever foe the trainees need to fight... But this projection is based on a robot body I actually have and use sometimes, yes. Electromechanical, with a synthetic brain and everything. Actually..." She brings up the console and messes with it again, and portions of the armor turn glassy and transparent on the left side, complicated mechanical bits within made visible. Then she dismisses it and takes up her stance again. She stares expressionlessly at the growl, but her ears fold back fearfully. She hesitates, waiting for Ozhira to make the first move, but after a few seconds and ends the stalemate, holding out a hand imperiously. "I used to have to carry so much gear, or build it into extradimensional spaces. Now that I can warp things in from the armory, though, I can just do this:" A trio of mini-missiles about a foot long warp in over her head and then launch a quarter-second apart, arcing down at the ground near Ozhira and exploding not so much in fragments or a shockwave of rapidly-expanding high-explosive, but an incredible amount of heat dumped into the air itself, flash-ionizing it into plasma. A test of how Ozhira reacts to something that can't so easily be dodged or melted around or the like!
Ozhira	"We see," Ozhira states with a nod, leaning forward when the mechanical bits become visible. The girl is clearly enamored by the complexity, staring as bits move along with Staren's movements. When the transparency disappears, they snap back up to a vertical position, though tilt their head slightly when pointed at. Something thin and crimson shoots out from behind her, a strand of thread and little more. Missiles launch in arcs and already the Beast is in motion. That thread snaps from slack to taut and grows thicker. The girl implodes within a second or two, leaving behind only the end of that thread to get destroyed in the ensuing bombardment. She has relocated to the opposite end of that thread, reforming well clear of the explosions. No longer standing, she has dropped into a near-feral quadrupedal stance where the joints bend just a little too much to be 'right'. "We remember what you said. That injury here is temporary. And so. We shall hunt you." The girl's outer later expands outward and then sloughs off, splattering into a glistening red smear on the ground where she crouches and leaving her looking...rather identical to before she pulled that stunt. Still crouched as she is, she lifts one hand and gives it a flick. The girl's hand detaches at the wrist, sailing as a projectile. Mid-flight, the fingers curl and elongate. By the time it reaches Staren, it hardly resembles a hand at all, but a ball of keratinous spines that spray some vile, acidic compound from the seams between each spike. Ozhira has already re-formed their hand, lurching unnaturally back up to a bipedal posture with their hands held out at the ready.
Staren	The parts stay transparent! It's a simulation, it doesn't have to affect her capabilities at all. Staren's mouth opens in shock as Ozhira relocates all of her mass so quickly, in such a way. How the hell does that body work? > We shall hunt you. "Geeze, you're good at being creepy..." Hmm. She thought Ozhira was a blob that can just reconfigure at any time, but that 'shedding' must serve some purpose. Staren wonders what it is... ROCKET PUNCH! Thrusters come on in Staren's limbs as she leaps aside, acid eating into the armor as she barely avoids the spikes! "Gah!" A glob of water warps in above Staren and splashes over her to try and wash off the acid. "Okay, that's good. No one expects a rocket punch from an organic... but once you do it they'll be expecting it to work like a rocket punch, not do... that." She plants her feet on the ground as there's a clunk from inside her right arm, and a panel on the vambrace opens, a miniature gatling gun popping out on an armature. Her left hand grips it to steady it as she walks a hail of hypersonic metal -- they're railguns, not firearms -- across the arena, planning to just keep retargeting it if Ozhira does that maneuvering trick again!
Ozhira	"We understand," the Beast resonates, multiple voices seeping into the one vaguely female voice they had been using up until now. When a cannon emerges, she leans forward a bit more at the ready, recognizing it as similar to things from before. All of the voices that constitute their mind agree that it's some form of minigun, though in varying stages of awe or dread. That much is clear, at least. Threads scatter out around her in multiple directions, but the body does not relocate this time. Rather, satisfyingly, Staren's spray of gunfire punches several holes through the Devourer's body, scattering crimson behind them and leaving large, gaping holes through their torso and limbs. Wobbling, the creature loses footing, then collapses forward with a splash of red fluids, seeping out in all directions. Worming through the cracks of the 'martial arts'-themed platform, that crimson fluid moves far faster than it probably should if it were blood. When it reaches the floor beneath Staren, something shakes. Swiftly, the girl's collapsed body sinks into the puddle of juices. A heartbeat later, something horrendous erupts from the floor beneath the armor-clad catgirl. It defies description; some sort of writhing mass of tendrils and eyes, a gaping maw lined with dagger-sharp triangular teeth swiftly forms to either side, clamping shut with a sound not at all unlike that of an industrial shredder. The mass hauls up and, should it have managed to chomp down on the girl, heaves aside and snaps back open to hurl her away. In mid-swing, the nightmarish shape recovers and recedes in on itself, forming back into Ozhira's complete human disguise, the tooth-lined seam of that awful maw closing up along the girl's Perfectly Ordinary Torso from hip to opposing shoulder.
