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Post by Achi on Feb 7, 2019 18:01:35 GMT -6
Up against the side of a sheer cliff stood a man. His hair was a wild mess, dark blue, and he wore a dirty, blood-stained, skin-tight blue outfit. It clung to his body, crafted either through incredibly dedicated body building or simply a life of brutal combat. If he knew anything about his company, he suspected that the lifetime of combat explained both his power and his body. The man gave off an air of confidence, ironic given his “strength,” and seemed to possess a deep potential for immense cruelty and violence.
All of that said: after watching him empty his bladder against the rocks, any sense of threat he might have felt vanished entirely.
High up in the sky, hidden in the bright light of the closest of Namek’s suns, floated Achi. His white hair fluttered in the breeze and occasionally revealed the bright, purple eyes they hid. His robes, a mix of light violet, white, and an earthy brown sash, waved in the wind as well. He stared down, obscured by the light, and simply watched. The man below glanced up and shielded his eyes with a hand, but then looked away.
If nothing else, he seemed vaguely aware that they had a visitor in the sky above, but lacked the focus to realize that he had not imagined the sensation.
Ironically, that was much more than he could say for the person he had come for. More than twice as strong as her guest, she sat in the grass a few meters away from him, facing the opposite direction and towards a rocky overhang that covered the battered remains of what Achi assumed to be some sort of shelter. She slipped her pale arm back into her loose sleeve and then turned her attention back over to the man she accompanied here on this world.
Namek. A planet in the Mortal Universe, home to the Namekians. They were a peaceful race of humanoid slugs that, nowadays, bothered no one. Their history had not always been so serene, but it seemed that the pendulum of history finally swung back to their more natural state. To see that woman here, now, dirtied an otherwise tranquil and perfect world. He wondered why the grass beneath her didn’t wilt and why the air didn’t turn into a noxious sort of acid.
It would have been a fitting reaction to her presence, or so he thought.
Above his head shimmered the black, metallic, Katchin blade. His knuckles tightly gripped the handle and threatened to turn white, an even whiter glow surrounded the weapon, and he stared down at the woman as she rose to her feet. The glow in his weapon grew and grew, completely swallowed by the sun behind him, until he felt himself reach the absolute peak of the energy he could pour into it. Anymore and he would lose control.
Quietly, he prayed for this to end quickly. A single, well-placed blow in a vital area could stop this madness before it went any further. He wished for it, pleaded for it, and begged Tinanna to give him this one, last gift, so he could let her rest in peace in her new home.
With a single swing, and a blinding flash of white light, he carved a crevice through the earth that immediately split the cliffside behind the woman in two.
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Methus
Rising Soul
PL: 32,000
Kingsblood (x4P)
Tag: @protheus
Posts: 114
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Post by Methus on Feb 7, 2019 18:54:30 GMT -6
“Inna, I—” he had an entire thought prepared, words he wanted to share, something he wanted to tell her. Then, in the span of just a single, brief moment, he forgot it all forever.
Pure, eye-burning white ripped through the landscape. Rocks shattered, grass flew through the air and ignited. Ash filled the air around Methus and he raised an arm by reflex to cover his face and eyes alike. Pebbles and stones flew past his head and he immediately began to cough and hack to get the dirt out of his throat and lungs, along with the burning smell of scorched soil. In the distance, behind where he and Inna had laid just a few minutes ago, he heard the tumble of boulders and the shatter of even bigger chunks of rock.
They had been distracted, and Methus failed to fully notice the presence with them. Just half a minute ago, he thought he felt something in the sky, and looked on instinct, but dismissed it as his mind playing tricks on him. After all, he never felt the presence and Battle Power of others unless he actively tried to. Whatever tickled at the back of his mind most certainly had to be a figment of his imagination.
Instinct took over again and Methus rushed into the cloud—but not for Inna. He raced through the brown dust and debris until his foot found his spear. The metallic toe guard clicked against it and, as he practiced thousands of times, he kicked it up and into his hand.
He remembered where he felt that presence and, when he opened his mind again, he realized that there really was someone there.
But not for long.
Around him, the red glow of his power erupted to life. A single shockwave burst out, pushing stones out of the way, and cleared the entire dust cloud. Methus never looked, but it revealed a hundreds-of-meters-long crevice that had been torn through the ground. It split the cliff they had laid next to completely in half and created just the smallest gap between the two new pieces, barely enough for someone to squeeze through.
