Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Septette Arcubielle      The simulated arena Septette's dialed in looks more like someone's ideal of drowsy relaxation than a combat venue. Anyone entering will find themselves standing on a street of dark cobblestones undermined and broken by the ancient and immense roots of some unseen tree. The air tastes like seafoam and smells like loam after a rainstorm, and everything's lit with shifting gentle blue-greens like the bottom of a pool. To the right, a stand of mossy bedraggled trees that don't quite match any Earthly species. To the left, a two-story wooden tea-house.

     Septette 'sits' at a table just inside the teahouse's front windows, and waves at Majima to invite him in. ('Sits' because her dense body would break it like a twig- her posture is carefully cultivated to give the impression of resting her weight on it, and nothing more.) The door chimes with a little bell when opened.

     To casual inspection, Sept looks like an ordinary five-foot-zero young woman. Her earmuffs, elbow-length gloves, and the purple shawl wrapped around her shoulders hide all her inhuman aspects, save for the dull purple glow in her eyes. Her staticky, burring, worn-vinyl voice immediately ruins that impression. "Good afternoon, Mr. Majima. I've set aside eight and a half minutes for assessing your ability." She doesn't check a watch. "Do tell me when ready. Or would you like some tea first?"
Majima Goro     Majima had a few ideas in mind when it came to 'Shrine of Adversity'. Y'know, like a temple atop a mountain with a jagged path, probably a bunch of guys with swords crossin' your path every twenty feet. Nothing about the Shrine was that. Still, y'know, scientists runnin' tests on people, he could easily shift to a general idea of a laboratory, plain rooms with white squares, maybe some of those neon lines like that movie with the lightcycles he saw once. Y'know? You get a certain mental image.

A seaside village with a teahouse as a place to have some sort of conflict? The crap?

The one-eyed thug has an image to maintain, though, slipping into the teahouse. He doesn't just sit on the chair. He steps over from the back of the chair with one leg, then the other, keeping those legs apart at almost a right angle to take up as much room as possible as he looks around. "Eh? No fire jets? No electric fences? I gotta take ya to Purgatory sometime, show ya how an arena works sometime."

He pours himself a cup of tea, and proceeds to just down the scalding mess like it's nothing in a single gulp. "Eh. I'm good. Let's go."
Septette Arcubielle      "Alright." Septette takes a single diminutive sip of her tea, then sets it down carefully. She doesn't show any sign of bristling for a fight; no 'killing intent', no sudden surge of fighting spirit. She flips the table towards Majima as if she were turning the pages of a book, stands and steps forward in a single fluid motion, and punches through the midair table to explode it in a spray of wooden splinters, shattered ceramic, and near-boiling liquid towards the man.

     "I believe in practicing combat in realistic environments," she says, her tone every bit as calm and sweet as it was before her abrupt display of superhuman violence. The yggdroid takes a few paces backwards to give Majima room to show his style, then puts up her hands up in a defensive boxing-like stance and turns her body to the side to slim her profile. Strong foundations, at least. "I'm not an artist, Mr. Majima. I occupy myself with practicalities."
Majima Goro     Septette may have believed she was going to catch Majima unawares. She is incorrect. His leg is curled around the chair beneath him, and as the table flips, he slips to the ground. Hands and elbows on the floor, he twists the chair through the air, sweeping away most of the debris and keeping the worst of the ceramics off of him. Sadly, the wooden contrivance is lost in the process, but it frees his legs, which he uses to spring back up into the air.
SEPTETTE ARCUBIELLE
   YGGDROID
Pink fire flares up all over his body, his arms crossed as he moves in a rhythmic motion, slowly sidestepping around the teahouse. He seems to knock over a chair without terribly caring. "Eh? Well. I can teach ya 'bout practicality in a fight, sure." He dives to Septette's side in what, at first, appears to be a somersault that'll go around right past her. Instead, however, he springs back onto his arms, legs sweeping around to aim directly at the side of her knees, rising upwards to finish with an upsidedown kick to her face. "Waaha!"
Septette Arcubielle      "I don't need to be taught," Septette replies cheerfully, her eyes perfectly tracking Majima's motions even as her body lags a bit behind. "I need to learn. They are quite distinct." Her body twists and shifts where he strikes her, 'flinching' away from the blows to rob them of relative momentum as they sink past her shawl and pass through where flesh ought to be to hit metallic 'bone', but it's like kicking a car- the car moves a little bit, but the experience is probably harder on your shoe.

