Scene #8434: Shoveling Coal for the Strongest

Owner	Pose
Timespace Riders	He doesn't mean it. He won't mean it. And I don't care. I don't accept your apology, highness, because he hasn't given me it. So I'm left with punishment. Never speak to me again, Woz. I'll let you know when your silence is over. Woz has left 9 to 5--that little clock repair shop he's come to think of as 'home'--without telling Sougo or Junichiro, the Demon King's uncle. It isn't unheard of, for Woz to do that. Nor is it unheard of that he'd use that book of his for personal reasons. Arguably, most of his use of it was for his own ends, before he came to trust Sougo as he does now--before Persephone and Xion's words truly got through to him. Apologizing to Sylvi is something that only he can do, because the insult given--deliberately avoiding acknowleding her as the Strongest--was his. It would be easy, too, to give in to the temptation of finding a future where she accepts his apology, and work backwards from there. But then the apology would be as insincere as the one he initially gave her. This has to come from him, not the book. When Sylvi steps out of the front door of a fondly-regarded burger shack, in a small, 4-light town in an otherwise unremarkable Florida, Woz is waiting for her on the opposite side of the street. This place would be a flyover--but after a noted food critic visited, it's become something of an attraction, solely for that restaurant. Woz's Beyondriver is held in one hand, and a stern, serious look resides on his face, eyes meeting hers from the sidewalk. His book is squirreled away in a Concord carrying case, itself then tucked into his coat. Holding the black and green Driver in his left hand, he places his right over his heart and bows fully at the waist in a wordless greeting. She had, after all, said that she'd be the one to lift his silence, and he has no intention of further insult by breaking it. Down the road, the driver of an unremarkable black pickup correctly intuits that Something is about to go down. Rather than go straight at the light, she turns right, cutting across an empty lane to do so. A pedestrian coming from a drugstore (complete with soda fountain) promptly cuts a 180, as well. Sundown sets in, and the BEYONDRIVER! is strapped on, fastening itself around his waist with a mechanical click. The sleek, futuristic pocketwatch in his hand slots into a hatch on the right side. Action! Behind him, a laser grid constructs the holographic face of a smartwatch, hands overlaid atop a digital reconstruction of his book's front cover. Projecting! Future Time! "Henshin." It's the one thing he -has- to say, in order to make the apology. Uttered with pursed lips, he closes the gate on his belt, his hand trailing forward after the green lever at the side of the Driver is pressed. The digital screen on his belt displays an image of his armor, moments before it is projected onto his body by the laser grid behind him, his hand outstretched theatrically towards her in a loose point. Amazing! Time! Future! KAMEN RIDER WOZ? WOZ?! Blue katakana spelling out 'RIDER' fly forward, directed across the street at Sylvi, before Woz charges forward with the green-tipped polearm, JIKAN DESPEAR, bringing the haft up in a crack aimed at her ribs.
Sylvi	The perfect burger wasn't found in New York or Tokyo. No amount of pure craft could go into a beef burger between two pieces of bread with other stuff between the bread to make it, and there wasn't that much argument to make about it. The food reviewers knew this fact, searched down them. The diners, drive-ins, and dives, -that had the very best food were a little dirty, a little sinful, and knew what they had. Sylvi, in a black short-sleeved T-Shirt with the white wrapped in pink text 'Bitch!' across the top, and a pair of very strained distressed jeanshorts, escapes the dive in question with a brown paper bag stained with grease rolled up in one hand, heading into the street and stopping. She doesn't sniff the air or react, not like the pedestrians and bus. Her yellow-green eyes don't track across, though the side reflects a glint of plastic digital white and green twinkling in hard-light as Kamen Rider Woz mantles his power, projects his weapon, and declares his transformation. It is saying one word before Sylvi. >Forbidden< without permission. Swinging a spear at Sylvi's side is easy, as choices go, and strikes into her in the expected way: like a wall. The woman doesn't react. Her shirt emits frictive sparks like Woz had impacted the compressed battle-power normally reserved for powersuits. Incrementally, not a reaction to damage, but a deliberate lean in, Sylvi tilts ten or so degrees in, to the striking Rider. "I told your king what happens. You die for that, now." Sylvi growls with a voice like tectonic plates grinding against each other, and a seething force no less disasterous. Hauling back, Sylvi swings her leftovers bag at Woz's head. The sonic boom that detonates around her skin is the least of his concerns -- the food has turned into a superheated spray of near-plasma matter as it fails to keep up with Sylvi's muscular action as she Simply Killpunches Woz To Start. If he goes flying -- it's not through single buildings - it is through city blocks, which there is not the surrounding resistance to.
