Scene #7411: All You Can Eat

Owner	Pose
Sylvi	Sadie's Roadside Diner is like every other roadside diner cut-out on the interstate. A long stretch of open highway in both directions. A gas station on one side of the road. Sadie's on the other. Sadie's has the old stlye of a Diner that still feels like it's in the 70's. Hash browns come from a can but the eggs are fresh and the coffee acceptable after a house grind in an aging machine. Coffee with the precise film and filter taste of a drip pot that hasn't stopped dripping in a decade. The taste of age. At a window-side booth sits a girl with long, unkempt white hair and green eyes that come to circular pupils - a soft concession for getting the mountain of food in front of her. Chili Fries, Super Cobb Salad drenched in dressing, a burger patty as thick as her hand flat on two greased buns. It's perfect. She eats and watches reruns of the weekend's college games featuring two teams she's never heard about, lost in the quiet contemplation of diner food consumption. There is, on the wall, next to a T-Shirt example of what you can win if you complete Sadie's Challenge, a collection of pictures of a bunch of random yukkos and also Sylvi looking bored and holding the T-shirt four times. She appears to be a regular.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	These sorts of places are familiar to Bercilak. If you have the fortitude, the courage, the hunger, you can get a full meal here for free. You can have your grinning mug on the wall. He is often the sort to challenge them, and he has not lost such a challenge yet. Sylvi might hear it, over the background noise of people eating, forks clinking, piped in music, before she sees him. The whine of the engine. The roar of chemical thrusters. Perhaps the downward hum as his massive armored bike powers down, the heavy thud as it lands. Originally, he'd come here to challenge this place. Dressed in a vibrantly colored, dangerously strained t-shirt bearing a logo which reads BOSTON over a silhouette of a UFO, the Green Knight no longer has any interest in Sadie's Challenge. His red irises are alive with excitement when he sees the picture wall. Bercilak's thumbs unhook from the wide studded leather belt around his waist, fingers slipping from the pockets of his ripped black jeans. Motorcycle boots thud against the floor. "BEAUTEOUS SERPENT!" Oh no. People are already casting nervous glances towards the giant green man, as a box materializes in his meaty palm. "Threfold yefts hath I for thee." That box is offered up, opened and dropped on the table before her. Inside it, there is her hoodie--still dirtied and bloodied from their last fight. That's one. On top of it, there's a flower--not just any flower, and certainly not something so cliche as a rose. Its faintly transparent purple-blue petals are spaced a little too far out for it to be a conventionally 'pretty' flower, the stem likewise too swollen and unshapely. But the Ghost Flower, unique to Rubi-ka's Shadowlands, was not plucked because it is a pretty flower. No, it's given to her as a gift because only the strong may hold one and resist its insidious, vicious thirst for the essence of the living. That's two gifts. The third is an uppercut aimed at her temple. "I shalt win thy name this dai."