     The traditionally 'smart' move would be to grab Majima's ankle, or kick him in the gut, or back off and aggress when he tries to regain his stance. Septette doesn't do that. She leaps above him, scrapes the ceiling with her claws (shredding her gloves' fingertips in the process), and drops down on the other side, sweeping her leg behind her in quick spin without looking to try and entangle his arms and drop her. A fraction of a second later, the ceiling herniates and ruptures where she's scored it, and an entire couch falls through to strike the exact spot where Majima 'ought' to be corner-first.

     It's making a statement as much as anything else- she makes that clear when she stands up, spine straight, and watches the havoc with a little smile instead of following through. "I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive, Mr. Majima. Don't worry yourself with tutoring. Just let me understand you."
Majima Goro     The metal on Majima's boots gets a workout, today. Metal clashes against metal. Maybe even enough to make a small spark. His brow raises, slightly, as the kick feels 'wrong'. Still, it's not the first time he's kicked metal, hard, and it doesn't impact him quite the way you'd think. Then Septette leaps up to the ceiling. There's almost a squint from his one eye. Right. This is the Multiverse. He's gonna have to learn, again, that people don't react like normal punks around here.

That said, Septette's sweeping leg hits true as she lands behind Majima, and he lands--for a fraction of a second. While he's in this hot dancing motion, he seems hard to keep down. Sweeping his arms has just meant his legs are on the ground. His knees bend, his hip twists, and he's sprung himself out of the way just as the couch lands with a crash a foot away. And then he's back up to his standing dance, his grin only growing wilder as he continues dancing to an invisible beat.

"Ain't noone who can read me like that, Sepsy-chan!" Sadly, he's not strong enough to lift the couch and start beating Septette with it, but what he can do is kick the chair over, sliding up it as it falls to deliver a twin booted drop kick-style slide to the Yggdroid's face, hopefully managing to bound away off her chest. Staying close to the cracy chick with the claws doesn't seem like the best of options.
Septette Arcubielle      Septette's reactions aren't 'sharp'- 'sharp' is a word applied to currents of electicity and chemical secretions pulsing through a biological nervous system. 'Sharp' is the speed of meat. Septette's reactions are instantaneous, responding to Majima as swiftly as his own reflection in the mirror. That kick ought to be a heavy concussion on anyone else, but she starts moving the millisecond he commits to it. Her eyes flicker a brighter purple as her perception of the world slows down. By the time his feet ought to connect with her head, she's leaning on her back foot to make it just barely whiff and pushing his legs to the side with her forearm shoving against his shin.

     The weakness in that defense only appears a moment later. She carries through on her momentum more than any creature of flesh and blood- with a body denser than depleted uranium, you can't stop on a dime. But here, she's covered all of her bases. The twisting, blocking motion of her arm carries through into a low spin under Majima, followed by a single jab precisely aimed at his solar plexus as she passes under him. Then she pops back up on the other side, hands by her sides, shifting slightly from one foot to the other.

     "It takes most people a fifth of a second to process the world," she says, perfectly at ease once more. "Your brain runs on a delay. I don't need to read you. Compared to you, I can see the future."
Majima Goro     Majima slides over that couch effortless. Alright. Gotta boot this lady in the face, and then--
"....Th' fuck?" He manages to get out as this crazy ass girl's reflexes are faster than his own. At the very least, it wasn't some devastating counter attack. He's just pushes to the side, and it's almost nothing for him to spring on his knees, land on his hands, and flip back up to his feet..just in time for that fist. A single jab to his solar plexus gets him solid, but he's not a complete piece of paper. He's just sent hopping back a little.

He isn't going to out-maneuver this robot, which is among the stupider things he's had to say today. That's fine. That flaring pink suddenly flares up again, turning a brilliant yellow topaz, as a simple wooden bat is drawn from..somewhere. He's stopped dancing, at least.

