Scene #8420: Start Hurting Other People

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	Strangely, Nephra never receives a call, and Lilian never has to ask. Petra must have been right, back then, about Lilian just finding her at a hotel she shouldn't have, and Hibiki must have been right about Lilian finding her at her own apartment. One moment she's on her own, and the next, she instantly picks out the sole sound of another human being in the empty sprawl; heels clicking on concrete, the gentle shudder of descending steps, the quiet crunch of broken glass underfoot. It'd be hard to guess anyone else; what local in their right mind would come here in heels? It feels like it's not the slightest bit surprising, when Lilian's voice carries down an entire alley, projected for a professional audience. "Apologies for how long this took to deliver. You asked me quite a long time ago, and ever so sweetly too." Nephra can imagine it without even looking. Lilian, dressed to the nines as usual, unable to help turning her nose up at the environment, all sharp and proper and passively radiating the sense of being too busy to waste her time here. It's crystal clear in her mind's eye even before she sees-- The summer casual outfit Lilian put together on autopilot, pretty and completely ill-suited to a dingy cityscape. The dark circles of exhaustion that foundation can only dim into semi-visibility. A shoulder subtly dragged a half-inch lower by the weight of her bag. Plain nails. Digital planner still in hand. A fading bite mark on her knuckles. Her Paladins badge must still be on a dresser at home. Only her voice sounds the same, as if everything she says has nothing to do with how she is; and maybe never did. "I should thank you for yesterday, while we have the time. You didn't have to rise to the bait, but you did so on purpose. I'm glad you took that opportunity to say something you meant, about all of this."
Nephra Tangent	In the steel-gabled warehouse hall Lilian finds her in, Nephra has been hard at work replacing (relatively) clean air with the reek of toluene, her duffel and all its gear leaned up against a shipping pallet. Turquoise and crimson drip from a brickwork wall, patterned like some sort of cityscape skyline, a mostly-doubled pattern drawn in both colors side by side, overlapping into a muddy purple by mere centimeters. She turns, at the footsteps, with goofy popout-book 3-D goggles pushed up her on her forehead like one might wear unnecessary sunglasses when indoors. Her expression, however, is far less so, pulled into a taut half-smile around a lollipop stick. She can't really say she expected Lilian to arrive like this, but it's not particularly surprising that she, if not also quite the number of others she's met over the past months, could. A small snort pairs with the thought that maybe she's showing off. "Time kind of flies by, don't it." Flipping it in the air, before catching and tucking it into a pocket of her toolbelt, like a dramatized cowboy would with a revolver, Nephra holsters her current spray paint cannister. She's dressed in her usual- the ever-present transparent jacket over shiny leather and scuffed camouflage canvas, and the dozens of little metal domes poking out of her skin along both arms, a handful covered up in gauze tape. Her feet shift, boot treads grinding into the rough and mildewed floor, and her shoulders slump ever so slightly. "Hope the journey didn't take too much out of you. Haha. But, ah, that's not why you look a little under the weather, is it?" She reaches up and scratches her cheek, the friction of her work glove's fabric amplifying the noise somewhat. "Y'know. Haha. You really don't need to thank me for biting that. I don't actually have to do pretty much anything, short on keep breathing. Haha. But asking's a good way for me to want to. Besides, you said it just now. I can do things sweetly, sometimes. Maybe you really are what you eat." A quick motion preceeds a wrapped lollipop getting pulled from a coat pocket and tossed Lilian's way. Blue raspberry flavor, store-brand, stick the sort of paper that can probably fully dissolve if left in water for too long. "Brass tacks, how bloody is 'probably gentle' going to be? Haha. I remember the request, but, hey, good practices. Partly to set terms, but mostly, I just want to know how excited I ought to get." With reflexive instancy, pistons click-snap and a persistent thud-thud echoes around the open factory floor, as plates of metal flow down Nephra's limbs, shrouded by the raincoat, like an ever-creeping frost. It's only a single step, crunching far louder now, for her clawed fingers to be within reach of her propped-up spear. She bares her teeth in an actual, honest grin, teeth nearly severing the stick of her own lollipop, and tilts her head faintly to the left. "Wouldn't be fair to make it easy for you, though. Not after you went through all the trouble to find little old me. So what's it they say, in all the official bouts? En garde."
Lilian Rook	Lilian's dull gaze fails to catch Nephra's face, first, and lands on her 3d glasses as the matter of greatest visual priority. "Oh. I just now understood." she says, thinking nothing of her subtly wrong gesture. "I'd wondered why you'd picked such a clashing pair of colours. Now I wonder what it is you see when you work." Hair next. "Or in the mirror." Her gaze wanders around for a little until it succeeds at finding Nephra's eyes. 'Time kind of flies by, don't it.' "Not really." says Lilian. "At least, not when it'd be helpful. The last six months feel like a quarter of my life." A beat passes as Lililian slowly half-tilts her head. "Does it fly for you? You don't seem the type." 'Hope the journey didn't take too much out of you. Haha. But, ah, that's not why you look a little under the weather, is it?' "Journeys like this aren't hard. It takes five minutes to find where I'm going, fifteen to ready up, and then no time at all to cross a few Warpgates. The ready time ablates through the rest of the day, too." says the woman now consulting her planner to double check that she even made room for this. "And I'm not under the weather." she adds, lying through her teeth. "I just haven't been allowed to feel well for a while. It'll pass, once I have some time off." She catches the lollipop on reflex, plucking it out of the air by the stem without looking up from her screen. "I can thank you for whatever I please." Lilian says, shuffling her PDA back into her bag. "Even if it's a terribly low bar, it's one that you stepped over and everyone else dove under on their bellies." she says, picking apart the wrapper with her fingernails now. 'Maybe you really are what you eat.' Lilian thinks back to the other night. The sixth time she'd drank too much in one week, and the second time around someone else. Her stomach churns with a vivid flash of memory, of sweetness and warmth and sick, glowing high. "If only it worked that way." says Lilian, just before biting into the lollipop. Her incisor punctures a little way in before the candy cracks in half. It sounds like crunching glass between her teeth. 'Partly to set terms, but mostly, I just want to know how excited I ought to get.' "I have no idea what excites you." Lilian says through a mouthful of candy shards, swallowing only after. "I don't mind giving you whatever you ask for. The only thing I wanted, after all, was to hear your thoughts on . . ." Her eyes wander way to the graffiti, though only as something convenient to look at. "What the crowd wants to see." It takes the clattering of metal plates and the telltale whisper of air over sharpened steel to draw her gaze back, steadier than before. "So, why don't you tell me? What is it that gets you going? The adrenaline of flirting with death? The hot trickle of blood and sweat? Or are you the type who gets invigorated by pain, and a nasty blow is what it takes to dispel the numbing malaise? Do you fight hoping to learn something, or hoping to be relieved of your burdens? I can make it enriching for you, even if what you really want is to be held down and made to regret it." Lilian's fingers find her pendant automatically. The flourish of inky black fog swirls away from her with a flick of the wrist and a brandished sword. The air blots dark and fuzzy around her hands and forearms, crackling particles fusing together into baroque black metal. Gold glints between the impossibly fitted seams in the instants she moves her fingers just right, catching light and perspective. Her heels give way to plate that runs smoothly from toe to knee, too well-conotured to ever strap on by hand. "Ready thy steel, where I'm from." comes the dull reply. "Though, last time it was 'you know what you did'."