Sylvi	Sylvi, regifted her bloody fused-up ball of a hoodie and a terrible Ghost Rose that only hungers for the life-force of the living, frowns into her focus on the College Ball. "Dude, go away. I'm eating." Then fist connects with chin, and she's popped up straight to the cieling, tearing a hole in the particle-board paneling before tumbling down in a sprawl of limbs back in across her chair. She doesn't 'right' herself in space correctly, a flowing to the motion rotationally like the turning of a single muscle-group rather than a fully complex person with anatomy. When she does, her eyes are slit ophidian and full of hate and disgust. "You wanna add to the buffet line?" Her fist reaches out, to grip the Ghost Flower by the head and tear it from its resting place to-- Pop it in her mouth and chew, crunching down on the plant matter and petals like it was some soft chip. Unpreturbed by the effects, she swallows, and then opens wide just to show that she had - in fact - swallowed it all, sharp diamond-points of overlarge teeth on display. She snaps her mouth shut. "Idiot Maximus. You interrupted chili fries, so when I beat you, your punishment will be etched into your bones." Kicking out with her leg, she follows through by rising from her chair, aiming two punches right to Bercilak's gut with her left hand before hammering down across his chin diagonally with her right fist.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	As Sylvi flies upwards and crashes through the ceiling, there is surely a startled and disapproving wave of pearl-clutching murmurs which passes through the diner, some patrons attempting to ignore it, others having the good sense to leave. Bercilak hears none of it--and likely wouldn't even if he hadn't just barked one of those booming belly-laughs of his. "Marvilouse," he says between that laughter, as the deadly flower is so wholly subdued by her fortitude. He wouldn't expect anything less of the 'beautiful serpent' he challenged today. Her fists crash into his gut. With the two of them, strength is the only thing each has to overcome the fortitude of the other. Hers is greater--great enough to stagger him briefly, but he still remains on two feet, his abdomen firm against the assault. Of course, this is a place where heroic deeds are enshrined--where those who have tested themselves against Sadie's Challenge and won are immortalized upon the picture wall. A place such as this must not be totally destroyed. And so, he jukes that last punch, pressing into her reach to trap her in a headlock. Face pressed against the strained fabric of his t-shirt, Sylvi's head is squeezed between his bicep and his pectorals as he leaps, with her in tow, through the window, showering the both of them in broken glass. "Let us not dilai," says the Green Knight, as his armor begins to materialize. He wants to get to the haymakers right away this time. Still attempting to hold her in place, his heavy plated gauntlet makes three strikes. "Sheu me what thou didst upon oure last ifighte, thou serpent fairli."
Sylvi	It's not hard to lock with Sylvi, to grab her by the metaphorical horns and strain. It's actually easier than with some people Bercilak has fought, because there is not a single point in which Sylvi attempts to move away or break contact. As he gets her head under his arm and heaves her outside in the glimmering shower of shattered glass, she spins in his grip like an eel, all muscle and thrashing, his blows finding different part of her back or chest each time. "You want me to what? No, you don't get to ask for anything!" Out in the sparsely occupied parking-lot, just off the interstate, Sylvi rotates her shoulder, looping it around Bercilak's neck at an impossible extension that rakes her fingers sharply across his neck -- enough to scratch, but mostly friction. A touch-hold. She drives her knee and upper thigh into Bercilak's lower back, bending his spine over her knee before rolling out of the hold-and-counterhold, just hauling her whole torso out to stagger aside and stand for a moment. "If you want anything from me--" She spits on the ground and spreads her arms wide before bringing them in, cracking her knuckles in a press-and-fan that she had clearly practiced. Finally, her fists come up and she takes a left-foot forward stance. "--you're going to have to take it by force."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Sylvi's fingers rake against his neck, drawing an approving grunt. It's going to be another knock-down, drag-out--that's his invitation to make it one. Her knee strikes his back just as that enormous breastplate settles over the already dense plates beneath it. Forced away from her, he stumbles and stands back up in time for his axe to appear in one waiting hand, and for that cloak of helleria and helleborne to spill out behind him. His grinning face is the last unarmored part of him which she sees, before it is enveloped by that horned t-visored helmet. "So be hit," he says gladly. "I shalt prise thy strength and thy herte unk bothe." Microthrusters fire, plated boots scarping gauges against the parking lot. The horned knight charges her head-on, stopping just short to make a false swipe with his axe, a feint. That feint is expertly seized upon, fluidly transitioned as his grip chokes up, and the haft is used as a blunt instrument. The butt end, slammed down to strike at her foot. His right leg moving to mirror her left, the haft slipped behind her leg to force her to ground. His grip eases up, the tip of the weapon's edge expertly brought against her in a low, upwards two-handed swoop.