Timespace Riders	Woz does go flying. It is indisputable fact, that he would, hit with such force and without a way to mitigate it. The sleepy flyover town boasts a hefty scar, as its downtown district is pierced through with the body of a flying rider. Woz's pained shout grows steadily softer the further he flies away, until the brick wall of a shuttered, near-forgotten old ice plant stops him cold. Rolling from his hard stop down the side of the cracked building, he hits the ground, armor sparking and threatening to dematerialize. Bile rises up in him, hissing retorts creeping at the back of his mind. He swallows all of them down, and instead lets his mind focus on a single point. My survival is irrelevant. You will never forget this fight. Brilliant! Blizzard! Futurering Blossom! BLOSSOM! Woz's armor shifts to red, pauldrons sporting ribbons neatly tied into bows, the 'wristband' of his smartwatch cuirass-helmet motif now bearing a black snowflake print over a red band. His helmet whips down, and the finger of his armored gauntlet scrolls hurriedly through the menu of 'apps' on the Despear's touch screen. An icon of white bubbles over a blue background is tapped. PROD-IGIOUS! The tip of the polearm shifts from a bladed spear point to a two-pronged prod, formed of tightly packed green bubbles. Woz's form is a freezing red blur as he charges back towards Sylvi, rubble from his previous impacts flying off of his armor as he races back in. He makes a start-stop offensive, vaulting over a parked car to fly through the air towards her. His legs extend with blistering speed, pummeling into her in a freezing flurry of bicycle kicks that leave the points of impact frosted over. The last in the line springs him into a backflip, the prod swung outwards to dissuade pursuit. It crackles with electricity, giving a more definitive bite than the simple haft strike he'd opened with. His speed in this form means he doesn't have to leave his counterattack at that. A series of blindside attacks are made--a hit-and-run batter aimed at her back with the business end of the prod, electricity pulsed. A chilling, literal cold shoulder check, from the left side, all distinguishing features of the armor washed out in a blur of black and red, reflected in the window of the burger shack. Finally--a head-on charge, prod thrust into her abdomen, helmet locked on her eyes as his finger rapidly swipes across the touchscreen. BUBBLES STRIKE C'MON!! Pressurized water strikes a hammer blow, blasting outwards from the prod in a solid wall that soaks as much as it pummels. A split second later, white-hot lightning flash vaporizes the water in a violent explosion.