Nephra Tangent	'Now I wonder what it is you see when you work.' 'Or in the mirror.' "Haha. Flashy pops against the backdrop, may as well make it do it more. I figured you'd understand standing out." But as Lilian's gaze meets Nephra's, she shifts, ever so slightly, the flat lens of her prosthetic staying straight-on but the pupil of her other facing anywhere else. "I don't spend a lot of time lookin' in mirrors, though." "Haha. A quarter of your life. Six-slash-eight years. You really got put through it, huh." Molars crunch, and candy shatters into slow-melting shards nestled between her cheek and gums. "Yeah. It doesn't really fly by. Tomorrows seem forever from nows, and yet yesterdays just pile up. Ain't that just something." Instead of elaborating further, she just flashes a faint smile. Nephra's grip around her spear is tight enough to imprint its steel haft in the shape of her fingers, but duct tape-covered chains wound round its length add similar traction without having to wear down the metal. She tosses it in the air to shift her grip instead of any simpler hand slide, lowering her stance and raising its point. 'What is it that gets you going?' "Oooh.~ Straight to the point, hm? I like that about you. I don't fight to flirt with death. Haha. What's the point in that? I'm overdue for that as-is, I don't want that audited! But, adrenaline's not far off! I love the feeling. Like someone's eyes are on me, hungry but unable to bite. Haha. Pain's not real in a fight like this. No matter how much I bleed. No matter how much they want it to be." "The audience I'm used to, they just want entertainment. Not an idea of a person. They don't look at you, and wonder how hard you'll try for them, your fans. How much you're willing to bleed for them. They want to see you bleed because they want to see a girl they can't remember the name of get her skull caved in and not be the ones who feel guilty for doin' it. They want to forget that they're the reason you're out there, that their money's what feeds you, that they're your enemy more than the person trying to stab you is. So you immerse them." She taps the side of her head with her index finger, and blinks- well, it could be a wink. Only one of her eyes can move, after all. Nephra exhales, slightly, the shoulders of her armor click-snapping upwards and back down, with even the slight change in posture from the exclamatory breathing. "Nice suit." The paper stick between her lips bobs up and down as she talks. 'Ready thy steel, where I'm from.' The second Lilian finishes talking, Nephra's suit's joints have already snapped into motion, heavy boots tearing at concrete as she launches forwards, linear motion to close the gap, force positioned into the single-point tip of her weapon. Each step is rock solid, and louder than it should be- enough to make the corrugated steel roofing shudder. She's smiling like a fool. Ten feet of metal is clutched like it's barely the weight of a toothpick, the point barely moving up or down with each cacophanous step, following motion faster than her body can turn, thanks to its angular leverage. "That's a silly salute phrase! My steel's always ready! And yours seems it too, huh? Is it just tradition?" Her arms click-snap forwards, carrying the spear with them. If the salutes are out, it's only fair to try and test how strong that armor is, right?
Lilian Rook	'I figured you'd understand standing out.' "I understand what the experience of standing out is like." Lilian says, but the agreement is tired and cautious. "But I don't understand a thing about wanting to stand out under your own volition. I've never had the choice, so I've never given it much thought." 'You really got put through it, huh' The way Lilian looks at Nephra is like an audible ". . ." 'I love the feeling. Like someone's eyes are on me, hungry but unable to bite.' The crack of candy splitting neatly down the middle is like a quiet gunshot in the silence between sentences. Lilian's eyes suddenly burn on Nephra with a kind of unexpected intensity that can only be called 'feverish' when taken in with her visible exhaustion. "I see." she says, as if that were somehow a far better answer than she'd ever hoped for. 'they just want entertainment. Not an idea of a person. They don't look at you, and wonder how hard you'll try for them' 'How much you're willing to bleed for them.' 'They want to see you bleed because...They want to forget that they're the reason you're out there...they're your enemy more than the person trying to stab you is' "I see." says Lilian, then falls silent for a longer moment than she ought to. The crunch of sugar between her teeth doesn't sound like a thoughtful grind; it's a series of neat, dissecting cracks, all the way down until she can drag the stick out from her lips, smeared red, and flick it away. "You have a strange way of coping with it." she adds. The implication would be that she knows other ways to compare against. "Is it just the element of money that had you fall into it? Or perhaps is it because they don't know you and don't want to know you? I wonder if it's simply innate to your personality. Though, if I were to go by the most incongruous factor, I suppose that would be that your audience doesn't want to be personally responsible. Does that make it easier to want to give them a show?" 'Nice suit.' "Don't say it like that. You'll make me feel as if I brought a three-piece." --following motion faster than her body can turn-- The spear whistles through empty air. Nephra feels a hint of feedback from the left side, and processes the sound of scraping after it's already happened. Lilian is standing a foot to the polearm's side, arm partly extended with the back of her hand turned outward. The spearpoint drifts-- has drifted-- four inches to the right, with all of Nephra's weight behind it. The following instant where Nephra's momentum carries her forward. Lilian's palm claps to the pommel of Night Mist and her sword snaps up vertical, an aggressive traverse step takes her past Nephra's left flank, and the blade flashes void into her shoulder, biting down into solid metal with a sense of force that is shockingly mismatched with the clean and minimal motions. "I'm not fond of people who overly reliy on linear attacks, but I'll admit that was well executed. I'd have scolded Tachibana much less if she could throw a straight like that."