Sylvi	"So be hit? That's not olde English, that's just a shitty--" She doesn't get to pun, as she carries through with a vicious backhand parry-- Of Bercilak's feint, sending the heft even more forcefully into her own foot. Swearing loudly and hopping up, the recoil partially a bounce as the earth ripples like a bowl of gelatin under her smashed foot. Her sneaker splits apart as her foot is flattened underneat the strike, straining the seam enough that the sole comes away. Sylvi catches the axe's downward blow with her bare hand, palm sparking as if the edge works against a grindstone, and thumbs her jaw back into place with a soft 'pop' that sounds too natural to be coincidence. "You never sssaid what happened if I won." Sylvi hisses, gutteral and raspy, her voice momentarily sibilant. "A pric-" sussurating rattles. "-e that's fair wager. Do I get to choossssss-" Her parrying hand tightens, a grip as if fused to the metal, as she leans in. Her tongue, long and forked a the tip, lolls out of her mouth and rows of shiny teeth, and slides from chest-to-crown-of-helmet in one long freaky lick that leaves a trail of oilslick-rainbow shimmering across his armor. For moment, even through environmental systems, the sheer toxicity and numerosity of status effects left sizzling there from her path causes a delirium all of its own, the exact wobble of a great trip about to go completely terrible. The followup blow, through the primordial haze, barely registers, though with it comes the release of Bercilak's axe. Across the way, Sylvi looms, slit-eyes glowing emerald-green. Perspective shifts, the world warping as she laughs. "You think you can even hold my heart? Go ahead and lose your mind any time, get it over with. Nothing can handle me but me."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"If I forlose to thee," begins Bercilak, as her tongue paints an eclectic trail of toxins which waft into his filtration systems. His axe is lifted high, and for a moment, the earth drops out from under him. All manner of poisons, maladies and afflictions seize upon his brain, his eyes, his ears. He halts. Staggers. And then he is whole again, the iridescent streak upon his armor slowly vanishing. He bellows another laugh. "I SHALT YEVE THEE ANI PRISE THOU LEST, BUT MINE ILEVINGE!" The axe is driven into the ground, and a massive tree shoots up from the asphalt of the parking lot, tossing cars and bikes aside as its canopy heads straight for her stomach, to lift her up. Bercilak is hot on her trail, running up the towering tree as hallucinations still hound him, dancing at the edges of his vision. He'll give her anything she wants but his surrender in his quest for her heart. "FOR I WOULDST RATHERE BE CRUSHED IN MINE ATTEMPT TO GRIP HIT, THANNE AFLEN FROM THEE AS WOULDST A COUART!" With a bounding leap he catches up to the racing canopy, thrusters firing as it widens out into a broad, elevated arena, from which everyone below might see this battle. He scarcely allows her time to get up before he begins his assault, starting with an overhead smash from the axe, flowing gracefully into brutal thrust with the blunt eye of the weapon, chasing her down and choking up on the grip to bludgeon with a series of butt-end haft strikes, stomps and kicks. He means it. He's not giving up.