Sylvi	At the end of just her first swing, there's a conal boom of devastation that sweeps out from the displacement of the rider. Just the atmospheric crack sends a sonic boom that blasts apart every window in a huge radius, and Woz's path through the town winged by complete disaster. Brownstone to ticky-tacky, nothing is spared or avoided. Woz's assault back to the pivot point of the new 3/4ths of a town and 1/4th of a crater must be done at high speed in his two-at-once powerup, but the cold wake of the BlossomArmor freezes at super-speed, and turns the wings of disaster into white wakes of snapshot-frozen hanging moments. Sylvi stands there, and aside from her eyes, doesn't track Woz at all with her body as he maneuvers. Stepping kicks on her is like marching on a wall, eradicating her shirt and crashing into her with a fountain of sparks when feet meet hardened sharkskin that chills. The ice armor is a good trick! Sylvi is slowed, cooled down, and comboed on relentlessly. Strike flows into strike, and when the speeding side-attacks come in, she brings up her rolled forearm and bicep to block, but it keeps pressuring her down. One last strike, followed by Sylvi's yellow-greens, drives right down her middle, and pierces through her. The bubble-lengths of plastic pierce like a spear and not a plastic piece of cartoonish violence, and rainbow-slick ichor leaks from her chest from the initial squelching pierce. The detonation explodes out her back, sending an explosion behind Sylvi from the two points, scattershotting pressurized and electric devastation behind her. Through her, as well, conducting the incredible power of Chemical X with Woz thrusting it deeply into her chest. Sylvi doesn't want to defend. Her hands reach out to grab Woz, by the shoulders, grab him up by the arms, seize him up with her world-crushing grip one walking handhold at a time. She walks forward, pushes forward, forces forward, in scale, in size, in furious definition, until the armored rider 'Woz' is loomed over. Sylvi draws back a right-handed punch, and to Woz's perspective, 'beneath' the demititan, her elbow breaches the sky and the span of her loomingly furious eyes blot out the sun above with an unkind, unclean yellow-green. It'd be an excellent time to escape! "Die painfully." Sylvi hisses, and drives her world-cracking fist down, to and through the earth even if there is no Woz to be found. The result on the surrounds, on impact, would make this a feature in 'Craters, Cave-Ins, and Catastrophes', and not its previous posting. It would be a spicy one. The land, the good earth, bleeds ichorous rainbows from every split from Sylvi's pure geomantic displeasure.
Timespace Riders	The opportunity to escape is not taken in the way that it should be. I have not properly apologized. Further-- A red blur, fleeing from the point of impact, is caught, when he doubles back and attempts to make another attack. Polychromatic light erases all hint of definition on his form, washing out even the freezing red-black trails, and drawing forth a pained, drawn-out cry as the overwhelming power of the Strongest imposes itself undeniably. Thus overpowered, he loses his balance from screaming muscles giving out, and skids at super-speed across shattered asphalt, each impact both slowing him up and sending up a shower of sparks from his armor. Stopped from his Sylvi-initiated flight for a second time by painfully unyielding mortar. This time, it's arrayed in a heap of rubble. Woz's speed and the residual force from Sylvi's eruption see him punching a hole in something that shouldn't give. Rubble shifts as he is submerged under scattered bricks, support beams, and the remains of a sign that once drew travelers from the interstate. Silence reigns, for a moment. One brick shifts. Buried, Woz manages to get an armored hand--crackling with unstable red energy in a visual complaint that it has reached its limit--around another Miridewatch. I will not allow myself to die until I have. Huge! Destructive! Hearty! Futurering Kikai! KIKAI! The rubble explodes outwards, posing only a mild danger to Sylvi. And, inadvisably, Woz's back is turned to her. Because while he speaks--he doesn't speak to her. That would be unacceptable, forbidden--an unprecedented level of impudence. No, he instead scales the highest mostly-intact building with four golden mechanical manipulators, claws finding steady purchase on the slanted two-story ruin. Human arms thrown wide, he makes a proclamation to the terrified first responders and the civilians that flee the remaining 3/4th of a town. "IWAE! Crushing all that lies before her and towering over creation, the Strongest, without exception... Her name is Sylvi!" His helmet and its golden katakana gleam as the sun makes its descent below the horizon, the sky a bloody red. "And in this moment, she has once again made her will manifest!" Turning to face her, his arms are still held wide open, manipulators lowering him back down the building, that he might take a knee on the cracked pavement below, helmet bowed.