The ground shook again, less than before, when Methus hurled himself into the air like a boulder thrown by a haphazardly constructed catapult. He roared, red eyes wide, as he stared into the sunlight. The burn agonized him, but he refused even to blink, as the white-haired, tan-skinned sight of their attacker appeared in his vision.
Just as he reached him, Methus flipped front-first, slid his hands down to the very butt of his spear, and swung the tip with air-splitting force. It arced straight down at the man’s shoulder and, with a little luck, would carve right through his flesh and split his heart—if he had one in that cold body of his—clean in two.
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Post by Inna on Feb 7, 2019 19:20:40 GMT -6
More and more, her robes felt like a suffocating formality, and yet she found herself twisting her body through the silken fabric. At certain places, the cloth had begun to stretch and threaten to tear thanks to all the stress it had been put under. In part from their training, but also due to a rather demanding partner that often left her weak in the knees for longer than she wanted to admit.
She wanted to tell him something. Something sappy and stupid that would make his eyes roll or provoke a bit of irritation. Maybe something to entice him back. She could already feel her lips begin to curl into a slightly smug smirk.
But the thought was torn away as a flash of light scarred the corner of her eyes.
It was hard to for her to say what happened next. It all seemed to blur together in a fit of fearful adrenaline. Her lance was in her hands, one knee buried in the soft sand of the lake shore, and the deep violet of her ki burned against the blinding sea of white in front of her.
One hand pressed into the flat of the spear head, the other holding it firmly at the base, she felt a roar of energy well from the base of her palms and wrap around her weapon. Briefly, it combatted the surprise attack and briefly humored the idea of actually winning out against it.
And then her back hit the base of the cliffside. The white Ki had forced its way into her own and shattered it, causing a sudden explosion that sent her unprepared body hurling backwards. Dazed, she blinked away the whitewashing and forced herself to breathe.
It didn't take long for her to find the source of the attack, even if she could barely see his figure hidden in the light of one of the suns. She didn't really need to see him after all -- there was a pretty good chance it was a Kai sent to retrieve her. Who specifically didn't matter.
She recentered her grip on her lance and with sudden burst of energy shot herself off from the ground, leaving the wall even more cracked and all the more precarious.
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Post by Achi on Feb 7, 2019 20:00:51 GMT -6
Mistakes were made.
Achi realized that the moment he saw the red burst of energy from the man blow away the entire cloud of dust. His Power Level skyrocketed, doubling, tripling, quadrupling in practically an instant. His eyes widened and his purple irises glowed even more brightly when he watched the man, with his aura blazing, kicked off from the ground and shattered the land beneath his feet. He screeched through the air and screamed the entire way as his energy concentrated into the red spear he had snagged from the ground.
The Kai hadn’t prepared for this. His arms moved, lifted his black sword, and put it in the path of the man. He tumbled midair and used the flip to gain even greater momentum the moment he reached Achi. His hands had gone to the very back of his spear, to give himself the most reach he could, and to swing the bladed tip as hard and fast as he could possibly manage. Achi lifted his sword into place, but in the split-second before impact, knew that his spacing was completely off.
Metal rang out, almost like a bell, when the blunt shaft of the red lance shoved the black sword down and out of the way. Achi grit his teeth and grunted as the blade at the tip carved into his shoulder, through his clothes, and down against his collarbone and the flesh of his pectoral. He grimaced for a moment and hid body twisted to absorb the impact, until the spear caught and stopped dead.
Just like that, all of its speed and momentum transferred to him. It threw him to the ground in a split second. The impact formed a crater and boomed across the land. The displaced air rushed over the short grass and flattened it even further, for just a few seconds, as another cloud of dirt and dust swallowed Achi whole. His back cried out from the impact and, for a moment, one of Achi’s eyes closed to bear the pain.
Pain that slowly began to fade. His eye opened back up and, slowly, the dust began to settle—until a shock of raw power from the Kai blew it all away.
Slowly, Achi floated straight up into the air, still in a laying position. He tipped himself back onto his feet with his energy and touched his white boots down against the compressed-dirt bottom of the small crater his impact created. He leaned his head from side to side and listened to the cracks as he stretched out the very top of his spine and loosened himself back up.