Sylvi	Perhaps he's delirious. Perhaps his mind is pickled from the fumes of the oil-slick rainbow that he can't even fight straight, but it just doesn't work out the way he impulses it to. Ears ringing, he tries to fight, and the scene shifts. He falls into her arms, and she pats his back and smiles. He swings his axe and they spin in a dance, hands together. Her cut-emerald eyes look past the helmet, and pupils dialated catlike. The force flows away, cast into her orbit, or blows simply fail to do anything but touch her firmly. She laughs, throatily, a slight rasp the whole time over a long sibilant tongue, the whole time. She laughs, and even though she laughs, for the first time it's not entirely At Bercilak. The final embrace is one where she dips over him, looming, a hand steadying at the small of his back. She hangs there, her other hand palming the back of his helmet, to squeeze. Fingers close around the back of his head, pressure building against his skull. Her arms constricted, far past any sort of love. A bone-crushing, armor-crumpling pressure wrapped around him. 'Can he pull the same reversal?' Her eyes wonder. 'Will he die?' Her eyes, her ears, her limbs delight in the twist and crunch and buckling of the man against her.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak's helmet crunches. Whatever marvels of engineering, whatever forge, lightyears away from this diner and this arena, are formidable in what they have created, but not nearly enough to resist the kind of strength that she has. Strength that doesn't care about resistance. Strength that just is. Metal groans and creaks. Bone cracks. Flesh tears. The plants which form his cloak are watered with blood and gore which leaks from the back end of the horned thing. He ought to be dead. But he isn't. Even as the back of his helmet caves in, crumples, his arms wrap around her, too. Squeezing. Even as blood now runs down the front end of it, his fingers dig into her back, his thick arms crushing her side. He can't win a contest of his strength against hers. Even in his delirious state, he must know that. But... <B-anter> Bercilak says, "Everi-man shouldst attempt to climb a mounthe of som manere. For if not, thei art living, but not alif." <B-anter> Bercilak says, "Whi, indede, fraist thyself ayenst a mounthe? Ayenst the sea? Bicause it is al-wais thire, al-wais unchaunged in its strength--but the ilksame is not true of thee. In fraistinge, and ifailinge, one greues more strengthi." He enjoys, for a moment longer, the rare sensation of being so wholly outmatched, of struggling and fighting for every inch of advantage--before he attempts to create an advantage outright. The axe is tossed to the side. He leaps, still wrapped in her crushing grip, still crushing her. Thrusters fire, pushing them both off of the edge of the towering tree-platform. He inverts his position, the knight now entirely headless, his helmet falling uselessly off to reveal a stump from which a new skull has barely begun to grow before it--and, he hopes, hers--crash at terminal velocity into the pavement below.
Sylvi	If you cannot struggle, leap, if you cannot leap, fall. Bercilak falls snake-down, the earth exploding beneath the pair as Sylvi connects right at the base of her skull and shoulders with the ground. For a heart-stopping beat it feels like the whole geologic plate depresses, like the ground was on a pool ball on a fizzy amber lake of lava that could be depressed into it. Car alarms start to ring. Sylvi's arms spasm as she chokes on her tongue and coughs, all the air compressed out of her lungs with the heavy weight of the armored knight being sponged by her chest and ribs. Rolling to a shoulder she hacks and coughs for a few moments, sending sizzling spatters of spittle at the pavement nearby. "Who the heck does that?" She coughs, more amused than anything, and pushes back to her feet, throwing off her other shoe since she had become mismatched before the grappling. "I've thought up the perfect punishment for you--" Sylvi begins, raising her fist. Her thumb moves up across the index knuckle and pulls down, causing a loud tension-release pop of a crack. "Are you ready to recieve it?" She leads with her fist, but after the first blow she turns off the pretenses of simple humanity, her second blow dragging along the ground like a match being struck on pavement to gather a fistful of molten concrete to uppercut the front brace of his chestplate, the molten ground just wreathing her fist like a glove. "You rrrrrreally seem to want a go at my heart. Are you ready to lose now?! It's punishment time!" Her grin, too wide, and too toothy.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Who the heck does that? The once-again headless knight gets off of Sylvi, armor dented and cracked in several places from the impact of the fall, plates slowly healing as his skull forms again. Eyes. Muscle. Skin. Hair. "I!" He grins wildly. /He/ does it. And he's quite glad to have surprised her, pointing a broken, mending thumb at the enormous harness laid over his chest. A punishment is offered, which he is eager to test himself against. "Yeve it to me, mine beauteous adversaunt." Her fist scrapes against the ground, He dives forward, into her blow. Molten concrete melts away that harness, the whole thing splitting open like the cracked shell of some great beast, falling off of his shoulders with a piercing creak. Each half hits the ground to either side of him. The force of her strike is so great that even the more compact plates beneath that harness have deformed from the heat. Blue light consumes the broken thing, as he twists his body to keep his chin free of the stroke. Even so--half his face is burnt for it. If she would cast aside pretense of humanity, then so will he. He makes for a counter-strike. But he puts too much of his strength into it. The cross-punch he makes, aimed downward, intending to collide with her temple, is thrown with such vigor that the man's back audibly breaks, as his upper body turns further than its human construction was meant to. Still standing, the wound is healed within seconds, and he throws a haymaker uppercut with enough force to break it in the opposite direction. The wound heals. Tearing his arm off at the shoulder with a triumphant roar, a new, bare arm grows to replace it--and he attempts to bludgeon her with the limb, making an implement of the armored arm and swinging it with both limbs intact.