Nephra Tangent	'I've never had the choice, so I've never given it much thought.' "Haha. Touché. Different perspectives, then. It beats being see-through, but, seems we've just got different options." Shoulders roll under nylon fabric, futilely trying to grind out some sort of phantom ache. 'You have a strange way of coping with it.' 'I wonder if it's simply innate to your personality.' 'Does that make it easier to want to give them a show?' Nephra lets out a coughing laugh, not just her simple dry, 'Haha'. Teeth grit into a grin, and her eye is stretched open wide to match the wildness. "Strange, huh? Says who? There a metric somewhere? I'm real curious, you know!" The last remnants of the paper stick, weakened and chewed on, are cut through. It falls to the ground without a sound. "I didn't start, just for the money. Sure, meant I could still eat! That's usually a good thing, huh? But they needed nobodies, and I already fit the bill by the time I got my shot at a suit. Loud risk there, quiet risk elsewhere, either way, there's people who don't want to be personally responsible for whether you've existed in the first place, yeah? So fuck it. Stand in their eyeline for a bit. They won't look your way otherwise. Haha." A heavy pause. "Said the pain's not as real, that sort of way. So it's an upgrade." The second Nephra's spearhead passes any chance of biting flesh, synaptic lightning sparks between interneurons and electrodes, rebalancing fine-tuned hydraulics with a hissing snap. Night Mist sinks in, cracking and crackling against metal, overlapping plates following automatic subroutines to ablate force and fill gaps. Nephra veritably shouts out an exhale, as severed dermal sensory relays throw caustic feedback up her spine like a frigid chill. It's easiest to roll with blows. She twists her torso, and lets her stance lower, pulling her impacted shoulder down and away from Night Mist's vector, and uses the momentum of her torso's movement to swing the metal haft of her spear in a wide-sweeping arc, slightly up at first, and then- down, like the terminal plummet of shooting stars- the distinctive whir and thud-thud of her reactor letting even the shallow slope of the wide blow carry shattering force. "Y'know, that's way niftier than formalwear! And three pieces, huh? Ain't that way out of style to begin with? Haha. Sure, the fabric kind's armor, of a sort, but yours is way more timeless, and seems more fun!"
Lilian Rook	'There a metric somewhere? I'm real curious, you know!' "More or less." says Lilian. 'Said the pain's not as real, that sort of way. So it's an upgrade.' A continued, singular extension of her last words: "The natural thing would be to hate them, wouldn't it? To hurt them, not entertain them. That's what's normal." Even this tired, Lilian is silent and wired in combat. Whether Nephra is paying enough attention to see her eyes widen that fraction at feeling her weight shift under the blow, or to see the way her extended foot suddenly swivels angle in the split second before it lands, landing sideways to prepare to spring rather than stand ground, the sense of focused attention from Lilian, prickling with cold electricity and pale light behind the eyes, feels different from just watching her. Different even from predicting and reacting to her. The feeling of being close watched is strange-familiar. Lilian's footwork is immaculately timed. The right-landing ankle tenses and launches her right back off the ground in oblique zigzag to where she'd passed by, leaping over Nephra's sweeping spear weightlessly, where she draws up her sword again in the air. The swift reversal of the haft to come right back down on her, powered by the expert adjustments of Nephra's power frame, would be equally well timed to anticipate and intercept the evasive maneuver, but even as sinew and circuit clench together, Lilian herself is already adjusting as well. The swift reversal of lead and guide hand, sword hanging pendulum, turning her body mid-air to angle her landing acutely against the ground, almost feels as if she is responding to the commands squeezed from Nephra's flesh and surging into her suit as part of the very same process. It takes all of two exchanges for an experienced pit fighter to recognize the synchrocity with her own movements, equally uncanny as a completely blank expression. The spear blade claps down on the flat of Lilian's sword, reverberating with a second shock as the intentionally off-parallel guard disperses some of the force into Lilian's wrists. The pendulum maneuver redirects most of the strength of the sliding along the length towards the suspended tip, but before Nephra's spear can even be fully sent off-target (and Lilian crunching into the ground from the hasty maneuver), she disappears in the middle; vanishing from existence at some precise micro-calibration of force absorbed and deflected. The jump isn't large; just enough to put Lilian on the opposite side of where Nephra's spear is coming down and already accelerating. A faint footprint smolders in the ground behind her, a pace behind the lunging foin aimed below Nephra's arm, thrusting the point into the underarm gap normally left by articulated plate. A twist of her following shoulder and elbow causes the motion to turn sideways and flick towards the left; skewering under and tearing away chestplate and motive structure. Which is to say, not plunging right into Nephra's ribs. The interplay doesn't quite leave enough time for Lilian to respond. She's still so strangely focused.