Staren	Ozhira... bleeds? "I thought you were like a colony of nanomachines or something... Why do you bleed?" Staren continues commenting, since this is a training exercise among allies she doesn't need to hide information, and perhaps she can ask it too. Ozhira melts into the floor. She's obviously going to relocate somewhere. Those ears start to sweep, and Staren starts to turn her head -- and then a split second later, realizes the obvious: If it was a teleport, she'd expect Ozhira to go above or behind her. But with this...! Staren jumps, with leg thrusters, but too late. And if she was expecting Ozhira's human form to like, try to cut her with a blade-arm or something, she is sorely disaHORRIFIED. It may be a mechanical body, but the mind controlling it is an organic one, all too aware of what a shredding structure like that can do to its usual body -- and evolved from, if you go back far enough, tiny furry things that squeak in the night and developed brain structures with a primal fear of being hunted and eaten. Staren is remote-controlling this body, so she's still affected by a surge of adrenaline, her heart pounding. Dissociate! You can't let her use fear against you! That can't be my way of handling everything! Panic and inner turmoil delay her reaction until she's thrown. Thrusters stabilize her in the air and she flies higher. She knows she can't get out of Ozhira's reach, but maybe she can get more time to see something like THAT coming. "Holy fuck, you really know how to scare people." Those optics stare into Ozhira's eyes. Predator. Alien. Anathema. No! She's still a person! Staren shakes her head. And an ally! Family! The Concord is family! "Have you been hunted? Most of us haven't... How am I supposed to fight something like you?" Visions flash through Staren's mind, of stalking through a damaged city in that robot body, the gory results of grisly deaths forced on the inhabitants visible all around her as she tries to hunt those responsible. She spent a week doing that... never again... She waves her arm. Another salvo of missiles, then another! But this time, the first three just explode into hardening foam -- covering the cracks over most of that quadrant of the arena -- while the second are once again plasma missiles, a bit more staggered out this time to try and catch dodge attempts.
Ozhira	"We hunt," Ozhira's voice does not quite match what her body is doing, "We are hunted. Prior to our ascendency. By men with rifles and flames and machines." Her stance shifts, planting a foot back and thrusting a hand down behind her. The limb elogates unnaturally with a crackling, snapping sound, splattering into the floor. This crimson mass spreads, expanding in rivulets across the heavy floor tile and sinking into the seams around it. The girl lifts her other hand over her face, the limb splitting apart and spreading. A keratinous growth expands between the spines as they grow, forming a semitranslucent shield to protect her main body even with missiles exploding all around. All it does is protect them from direct hits, but splash from surrounding impacts splatters the floor with more of that bloody crimson fluid. "Fight. Learn. That is how." The Beast wrenches, dislodging the stone block and hurling it overhand towards their skybound foe. The braided tendons release at their longest extension, hurling the block as a projectile while Ozhira recovers their posture
Staren	Staren tries to dodge and gets clipped for her trouble, one leg crunching in a bit with a sort of clang as she's sent spinning and has to arrest her movement again. "So my weapons are like those once used to hunt you. I'm sorry..." She conjures a shotgun and fires a few blasts from it to buy time while she thinks of a strategy.
Ozhira	As Ozhira's limbs return to something more approximating 'normal', their posture changes, twisting to keep facing Staren as she moves. "We are not distressed," they say, voice closer to 'singular' again, "Were we traumatized, perhaps. But we have consumed all those who had threatened us in that time." Which might be a different kind of trauma, but the Devourer isn't offering anything on that front. The sudden shotgun blast catches them off guard, though, neatly disintegrating the creature's head and shoulders and splattering scarlet fluid across the floor behind them. Staggering in place, it once again collapses. But this time it does not 'sink' away. The corpse remains in a pool of what could pass for blood. That crimson sludge has been scattered all over the place by now, actually, between Ozhira's shedding earlier and the various wounds the beast has sustained. Globules of flesh and blood that quiver in place, glistening as they turn and shift and-- lance into the sky as barb-tipped spines, tethered to the ground by braided ropes of crimson tendons. Should they find purchase, the tendons reflex, yanking flying targets back down to the ground. All while Ozhira's body hauls itself back up, the missing parts of the body re-forming as bubbles of red that swirl and shift and re-texture themselves back into 'her' fully intact face. "You have nothing to apologize to us about."