Sylvi	It's a moment that looks absolutely cartoonish. Drawn on. For a moment she's posed arm up with her dripping-hot concrete fist, a single cut-emerald eye glowing from past the round of her shoulder and candlewax-dripping concrete coated forearm. The a real guard, something tangible. Knocked around enough to respect momentarily his strength rather than leaning into it. As his back emits gnarly pops and crackling twists, the very air about her bristles darkly as the candlewax of the concrete pours out molten-dark over her whole raised guard like a shield. The blow comes on that concrete-reinforced forearm shield. Flecks of green and molten orange fleck from the shell of stone. "I'm not so weak as to fall to mere force of will. I don't feel like losing today, Bercilak." The second blow hammers down and she is not so much a woman as a golemn of concrete and asphalt, dripping molten rock from the broken stone around her joints like a magmatic elemental, who ripples not against but into the pavement as it -- as she -- advances into it. The third blow, arm and all, is batted aside as she falls astride him to ride him, molten geo-armor and all, into the ground, to simply pummel into submission.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Both arms break for the strength with which Sylvi guards against his blows, wounds rapidly healing before one is torn off. And when that one strikes against the golem, it is broken in two for the strength with which he smashes it against her parrying strike in vain. Forced to the ground, straddled, his armored back renders another fissure in the ruined parking lot, as car alarms blare all around them. Under the shade of his giant tree, tremors quake the earth itself for the force with which her fists rain upon him. His improvised weapon avails him not, pried from his grasp by her greater strength, perhaps cast aside to shatter the window of some poor diner's car, or to knock over an unfortunate biker's chopper. His face deforms, breaks, mends, but her furious assault pummels his head and chest into submission. So great are the tremors that his axe is shaken loose from the top of his tree arena, and it crushes a minivan under its weight, adding another accusing cry to the cacophony all around them. When his arms finally raise, they aren't raised for more strikes. Only to gently catch both of her hands. To cede victory. "Thire is noudgten 'liti' aboute mine iforce of wille," he says proudly. "But thine own strength actual erned thee thy victuredom. I shalt not knoue thy name todai, beauteous serpent," he admits. But he is smiling, all the same. "Yet I shalt bere mine scomifture proudli, to knoue 'twas thee which yeven it unto me." He holds her hands for a moment longer, a thumb stroking over hers, before he releases them. "Name thy prise, beauteous serpent, and glathe shalt I be to yeve it unto thee."
Sylvi	The hands come up, and the fists dap against them. Sylvi has her strength under control! The 'expression' she wears shifts as the asphalt golem body, dripping molten rocktar everywhere, smooths and subsumes into a form about her. Neck and shoulders smooth and widen, hood crowning out like a cobra as her rocky chin becomes a defined, smooth jaw. Scaled all over in molten-shimmer oilrock asphalt scales, the humanoid cobra brings a raptor-nailed finger to the tip of her flared muzzle, eyes nictating as she rattles in a lingering way, deep in her throat. "Do you believe..." She begins. "That I will deal you fairly? Reply thrice, unknowing the bargain." She turns her palm, the light glinting off the sheath of tiny diamond scales on her wrist and back of hand. "A give... and take?"