Nephra Tangent	'The natural thing would be to hate them, wouldn't it? To hurt them, not entertain them. That's what's normal.' "Haha, sure. And then what? Whose face do I bash in? Everyone's? I've only got two fists, Miss." The tone of her voice changes, ever so slightly less sure. "Haha. 'Sides. Ain't got an audience anymore. So now it really is just that. If I'm lucky, knockin' a handful teeth where they might bleed." Nephra's visual acuity is not quite ideal. Her depth perception and periphery range are both altered and worse on her left- something Lilian is sure to notice from her continuous side to side glances. She can't keep up with the level of quick-motion footwork of her opponent, even as reflexive her own capacities are- you can't react to what you can't quite watch. Instead, at the maneuvering, she tucks arms closer to her body, choking up on her rear grip. Lilian can move faster than her spearhead, so the leverage advantage matters less than rock-solid stability and security. When their weapons collide, the reverberations buzz all the way up her suit's arms and into its exoskeletal backbracing. She grins, wide and wild, lips pulled back like a snarl, but eyes wide like excitement. Maybe it's overexpression, maybe it's on purpose, or maybe the focus- her own, and lilian's on her -and its moment-to-moment fervor, is something she's really just that fond of. Apparent teleportation is a trick Nephra doesn't have practice with- and a sudden interruption of her expectations and planned motions. That's fine. Don't think, act. Even if there's no pause in Lilian's actions, there's a gap before Nephra can re-ascertain where she moved to, and she fills it with the noise of her reactor's purr, growing ever and ever more deafening. Gravity shifts, tugging at all it can grasp with an even, continuous pull, increasing and increasing. Lilian's mobility is something Nephra just can't afford to leave be. It doesn't stop the lightning-fast and surgical sundering of her armor. Overlapping plates dig at the blade, but mundane steel gives way- pieces crack and chip, bend and shear. No singular plate makes up her chestpiece- overlaid bands cover bands cover bands, sliding and shifting with the slightest rotation- but a nasty, jagged scar rings out, cloven through, plate-ends twisted outwards and disrupting to motion, all the while hissing from severed livewires and spurting hydraulic fluid. Red-dyed, just off-color from the real deal. It hurts, like the real deal, in its synthetic sensations- mixed in with the biotic, impact and twisting still passes force along-, pumped straight to her central nervous system. "Oh, how rude! Won't even aim for the head? This is so much harder to fix!" A blow like that shouldn't be followed up by laughing, but she does, anyways. Her own motions are barely impeded by the all-pressing weight, and, shifting the spear to a one-handed grip, swings out with it at nearly its full three meters of length, twisting to lunge herself Lilian's way, and cut off any direction but back and away- her free hand, sparking and chipped at its under-bracing, no longer meaningfully helpful, is kept ready to claw at her should she dodge to the less-threatened direction.
Lilian Rook	Lilian's whole body moves with the entire followthrough of her lunging thrust; everything from wrist down to ankle tilts and twists and angles with its neighbours to throw her entire weight into the tearing motion through Nephra's fortified hydraulics. It's not even close to proper showmanship. Rather than a dramatic key pose, it's like watching the strange grace of an overly specialized machine; Nephra can even hear the little clicks that come from the migrating tension in Lilian's partially armoured limbs. It's any guess how much someone has to train to do that; that they'd need to do to be so precisely aware of every single part of themselves in space. Which is a shame, because the eerily beautiful efficiency also falls apart quite quickly under the influence of multiplied gravity. Lilian has to short the rest of her followthrough with a sudden stomp, absorbing the effect of her own body's weight climbing along with the weight of the air on top of her. The point of her sword dips before her body can fire the muscles necessary to counterbalance it. She utters just the soft sound of air being pulled through her lips when she sees the following lunge. Lilian's multiplied weight is on top of the spear, driving it down into the asphalt where she stood before. There's no particularly sensible reason for doing so, unless one assumes that she's already tossed aside the idea of backing up and firing from range if Nephra can alter gravity, and has likewise already assessed that Nephra is a skilled enough spearfighter to not have issues with 'minimum range' without her doing something. Flying would have been more sensible, but then she'd just fall, wouldn't she? Getting a couple of feet off the ground is doable, and it makes Nephra have to Choose. 'Haha, sure. And then what? Who's face do I bash in? Everyone's?' "Why not?" Lilian finally replies, balanced atop the metal haft. "If everyone is your enemy and wants to see you bleed; if nobody cares about you and they get off on seeing you fail, then what's wrong with hating everybody?" She wipes the red hydraulic fluid from her blade with two fingers, as blackness coalesces up her arms and legs, extending her armour to the hip-plates and shoulders, swirls of dull semi-visible gold running across the layer visible through the gaps. Ill-advisedly, out of disassociated curiosity, Lilian touches her fingers to her lips, then spits at the flavour of machine fluid. Appropriate. "And why would I aim for your head? Just because you'll heal on your own doesn't mean you're more disposable than hardware. If you need money for the damages, I'll be happy to pay, but I didn't plan to fight out of some sadistic desire to see you bleed." A pause as long as a single breath. "Though, that might not be so bad."
Lilian Rook	The moment reaches its limit. Lilian takes up Night Mist by her side and rakes it across Nephra from out of her field of view; a flick of the wrist on her cybernetic eye's side to conceal it. The tradeoff is that it shouldn't be nearly powerful enough to actually cut into Nephra's vitals, but at the exact timing Nephra would pull back, duck, parry, or throw Lilian loose, a visible pulse of red runs through the black blade's extensive, otherwise invisible inlays, and an insubstantial extension; a ghost's sword; slashes through another three feet of space. "Either way, I'm sick and tired of it always being girls with nowhere to go who have to bleed. The ones that get chewed up by the thoughtless filth for their pleasure and spat out once they're too saturated with their toxic bile to tolerate it anymore. I wouldn't enjoy it." "Even though I understand why it feels good to taunt them; to deny and frustrate them and put yourself above them; what's the point of living like that? All you're doing is staving off being their bitch by making yourself their collector's item, aren't you? A rare toy instead of a neglected pet. If you're going to mask yourself and laugh at everything, you should at let yourself hate inside, not keep it empty."