Septette, being a genius robot, can probably figure this out: Majima's tactics are literally telegraphed by what color of fire he is on, if for some reason the difference between holding a bat and holding a knife aren't clear enough.

What probably might surprise her, whether or not she can react in time, is that he's using the bat as a crutch to do some kind of cartwheel, swinging the bat around and then leaping around to do a full spin and smash the bat vertically atop her. She can probably see what's going to happen from a mile away, but the question is whether she can do anything about it.
Septette Arcubielle      Again, her eyes light up and follow his movements perfectly. They make an audible click-whine, almost like a camera, as they flick and jitter to follow the erratic lines his limbs trace in the air. Her head whips around to follow the cartwheel... and her forearm comes up to meet the bat with a meaty ping, splintering the wood on contact. No fancy martial maneuvers this time- she's testing out her toolkit on him methodically, one piece at a time.

     Instead, her body ignites like a slick of gasoline. A thermal current of air billowing her shawl and stirring up dust or papers is all the warning Majima gets- a second later she explodes like a fireball, briefly silhouetted in black at the center of a ten-foot-across flaming halo that chars the floor and sets fire to the ceiling. Her gloves and shawl ash like cotton, revealing a sharp and angular body of tan ceramic and black metal that seems equal parts skeletal, robotic, and insectoid. A red crystalline orb pulses in her hollow ribcage where a heart ought to be.

     "You're in the ocean, hundreds of feet from land," she says, shifting back into a boxing stance as the air around her shimmers like the horizon over hot blacktop. "There's a shark attacking you. How do you survive?"
Majima Goro It's not like the bat's made of anything special. Still, he's smashed this thing on metal before. Watching it actually splinter and break throws him off. That leaves him awfully close for the counterattack, though, as Septette proceeds to explode. He's got nothing to block with, and no time to change strategy. The most he manages to do is adjust and twist so that the explosion propels him faster than the fire catches him alight, but he's still smashed off the floor.

And then bounced up against the wall, and smashed into that as well, and then the fire washes over him.

...Still, he gets up. Well. He's gotta fight a flaming robot. That's gonna be tricky. That's 100% gonna be tricky. "Ehh. Sharks? Fuck kinda question is that? Y'gonna turn into a sharkbot, lady?"

His eyepatch has to be adjusted. Septette can quickly see that that eye was not removed in some quick, oneoff accident. The scarring and complete removal indicates it was done surgically, and in a manner designed to inflict as much pain as humanly possible. Once it's covered, then he considers his options. Going at her first seems dumb, but if her reaction time's literally instant, there's no point in focusing on countering her strikes. She's also made entirely of knives, but..now she's shown a weak point. He thinks he can capitalize on that.

That yellow flare turns a deep purple, as a black-sheathed Tanto is drawn and brandished. "Alright. I'm startin' to get a general idea of what I gotta do here if I wanna survive this." That tanto swaps out for some cheaper, lesser knife, which he throws up in the air--not in a useful, 'stick into someone' manner, but just casually flipped.
Then he rushes towards Septette, the tanto coming forward to try to aim for that weak point for a few strikes, before he hops back--just in time, if all goes well, to roundhouse kick the thrown knife directly into that red core. It'd be pointless to aim anywhere else.
Septette Arcubielle      Septette's eyes linger on that empty eye socket for a moment or two. She's a bit too well-mannered in her own peculiar way to say anything, but the weight of observation is palpable. She stands her ground- as she's wont to do- when he rushes in, seeming to prove a point by meeting his assault head-on. Striking someone with a tanto when they can catch it with their bare hands is a novel exercise, and she wards off the initial attack aimed at her core easily enough. "It's a lesson in a metaphor. You can't kill the shark, Mr. Majima. How do you get it off you?"

     The roundhouse kick- she can't see the knife behind his back. She can trace its trajectory out from its last known position, she knows where it is, but she doesn't seem to consider the fact that he might be able to do something that crazy. So she holds her hands out by her sides, palms-up, grandiosely... and widens her eyes when the knife comes around, balanced atop his foot.

     There's no reacting to that, caught too far out of a defensible position. Her thought is instantaneous, but her movements aren't. The knife comes in with all the force of Majima's body behind it.