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Does he believe that she'll treat him fairly? Of course. He agreed to this from the moment he threw the first punch, and cemented it when he allowed her to name any prize she wanted. He is so certain that she will, that it draws a wide, confident grin to his face, red irises twinkling. "Yea, yea, and yea," he speaks, unkowing the bargain, wild and savage eyes locked with her serpentine pools. "Threfold swares I yeve to thee, thy prise may thou ensese." His broad, armored chest rises and falls. There is anticipation in him. Whatever terms she sets, he will honor. It is therefore, to him, impossible for him to be treated unfairly.
Sylvi	"Fine." Sylvi, the odd asphalt-scaled cobra leans in, eyes to eyes with Bercilak. His beard brushes against the tip of Sylvo's face, her serpentine features looming over him. "Then the gift I grant you is that which you seek. My father is Jormugandr, the Midgardsormir, the devourer if worlds. The one whose heart you seek to claim--" Her eyes are points of light, but there's nothing special about them. It's the wet feeling at his ear that should be bothering. It's a spiritual numbing as the sloshing flick of a tongue fiddles around in his head, searching and tasting for something within his mind. The 'appendage' in his ear seizes on something and yanks, dragging something that feels like it disdends out his ear canal while doing no such physical thing. Sylvi-the-Asphalt-Cobra draws back, holding an orb of some kind, gold and squishy and bright. With great show, she lifts her neck and places the orb in her mouth, gulping whatever it is down. Her eyes drop back again, meeting Bercilak's, and the whole Asphalt thing fades away, until it's 'just' the girl again, sitting on Bercilak's chest. She rolls her hands through her hair and snaps a rubber band into her mane. "I'm Sylvi. The consumer of stars, devourer of destiny. The one who's consumed your fantasies, the one who you can't help longing for. The one whose love..." A hand traces against his left pectoral, tapping against his beating heart hard enough to tremor down to the muscle itself. A physical pitter-patter. "... you want more than anyone else. Ahh, we'll have fun, my little star." She pats him on the cheek twice, fondly. "Next time try a little more aggression. Confident men are much sexier." She swings her leg over his chest and shoves off his pec and hip to push herself to the ground, dusting off her shorts and looking about for her shoe.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	>Fine. His eyes, by comparison, are not points of light. But when she gives her gift, they are utterly alive. Afire, perhaps, though not literally. What's an orb to him? Nothing, that's what. The beauteous serpent Sylvi, consumer of stars, devourer of destiny, will have fun with him, and he with her. That's all that matters to him right now--indeed, what he wants more than anything else! The armor disappears, consumed by encroaching waves of blue light as it's broken down and stored in the memory of his nanite swarm. The armor, and his body, may take quite the beating. The same is not true of the clothes he wears, which have suffered all the transference of energy his armor was unable to halt. Stretched and even torn in a few places, stained with blood in others, the shirt is ruined, and the jeans would be too if it weren't Hip and Cool to have torn jeans in his circles. As he yanks the axe from the minivan it crushed, a man worn down by stress, dressed in wrinkled polo and khakis, rushes over to bemoan his fate--and presumably, to compain to Bercilak, but that dies in his throat upon seeing not only the man, but the ease with which he hefts the enormous weapon. Looking this beaten man up and down, he asks a question. "Doth this carte yeve thee joi?" A question pondered. Ultimately, no. Bercilak kicks it across the parking lot. "Thanne stele one which doth, for if endliche Bercilak may sese joi, thanne mortual manne may, als." It lands on the other side and crumples, and the Green Knight mounts his stede. "Fare thee wel, Sylvi," calls Bercilak, as the engines roar to life and he makes a music selection for the ride to the warpgate. Grinning, as he remembers her suggestion--a little more aggression next time--"I shalt yeve thee plenteth of mine tothnesse whanne next we mete, and so moot I it shalt be son indede! Bahaha." Motorhead plays him home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd6dtkuKvao