Nephra Tangent	It's a bold move, to jump on someone's spear haft. With the gravity as it is, and the leverage out on its length, even the mechanical power of Nephra's suit couldn't move the tip much more than keeping Lilian balanced there- but it's a gamble on whether or not she'd cut the gravity and throw the precariously balanced forces into utter dissaray or not. Well. It'd be a gamble, if it was anything other than intensely showy. She meets it with a half-surprised smile. "Why not? Is hate something you're supposed to like feeling? I don't. Haha. I hate plenty, y'know. And there's nothing wrong with hating everyone, hell, sure are plenty who could use it on 'em. But does hate make you happy? Does it make you feel alive?" "Haha. Goddness me, you've caught me rambling!~" Nephra snickers, still not doing anything to put an end to the speartop parley. "Come on. It doesn't taste that bad. Numbing, slight hint of being pretty chemically similar to pesticides, irritating on skin, y'know what, spittin's probably the right call." A cough punctuates her giggle, the still-healing bones in her chest once more aggravated by the intense gravity and damaged pressure of her suit. "...Urgh, c'mon, Lilian. You've got to know I'm far less pricy, and far more replaceable, than this hunk of steel. How do you think I got it in the first place? Haha. Someday someone'll scrape me out of it, too. Undo my silly little touches and changes, buff its plates and paint it bland once more." Nephra doesn't duck, surprisingly. The second she feels the contact, she releases her reactor's grip on gravity, shunting the floor back to a cool and clean 1-G. Or- as it may feel like, in the pit of one's stomach: momentary free fall, balanced limbs shooting upwards with automatic compensation, and an unsettling loss of heaviness. It can't stop the formless blade of Night Mist from carving a path through her, pain and sharpness dancing through flesh and wires in a dizzying firework show of sensation. Her breathing stutters, caught mid-way through coughing and inhaling, and the ensuing rebalancing of her motions is crude- but quick. She pulls back on the spear, lifting it, catapult-like, Lilian as the payload, to launch her upwards and into the air. She doesn't stop there. Combat choreography is a constant step-after-step, follow throughs are mandatory. Metal plating shifts, and buried intakes and exhausts start to throw massive quantities of air around her, and with click-snapping leg joints, she springs herself and her suit's entire bulk towards an aerial intercept with Lilian, free-hand first. Its fingertips, while nowhere close to razor sharp, still come close to being claws, splayed out as they are in a raking arc. "What's the point in living like this? What's the point in living like anything! Haha. What's inside me doesn't matter. Maybe it's hate. Maybe it's candy, like a god-damn piñata. Crack me open and find out. I dare you. Maybe this is just easy. What's wrong with sitting up on a shelf, loved and left alone, something flashy in the background. It doesn't hurt. Haha." "Sweet that you think I'd be a rare one, though.~ Tee-hee."
Lilian Rook	'Why not? Is hate something you're supposed to like feeling?' "What does it matter if you like it or not? It comes easier, doesn't it? It feels worse to hold in. It feels better to act on. The only reason you'd stop is if it were too much, isn't it?" 'Does it make you feel alive?' <J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators \| Red Dwarf mutters, a little: "She... feels like death. But she doesn't feel like a killer. It's easy to make the mistake." <#-1 INVALID ANSI DEFINITION: 258 J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators \| Red Dwarf whispers, a little. "She... feels like she's dying." "Sorry, but we're not talking about me. We're talking about you; aren't you the star?" 'c'mon, Lilian. You've got to know I'm far less pricy, and far more replaceable, than this hunk of steel. How do you think I got it in the first place? Haha. Someday someone'll scrape me out of it, too. Undo my silly little touches and-- "Shut up Nephra." Lilian shouts without really meaning to. "Does wearing that thing-- does venerating that hardware that some bland and normal nobody made in some expensive and soulless way and told every #-1 FUNCTION (ASNSI) NOT FOUND bland and normal nobody how advanced and important it is, just like all the rest-- does that make you feel more worthwhile? Wearing something someone said was valuable rather than putting any value on yourself? Just tweaking your skin to feel a little more unique instead of daring to make it yours? I thought maybe a gladiator would show me some signs of life, but you . . ." Lilian's gaze lingers on Nephra's face for just long enough to try and read it before the abrupt normalization of gravity forces her to rebalance and the levered swing sends her flying upward. For the second where Lilian is up there and Nephra is still down on the ground, powering up her leap, she has the lingering image-memory of dull green loneliness in that disappointed stare. Feet from contact, a ripple of black static washes off of Lilian, and her ascent stops with a short, smoking trail that leaves her inside Nephra's claws' arc. Her-- Night Mist is braced across the side of her neck, Lilian's folded forearm catching the rest. Claws skid over cold blade and warm armour and the latter is what feels like stroking bare skin. Winter Crow is already drawn from the opposite hip, aimed straight down into Nephra along the line of her extended arm, and a quick burst of black-gold flash and ringing metal-tone percussion fires a cluster of shots into Nephra's head before the compensator fully rocks back to expose the weapon's gold spine. Each shot strikes with the feeling of a tiny blunt object colliding at painful, bruising speed, and an ice cold shock as if a stroke of lightning could feel like frigid water, locking up and overloading senses, numbing flesh and driving away breath. It feels suspiciously like they passed all the way through, somehow.