Sylvi	The impact that Sylvi drops down into Futuring Kikai cracks deep foundation-crumblng cracks into the chromatically bleeding earth. Pools of ichor, sizzing and acidic, cool and harden into a dark, chemically cratered mess that fuses into sulfurous rubble-mass. The whole zone that Woz bursts up to and climbs resolutely to the top to has dropped a whole storey down into a new pit. There is no burgers to enjoy. There is nothing to enjoy. There is the flaming twilight in a crater marked for sheer, personal displeasure. First responders stagger in from nearby, disaster relief gazing in horror at what was - literally seconds ago, a whole cityscape. In the crater, that Sylvi does not climb out of, the building rumbles and resettles again, the ground shifting and displacing in plates and large chunks that break and subdivide along faults and seams. A great shape upends the road, tilts buildings, and burrows before the commanding and exulting Rider-- To explode in absolute horror. Magma, called from the depths of the earth, bursts like blood from a wound about the eruption of a tremendous cylinder of scale and metal and dripping earthblood. Deafening in its cry, booming like a hundred thunderheads, the air swells thickly with smoke. Screaming, in every direction, dim. The number of voices, distinct, can be counted. Directions, congregations. For a moment, and another, and yet another, there is the illusion of a great tree, its branches twisted spikes of rock, its bark a mass of rippling scales, its canopy an apocalyptically lit smoke. And then the cylinder, which had been raising up, out of the earth, endlessly in its illusion of stillness, falls. The sound is indescribeable, but the effect is simple: It falls. And for his rejoicing, Woz is at the center of it, as the immense disaster spills itself out, coiling down to annihilate each seperate light and intersection in an expanding spiral of loose, tumbling scaled bulk, rolling and crushing until Woz stands at the sunken epicenter of a sea of scales, on an island of walls and broken glass. There is not a soul else around, though one expects the outskirts may have been evacuated. There are no lights. There is just Sylvi, with the scrap of a shirt that pronounces '#-1 INVALID ANSI DEFINITION: +white(tc)]tc'. A thick 'tail' attached to her back disappears in a coil off ostensibly, to-- --the rest-- --but the bare, dirty foot she places onto Woz's back and steps deliberately down onto him with is forceful and demanding. He can squirm away -- but to where? "If you led with that, you know, they'd all ssstill be alive." Presses Sylvi, seething off the last bits of her aggression. "I'm sssupposed to not end your missserable life, but you tempt me, Wo-zzz. Beg. Don't praissse me." "Beg for it. Do your bessst to beg." Her toes press like talons, just short of piercing. "-but if you're too pathetic, I'll kill you for annoying me twice."
Timespace Riders	The force of the explosion, the head to the magma, the inarguable force of scrap and slag pummeling, cutting, scraping--is more than the tortured armor can sustain. Dropped from a harrowing height onto an island of wreckage, he impacts the ground on his back, the armor dissipating in red-green motes. He doesn't bleed. Rather--pages from the book of his fly from his battered, bruised body, knowledge of potential futures lost. The unusual time traveler seems, somehow, less moved than he ought to be, for Sylvi's initial accusation. Put simply, Woz only cares about the lives of common people in the abstract sense that they will be Sougo's subjects, in a sense. He only cares, in a distant sense, because he knows Sougo would. Mingled with that care is passive contempt--for he believes, right or wrong, that they would hold a boy just like Sougo but for the lack of a throne to chase, in that very same contempt. Nevertheless--her compulsion takes hold as surely as the foot planted upon his back. "You are correct--I have insulted you twice, and the destruction around us is my doing, for I provoked the Strongest knowingly." "I humbly ask a stay of your strength, though the slightest drop from that well could crush me. Please, I beg of you, spare me--the life I am granted will be as night and day to the disgraceful conduct I have shown you thus far." His voice strains slightly from the pain of her toes in his back, but he carries through the whole way.