Staren	The railgun retracts back inside her arm. "You consumed them?! ...Does that mean they're part of you now, and their memories, or...?" Staren is briefly surprised at the dramaticness of Ozhira's head being blown off, but she doesn't believe that's the end of the fight for a second. Staren's looking around for movement, half expecting a mass of Ozhira to start growing somewhere at the end of a tentacle too small to see... Movement. Staren flies up-- And is caught, even if the tethers don't penetrate as deeply as Ozhira would like, and thrusters keep her from being slammed into the ground quite so hard. She's still restrained. Staren electrifies her chassis, in hopes that will do something to the tendrils. There's another series of clunks from her arms, and the appearance of energy seeming to suck into them as swords appear in her hands and she swings, the blades surrounded by a field of shredding energy... but she has to try and focus on Ozhira too... When Ozhira moves, she immediately thrusts her arms out that way, panels on the vambraces rotate so that the barrels of some kind of energy weapon is now on the outside, and they fire, twin streams of plasma gathering in front of Staren into a comet-shaped projectile almost as big as she is, which burns its way through the tendril forest towards Ozhira!
Ozhira	"We are," is all the Beast states, their posture changing suddenly to one of predatory aggression. With Staren on the ground again, Ozhira approaches, the forest of tendon-like spine growths retracting before them, receding back into the pools of red sludge left behind by the monster's actions. Electricity crackles amidst the spines and tendrils binding the catgirl, snapping them and freeing herself, which only seems to make Ozhira advance faster. The pause though when presented with a huge, slow-moving plasma comet, recoiling when it engulfs their body. The body dissolves within it, along with a goodly amount of the splatter they had spread across the arena floor and most of the 'forest' of sky-reaching harpoon tendons. Some of those that remain, which were closest to the blast without being inside it, crack and crumble into powder. This time, there is nothing remaining of Ozhira in the projectile's path. But the Devourer is still present. Those countless murmuring voices remain, chattering amongst themselves in maddening cacophony. Spine protrusions around Staren break off, their sky-reaching tendrils keeling over and only leaving the root-like 'clump' of a base. These sink down slightly, flattening, whitening-- into teeth. With the speed of a beartrap, the maw snaps shut, ripping up stonework in the process. Tearing away from this nightmare maw of teeth and tendons, a vaguely humanoid shape resolves itself as it wrenches the maw up overhead. By the time they have spun around and slammed the tooth-lined jaw down, the body has fully resolved back into Ozhira, the tooth-lined mouth retreating after the impact to become their right arm. "Surprising. We did not expect something like that. Our biomass is quite harmed by it."
Staren	We are. "...You remember getting eaten by a monster and now you're the monster? That's really messed up!" Staren shouts back. Ozhira's 'body' seems gone, but there's all that 'blood' and the tendrils... Staren looks around, only now realizing that the problem is that Ozhira's focus could shift to any part of her, at any moment, and Staren has no way to tell where until mass starts repositioning or the attack comes. If she fights Ozhira again, she'll need a strategy to deal with that. Maybe she can spray water at the biomass to try and wash it into a contained area? She just can't react fast enough, either. The 'trap' snaps down on Staren, piercing metal skin-armor and crushing, while the tendrils rip out of her. She tries to fire the plasma cannons point-blank but teeth tear into them too. Staren can see on her status HUD that there is no way she's in condition to continue fighting. "Alright! Alright, you win!" She slowly gets to her feet. "...If this wasn't a sparring match, I'd be running now." She sort of... blinks away again, replaced by Staren's real body as seen at the beginning. Staren looks at Ozhira, blinks. Oh right. She activates the Shrine's rewind function to restore Ozhira to her initial state. Then steps forward, hand extended. "Good job. I... need to be better prepared for dealing with fighters that use emotion against me, like you." She realizes she has other useful feedback to share: "I was just thinking, if I fought you again, I'd come prepared with ways to move all that loose biomass." She waves a hand over the part of the arena Ozhira was splattered across. "Try to keep it contained in one area. Wash it with liquid, maybe, or reshape the battlefield to move the bits you're, uh, splattered on. Also, to move a bit faster. The... like, the problem with fighting you is you can suddenly be anywhere there's a bit of you, very quickly. It's hard to dodge, react. Making my body move faster might not actually help, since it's more about reaction time, but I'd try it. An opponent preparing to fight you might, as well."
Ozhira	As Staren's injuries are blinked away, Ozhira's body...doesn't, actually change all that much. They do become suddenly heavier, though. The biomass scattered about remains, though it starts slithering back to the monster, disappearing into them for a few minutes until the red stains are all completely gone. With a nod, they speak once more, "We understand. Our fashion of fighting requires keeping the enemy off balance. Use unexpected approaches. Trick and deceive and trap. Hunting is many things; but it is always violent." "We accept your advice and shall make use of it as best we can."