Lilian Rook	In that opening, Lilian accelerates down Nephra's arm as she fires. Boots crash to her shoulders, and then a tremendous amount of force and speed is generated all at once; her guts skip the part where they feel like they're rising and simply relocate somewhere into her chest. Lilian finally sticks with her during the unusually risky and flashy lithobraking fall, firing twice more before hunching down to drop her sword inside of Nephra's elbow, turning on her toe to drag it free, sharp edge across the joint, and swing it back down overhead with a full revolution of momentum. Dark, hallucinatory afterimages trace the ribbon of its twist and fall; it feels like multiple blows land nearly all at once. Lilian only appears somewhere else the moment Nephra stabilizes herself or just before she hits the ground. It's by far the hardest she's tried to show off at all; learning from Nephra about showmanship, as she promised. But it's also the moment where Nephra least feels Lilian's eyes on her; she just hears her boots crack down on the cement nearby. "You're out. You're free. You're shockingly strong, even. You have that thing and it belongs only to you. Nobody can snatch the food from your hands. You don't have to listen to anyone at all. So why still cling to that role you don't even believe in? What point is there to still be pretending to be replaceable, unremarkable, keeping your head down, staying invisible, trying to be one of the good ones, by now? Isn't there even one little part of you that wants more than just . . . clinging to what you know?" "What's tolerable at all about easing your pain just enough to reach equilibrium with feeling so lost?" 'What's inside me doesn't matter.' "It's the only thing that matters." 'Crack me open and find out. I dare you.' "I won't tear open your insides just to feel a little better." 'Maybe this is just easy.' "No it's not. It only hurts a little less." 'What's wrong with sitting up on a shelf, loved and left alone, something flashy in the background.' Lilian steps forward hard enough to crack the concrete with a sound like snapping steel cable. Fist balled and shaking by her side, her voice carries over it anyways. " Because then they get away with making you this way! And-- there's another after you, and another after her, and you take your turns riding that hollowed out little shell of personhood that those scum sold to you as the best you'd ever get, and nothing ever gets better!" She only stops to breathe in again, shouting just as loud. "There's more to this than just what hurts, Nephra! Going limp isn't the same as living getting easier! All you're achieving is--" "All you're doing is dying slower than I am. By putting them more at ease. You'll never be one of them, no matter how tolerable you are, so can't you at least be one of us?"
Nephra Tangent	'The only reason you'd stop is if it were too much, isn't it?' 'Sorry, but we're not talking about me. We're talking about you; aren't you the star?' 'Shut up Nephra.' "This is what I have. Haha. Ha fucking ha." Flat joking tone cut away, replaced with a quiet severity. "This was my one shot, Lilain. It's more mine than anything else is. It's not much. It's just fucking metal. Its value isn't there. Its stronger, tougher, and better than I am, it doesn't break, and when it bleeds out, it doesn't die. When something touches it, they aren't touching me. It stands up brighter than I can. Haha, it wasn't ever my call, but why the hell do you think I like that I can feel through it, and move through it, and fight through it? I don't want to hate, because-" She falters. "Doesn't that kind of hate just eat up everything else? It's easy to fall, too. Haha. I don't want to look down." "I still can't figure out a name for it. The armor. Not for lack of trying. Haha." Lilian's gaze stings in a way a sword doesn't tend to. Bitter and sad, the way that makes Nephra wish she had a helmet to cover up the last vulnerabilities, the last of her showing through. It didn't do much good for the last wearer, though. Clawed digits scrape chalkboard-sounds, it's assuredly their own metal that ablates away from the friction, dulling ever so slightly hands that could never be gentle. The sudden shock of phantasmal bullets, hitting with force but hurting with feeling mostly has the effect of causing Nephra's teeth to grit, deeper and deeper into her firm-set smile. She feels the chill, the overwhelming sensation- it's so much, but it's far from unusual. If she can like it, she'll be fine. But then the sudden, impossible impact- Nephra's posture stays rock-steady, feet planted firm enough into the ground to chip concrete away from the metal tread of her boots- but everything inside feels like aching jello. Sore, still-broken ribs shift and pop, organs feel like pretzels, and she swallows back immediate nausea. She doesn't fall. The force would be easier just to roll with. Too bad. "Everyone wants more. I wasn't meant for it. That's- don't you get it? I don't have anything to lose, anything to be taken, anywhere to fall. I know how fast and hard that happens. Haha. I'm scared of that ever changing." Words fill the reprieve after the blow to suck in air and gather her bearings, and whatever filters she uses between thoughts and words soften, ever so slightly. "Sunk cost, ain't it?" Concrete cracks- not Nephra's doing, this time. Her cheek twitches, stained red from Night Mist's ever-so-sharp touch, and grinds her own heels into the foundation. Instead of a crack, the pressing weight turns flooring into gravel in a slow, sickening crunch. Despite its damaged, sparking, and hissing limbs, she once more engages her suit's servomotors, neuroelectric fire racing up the channels, flooding simulared epinephrine through metal synapses. Her spear, clutched two-handed, raises in defense, tracking the midpoint between the two fighters.
Nephra Tangent	'...Shell of personhood that those scum sold to you as the best you'd ever get...''All you're doing is dying slower than I am.' 'Can't you at least be one of us?' "It's the best I've gotten! I took what I could. I made it as mine as I could. It's not much. I know it's not much. But I died the second I stepped into that ring, even before someone's knife came a hair's breath from smearing the room with my brain." Her left cheek twitches, unconscious reflex, trying to close an eye that isn't there anymore. "I was dead the moment I got to feel what- what even that sick, hungry want, that an audience has, felt like, and liked it more than the alternative. We all fall the same nine-point-eight-one. I wasn't meant to climb higher. There's nothing in me that deserves that." Quick-snapping motion, stuttered by sheared motors but still leveraged by her cradling exoskeleton, her arms pull back into a cocked stance, shoulders feeling like they're about to pull apart, muscle and metal both. A javelin stance, for the split second she holds it, before shooting forwards, follow-through snapping like an implosion, gravity pulling her leading foot, leading arm, and leading side down with the kind of thunder that makes corrugated roofing shake and tremble. Split-second evening light catches a faint nova of dust, circling around the faint-beating reactor, tucked up in the chest of her suit. The spear launches forwards, dead-on, for now, gravity abating with a whimper, to let its trajectory remain on-point. "There can't be." she continues, breath hoarse. "It's too late for that. I'm just one of no-one and nothing. Who knows 'bout my heart, but at my suit's heart, at least, there's no star. It's the exact fucking opposite. Haha. Isn't that something?"