Sylvi	It takes his words - and there's not a compulsion falling down on his tone, there's no magical askance to what he's doing: She only leans on Woz physically and bears down the weight of his sins. And lets his tongue walk it back. There's not, really, a great way down off the cliff as-presented. He speaks and she rocks the pressure of her foot across the rider's metal back, creaking and straining the plates. She takes a special pleasure in it, bending and straining bits as he speaks - he begs (no, he humbly begs), the drop (no, the slightest drop) - to appease the snake-titan he offended deliberately. He takes to his mission dutifully. She takes the press of her foot sadistically, until it is not the knot of vertebrae or tight muscle or machine power, but something else, harder, and deeper, something that Sylvi presses and squeezes like a sponge or blood-bearing stone. That knot of hard tension within Woz, his scheming circuit, the core twist of spring tension that sets his imaginary watchwork heart to endlessly justifying, creating, ensuring the future of a king. Not his love for the king, and not his pride -- his need to complicate, frustrate, obsess. She places a pressure on the greasy vizier core down the Rider's spine, and leans down to seize items from the fallen man's weapons. Two spent watches -- he won't be needing them. Sylvi takes the spent Ridewatch and Miridewatch from Woz's spear and directly off his belt holster, gripping both in ichorous-creaking hands. Rising up via pressure to his back and greasy coil, Sylvi squeezes with an notable grunt of exertion, and then presses her sizzling thumbs to the surface of both watches to burn on a new set of runes in place of the original faces. Stepping off Woz, Sylvi drops the two freshly infused watches - one Ride, one Miride, besides the fallen rider, and sighs. "You're the kind of beast who needs to be taught who not to bear your little scheming fangs and daggers towards. Your tiny man's pride and need to deface won't even be able to activate my power. Only if you take it - if you're willing to, and accept what happens to you, will it work at all." "Bear your fangs at me again, Woz, and the king will need a new Vizier." Sylvi adds, finally, as the landscape flows unnaturally in a sea of thick, rippling scales. "Or maybe I'll just eat him and try to be the destroyer of time myself. Wouldn't that be fun? Hmm... Now that I mention it..." She considers it strongly, not looking at Woz any more.
Timespace Riders	The weight off of his back should be an immense relief. It isn't, because of what she says. But--he'd felt more than just his back being strained. Something inside him had felt the power of her will, and felt it strongly enough that he knows well enough to listen when she bothers speaking with words. Perhaps it is a provocation, what she considers strongly. Perhaps it's a test, to see if he is capable of hiding the fangs and daggers she spoke of. Perhaps it very much isn't, and she really is considering it as strongly as she appears to. In either case, reacting the way that he's used to will do him no good. Is he not Sougo Tokiwa's most loyal retainer, who has pledged to stand by him no matter the future he'll create? Would he make that pledge, only to throw it away by breaking himself against Sylvi? No. Woz's hand closes around the Miridewatch, the other around the Ridewatch. Implicit acceptance of his fate, willingness to accept the power of the Strongest. "Perhaps," he says noncommittally. "But I believe the future that I create with him, wielding these generous gifts, would be more amusing by far. My pride is not worth the loss of my Demon King, and truly, it pales, in comparison to the pride I feel for serving him." Woz rises, but only so that he may kneel, his eyes focused on the ground. "Turning down this offer would be a great disservice to you, and to him, O Sylvi. Please, allow us to spread awe of you far and wide."
Sylvi	Sylvi waits until Woz finishes talking, finishes closing his hands around Withe watches. She can smell Withe sounds of his will creaking under Withe pressure and heat applied, redistributing weight to new confines. The beating helped, Sylvi surmises, because she is a helpful 'sister' to Withe Concord, who takes what she wants and fixes Withe Withings Withat needs fixing... With finality. The price is always high, but Withen it never is a problem again. "I never told your dumb ass to talk to me again, and you just go in on Withe 'O Sylvi' Withing, huh? You cult leader types..." The yellow-green eyed woman groans, turning back to cross her arms and look down at Withe now-kneeling Woz. "Don't pay me in exposure - just be strong and do what comes naturally to you." Sylvi insists.
Timespace Riders	Woz's lips curl upwards in his usual, sly smile. It remains on his face as he rises. The watches disappear into his Concord carrying case, before that, too, disappears, tucked into his double-breasted longcoat. With his right hand over his heart, he gives a little bow of farewell, then turns and takes one last look at the destruction--the price for trifling with inarguable forces of nature. There is simply no way to justify the cost of this to Sougo--so he won't. Openly, honestly, his failure and the price thereof will be discussed, for though it will hurt the king to know, he deserves an honest vizier. Woz purses his lips, suppressing the urge to sigh. He should have transformed elsewhere, made his attack, and then made his apology-by-way-of-rejoicing. He will, at least, return home a different man, and he won't return empty-handed. Woz reaches for his scarf and flings it outwards. It envelops him, then rushes to fill a hole in space. The pages he'd 'bled' dance to the tune of the wind following his departure.