     The knife shatters on her heart.

     Septette's arm comes in behind Majima's knee, trying to pin his leg to her chest. Her ribcage opens up like the jaws of a venus flytrap, and then tries to chomp down on his leg. "If you're fighting for your life, and the shark is fighting for its meal, you only have to be 'not worth it'."

     Her heart isn't in it. What kind of person only has eight and a half minutes for a fight?
Majima Goro     See, that's why he used the -crap- knife to kick into her heart thing. It doesn't matter if that breaks!

Still, Septette is somehow fast, when she wants to be. Majima's not used to someone not staggering like an idiot when he kicks a knife into their heart. Heck, he usually has a moment to lean in, make fun of them, and rip the knife out. The robot just casually snagging his leg gets a moment of surprise, and then he laughs. "Ya gonna spend this whole fight talkin' some stupid bullshit?" He asks. Does he shout with pain as that ribcage chops his leg?

Yeah, okay, that hurt. But he's still laughing, because this shit is ridiculous. ..Hopefully, the whole 'fix you up' thing includes his pants. He likes these pants. He rips his leg from Septette's grasp, sliding away on one knee a moment before standing back up again.
"I ain't fought a frickin' drawer of cutlery before, alright? I ain't got a bead on where your weak point is, but now that I think about it..." The knife is literally not going to do any good. He draws out a can of energy drink...and slugs it back, throwing the can to the side.
Then another one.
And another one. Those flames are only growing stronger, even as they emit almost no actual, real heat.
Analysis: Majima gains immense, short term strength from caffeine.
"Let's see if I ain't got one last shot, huh?"
His knives are useless here. That flare turns blue, and this time, as he runs towards Septette barehanded, he..suddenly rolls to the side, grabbing onto...that's odd.

An old, rotary-style telephone?

HEAT ACTION: ESSENCE OF COMMUNICATION

The receiver and cord are swung around like a ball and chain, attempting to strike here and there on the robot's body, before the cord is swung around Septette's neck like a loop. Finally, the base of the phone is smashed forward, directly into her face, followed by a solid headbutt. "CAN YA HEAR ME NOW?"
Septette Arcubielle      Septette doesn't take it lying down, of course. She's immediately in motion, moving not just in response to Majima's actions but- out of necessity- in anticipation of them. Unfortunately, she's taken aback by the assault not because she doesn't expect it, but because she expected something saner. Maybe moving in to strike at her neck with the heel of his hand, maybe striking at joints, not... this. Again, too far out of position for an adequate defense. The phone-cord garrote doesn't do much to 'choke' her, but like a ballerina pulling in their limbs to spin faster, the shortened cord makes the base of the telephone smash into her face all the harder.

     Their heads slam together, flesh and bone meeting magitech ceramic. Septette, characteristically, doesn't yield. If there's any sort of brain in her head, it isn't susceptible to concussion. Her eyes bore into his, flickering sporadically like the light on a hard drive. Her hands open wide, knifelike fingers flexing, and heat to red-hot in preparation for some kind of retaliation...

     And then she steps back, abruptly disengaging. The simulated teashop disappears just as its roof starts to cave in from the fire, the picturesque scenery replaced by a plain white room. Her shawl, gloves, and earmuffs reappear as the scuffs and ashes melt off her. "And that was eight and a half minutes," she says, with a respectful bow of her head. "I think I have an idea of what you're capable of now, Mr. Majima. Thank you kindly for demonstrating."

     As an afterthought, she adds before departing: "Oh- you bloody the shark's nose. I can't afford to be hurt."
Majima Goro     Majima has one advantage over Septette. The droid has an awareness of most of his capabilities. He's still got a couple tricks left, but at some point, he had to do his own research. As the fight--suddenly stops, he stops as well. He's panting, down on one knee, but he still looks fairly excited.
"Hahaha. Yeah. Can't say I didn't learn a lot from you too, huh? Gonna have to be careful out there." He flicks the light on a cigarette, and then pauses. His eye closes once, and then opens again.

"Hey, wait," He says, once Septette's finally departed.

"...if nothin' lasts in here, what happens if I get riproaring drunk 'fore I step out?"