Lilian Rook	'This was my one shot, Lilain.' "I don't believe in 'my one shot' Nephra. I can't believe that's how it works." For an instant, Lilian's tone is so bright and hot and so absolutely sure of herself-- 'When something touches it, they aren't touching me.' --that it can't possibly last. Her breath escapes her with a flinch of recognition. 'Doesn't that kind of hate just eat up everything else? It's easy to fall, too. Haha. I don't want to look down.' "So does pretending it's not there. Not looking down is even worse. You have to live your whole life afraid of when you'll slip." 'Everyone wants more. I wasn't meant for it. That's- don't you get it?' "There! Stop talking that way!" All over again, there's something intolerable enough that, in her worn down and unguarded state, Lilian can find the energy to shout about it; to stomp her foot and yell at Nephra instead of saying something clever and silently internalizing it as if she didn't care at all. "None of them were made for it either! What did they do to deserve it more than you?! Why are you disqualified before even beginning?! I hate this! I hate hearing it, over and over and over again, and I hate that it's always the same people who believe it!" "There's nothing good about having nothing to lose! All that happens is, years down the line, you look back and you see that you were losing so many thing, in a way you can't possibly get back! You can replace anything else you lose, if it feels like shit, but you can't ever replace that!" 'It's the best I've gotten!' "You should have gotten more." comes Lilian's heated rebuke too-quickly after, words stumbling over each other until her throat growls. "I barely even know you and I can tell you that. Another girl who was set up to fail, left waist deep in the mud just trying to stay alive while everyone else got further and further ahead. Another one who just looks at that gulf and thinks 'I can't ever possibly cross that. I won't even try. It's better if I learn to live where I am.' like that's so fucking noble and sad and mature! There's so many that I'm starting to see why I'm the only one who could want the thing I got." "God, I know it's not easy having things to risk, alright?! I can't even tell you for certain that it's the right thing to do! I'm still living my whole fucking life trying to have everything, aren't I?! And non-stop, everyone who agrees with you has been trying pry it out of my hands since forever! Don't you think I'm fucking petrified of falling too?! Do you think I've never had some fucked up thought that made me feel worthless, or done some inexcusable thing that made me deserve worse?! Why do you care so much?! You can do anything, be anyone, have whatever you want, and you're choosing to be what they think you're worth-- nothing, forever-- all on your own!"
Lilian Rook	Anyone could tell what's about to happen from Nephra's stance. A javelin is thrown the same way anywhere, and the disappearing crescendo of her reactor can only be followed by something as dangerous as its dramatic boom. Even in the midst of her uninhibited tirade, Lilian feels her fine hairs bristle at the gathering of tension and her skin tingle with the concentration of electromechanic power. Her gaze, briefly focused and alive with energy, locks on to the tip just before it achieves motion. The explosive sound is far too slow to react to, and the spear is far too quick to dodge but-- Lilian appears before Nephra as if she had switched places with the spear on the slightest lag. Her trajectory is too flat and fast to have slogged through the heavy gravity field; the only thing accounting for it is the glowing boot print left fading on the haft and the residual smoke and crawl of electrostatic lightning from Lilian's heels. In a theoretical timeline, her sword darts out from behind her, swings wide into the heavy gravity, and cleaves Nephra's head from her body at immense, irresistible speed. In other hypotheticals, Neprha could see herself sacrificing something else by acting just in time. But in reality, Lilian's outstretched hands clank down on Nephra's shoulders, deflecting herself just upwards of the spear's zero gravity wake, and both armoured knees crash into Nephra's skull instead. The impact is enough to send even Lilian tumbling; there's no balanced way to absorb that impact; but she rolls across the asphalt and concrete on the hard surfaces of her black steel skin and brings herself to a four-point sliding halt by fingers and toes. Inky black particles fuse and glow with gold mass-light in a wave up the remainder of her unarmoured body, erasing her clothes and cladding her from waist to neck to antler-oid crown in impossibly contoured and expressive metal; save one large window of bare inner layer and radiating golden lines, just over the heart, as it always is. "Didn't I tell you about obvious, linear attacks?" Liian says, rising smoothly to her feet, and flourishing Night Mist dangerously overhead; inlay filled blood red, throbbing with coalesced power. "That thing isn't all of you." The toe of her boot slides stickily through a pool of Nephra's earlier hydraulic fluid. "Cleasa Iontach!" It's intentional. "Slais Gearradh Fola!" The blade is thrust point down into the fresh splatter of synthetic off-red, and vanishes into it like a deep pool of water. Intangible damage explodes through Nephra's power frame, diffused into a spreading wave of blowing and slashing through its weakest links, but only splitting the very surface of her skin, stinging hot flesh where steel is separated apart and the power of a singularity is cut off without even being overwhelmed. "It isn't even the most important part of you."
Lilian Rook	'It's too late for that. I'm just one of no-one and nothing. Who knows 'bout my heart, but at my suit's heart, at least, there's no star. It's the exact fucking opposite. Haha. Isn't that something?' Lilian wrenches her sword free of the hydraulic pool and flicks artificial gore from the length of its blade with numb and lonely dispassion. "I just don't understand. There's so many of you-- I thought at least you'd be able to tell me, after you saw it happening to Petra, and you didn't pretend you couldn't see it, but it's the same disease everywhere." Lilian begins to walk, sliding her fingers along the black magnetite to gather up any sticky smears before shouldering it. "Why is it always the girls who deserve so much more who think they don't deserve anything? Why is it always the ones with the most to say, who just . . . hollow themselves out, turn themselves off, fit themselves to the least painful shape, and make an excuse to go through the motions. I don't get it. I can't." Lilian comes up on Nephra, blade still drawn and at hand, posture tense and ready. "Can I even ask-- Do you think that helped Petra? Did you think trying your best not to hate him and them was fair to her? Because for a little while, it seemed like you cared. You even said so without laughing. I just can't accept you people." Lilian exhales, and her breath steams in defiance of the ambient heat. Glow-tinted fog drifts in tendrils from her teeth, faintly stained candy red. The sound is something much deeper than exasperation and much heavier than relief. "Why is it so easy for you to ruin yourself and so hard to ruin other people? How can you not want to taint them and make them worthless too? There's nothing wrong with it. Just stop bleeding and start hurting other people." "That's how I got everything I have, and that's how I'm going to fix what the audience did to her."
Nephra Tangent	'Not looking down is even worse. You have to live your whole life afraid of when you'll slip.' 'You should have gotten more.' Throughout the entire exchange of blows, and despite the obligate tight-drawn smiles, it's been easy to see that Lilian's attacks have hurt, as much as magical blades and bullets and horrifically-forceful impacts should, but her words are the first thing yet that spark a flash of fear in Nephra's eye. "Don't tell me that! I don't want to have to-" 'Nothing, forever-- all on your own!' '...You look back and you see that you were losing so many things, in a way you can't possibly get back! She freezes. I know. I know. Why do you think I don't look down. Why do you think I can't stop. Coulda's, woulda's, oughta's, mighta's. Anchor's sunk in, slipped past the horizon, no getting it back. Don't feel its weight till you try and move. There's a slight tremble to her- her face is all that's really visible, but her breathing is faster, shakier, and strained like she'd rather be anywhere else but right here, in this moment, in this place, and behind her wide-dilated eye. Quickly, it squints shut. "I don't want to reach, just for everything to slip away anyways!" The desperation in her voice doesn't make it less of a whiny excuse. Blindsided, the fraction of a second difference in reaction time is enough to not engage any drastic defensive shift to gravity. Ears ring and eyes white out when Lilian's knees impact her head. She still doesn't stumble, doesn't fall to her knees. There's only numbing everythingness, paralyzing thought like being hooked up to a livewire. By the second she can realize she's been blinking repeatedly, blood from a bitten tongue fills her mouth. She spits it out with an ugly, coughing sputter. '--Linear attacks? Nothing but force is linear, not really, not even always light, curving back and down to the origin, the lowest sink, no matter how fast and far and high, it always- "Huh-?" Ears still barely process, half-hearing in the static echo. She knows her attack was doomed, but it wasn't really about hitting in the first place. It's just carrying through the motions, one step after the next until there's no more solid ground underfoot. Night Mist's edge finds brutal purchase, transposed through the puddle, flowing in and out of the muscle-analogue pistons and solenoid valves. It's more like surgery than combat, but just as eviscerating. Whirrs and readjusting clicks fade, and the panic returns to Nephra's face Life pours out in spurts, severed aortic electricity rebounding through places it was never meant to flow, across dampening systems and grounding steel, spilling intangibly to the Earth below. Servomotors lock up, turning armor into a cage. If not for the shorn plating and shattered actuating joints, peeling her electromagnetized implants out from their mated sockets would be a nightmare. But the feedback sensations deaden, forces burning through the last dredges of capacitator storage, and the thin cuts across her body, beneath the metal, seep out just enough blood to burn into a carbonized patina on just a few of the scorching electrode surfaces- currents disrupted, magnets fading, and gashed-open armor free to veritably tumble out of the exosuit and through to the cold concrete ground.
Nephra Tangent	Barely rolling as she lands, it's a quick, wincing scramble to stand up. Her boots slip on red-dyed fluid, staining their tread and nearly bringing her crashing back to the ground, before a gloved hand can grab the lifeless frame and keep her steady. "N-no, no, fuck..." Her ragged breathing is rushed, as she tries to fumble through the jagged and hissing plates, to make sure the all-so-important safety mechanisms of her reactor are still functioning and engaged, now that she's cut off from its helm. It's no fun task to imagine what threat a destabalized black hole could amount in. Plating hatches are thrown open, and a switch, heavy for such a small power unit, gets disengaged with a click-snap. The omnipresent thud-thud cuts off into silence. Standing up feels wrong, without the pressure and contact of the suit against her spine, even when compacted into its folded-space housing. Nephra's now-dusty leather shirt is backless, and it's easy to see why. The absence of the folded-up suit's thick caterpillar-ish band reveals a trench where flesh would usually stretch above spinal vertebrae, plated with black metal and studded with dozens and dozens of shiny silver electrode connection points, each capping off a channel certain to have been drilled straight through bone and into her nerve chord. Bruises and lichtenberg fractals, both fresh and old, dance along rising and falling skin, as she finally takes a moment to catch her breath. Not the most important part. Haha. Then what even is? 'Do you think that helped Petra? Did you think trying your best not to hate him and them was fair to her?' "I'm no good at thinking. But I don't think much of anything did good to her. Haha." The laugh again. "Wasn't fair. Hopeful, maybe, but not fair." 'Just stop bleeding and start hurting other people.' Fingers tremble beneath heavy canvas gloves. It's ironic, how little red rivulets cascade down her limbs. "Wish it was all just a show. Where all the blood and the hurt can get hosed off at the end of the day, and let you go on with something else. I'm not stupid, I know that's a fantasy, I know that's not part of the choice. I know there's no finishing bell, no curtain call, no borderline. Bleed or make bleed. But if I just make it hard enough for them to get through, hard for them to hurt me, bleeding's not so different than not even choosing, ain't it? Balanced close enough to play-pretend I don't have to make it matter." "Yeah. I know I ain't tough enough for that, though. I know it's just lying. It's only easier because it- it gets to feel like it's up to me. It's just not though, is it." Shaky exhales come, as she still leans against the headless suit of armor. "...Does it help to do that? Does it hurt less to taint them?" A brief pause, coughing. "...Ah. Haha, y'know, never mind. Stupid question in the first place." 'That's how I got everything I have, and that's how I'm going to fix what the audience did to her.' A dusty glove is raised to rub her cheek, red fluid of multiple types smearing across it, masking a faint sniffling noise. "...Yeah. Good luck."