When he glanced at his shoulder, he saw the small cut, less than a dozen centimeters long, and swallow. It burned with pain—the first real wound he ever suffered—but nothing he couldn’t bear. Instead, he turned his attention to the green sky above, where the blue-haired man and that woman floated.
“I see you’ve pushed yourself onto someone else you shouldn’t,” he spat the words out as his eyes turned away from her mortal companion and back to her. He would have to deal with the other one in a moment—his power far exceeded what Achi felt a moment before, and what he expected Inna would have found in such a short amount of time since she left. “Do you have any idea the damage you’ve caused with your…actions, Inna?”
He felt dirty letting the name pass his tongue.
“Please, for everything that is good and right in creation, come back with me quietly,” he insisted with the shake of his head and an empathic tone—a good fakery, if he ever made one. “Before you make the whole universe even worse than you already have.”
The things he saw her do to, and for, that mortal, still churned his stomach. Just when he thought her crimes could not possibly get any worse, she found a new way to sink to yet another rock-bottom low.
Then, he turned his attention back to the man in question. Apparently, his species had the ability to dramatically enhance their natural, mortal ki, and his body seemed no worse for wear for doing it.
“You’re free to go,” Achi informed him. “I understand you may be compelled, for biological reasons, to fight for her. You may also believe that you have an advantage because you have me outnumbered.”
Achi developed the power he had because fighting was, although not exactly a love of his, a hobby. It distinguished him and made it more likely that his requests to continue his simple-but-important job as the Guardian of the World Tree would be honored. He had to learn a few things, gain some strength, have something that set him apart from everyone else, in order to avoid what he really didn’t want to do.
Another white light appeared around Achi, but this one did not grow to the blinding luminescence of the previous. Instead, it remained steady, and Achi slowly turned to his right to walk out of the crater.
At the same exact time, Achi walked to his left out of the crater.
When the light vanished, two of him stood on either side of the indentation in the ground. Both looked identical, right down to their outfit and the wounds on the shoulders.
In unison, they finished their thought:
“But you would be very wrong.”
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Methus
Rising Soul
PL: 32,000
Kingsblood (x4P)
Tag: @protheus
Posts: 114
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Post by Methus on Feb 7, 2019 20:34:54 GMT -6
What in the f— the thought dominated Methus’ mind when he saw the man take the full brunt of his spear, crash into the earth with enough force to leave a dent, and then simply float back to his feet after he cleared the air. His shoulder, the one that Methus struck with everything he had, was cut and bloodied—and it bled onto the rest of his clothes—but not split open like it should have been. It looks like he even failed to sever the man’s collarbone and, instead, simply gave it a good nick. It hardly made any sense at all as he floated there.
Unless this turned out to be some sort of illusion, it meant only one thing: This man, whoever he was, had even more power than the Zoon Commander that Methus last faced.
Slowly, he lowered himself to the grass below and stood a handful of meters away from the pointed-ear man in front of him. He realized, gradually, that he must have been one of the same creatures as Inna herself. Some of the words that followed only confirmed that suspicion. In light of everything else, the breaking news hardly registered with Methus.
Instead, he struggled to figure out how he could possibly defeat him. It consumed his every faculty. Even Inna only earned a cursory glance from him—she was wounded, it turned out, but not gravely.
But this man, this “Kai,” wasn’t done taking Methus’ mind and twisting it like a wet rag he wanted to wring out. Just as he pointed out his situation, that they stood as a united two versus a single man, a strange glow enveloped him. Methus felt it from where he stood: it was, most certainly, not the same as his attack from before.
Then he watched as the man turned perpendicular and walked out of the crater. Just as he did, another, perfect copy of himself did the same.
If it could have, Methus’ jaw would have hit the dirt.
Immediately, his mind tried to see through the ruse. He reached out and felt the man’s power again, yet, sure enough there were two presences in front of him now. Two energies that were half of what they were before, but both full and ready to fight. Two fists to punch with, two legs to kick with, two brains to think with.
As he learned a second later, they also had two mouths to drone on with.
Methus immediately dipped into a low stance, spear pointed down and at the ready.
“I’ve beaten stronger men than you,” Methus lied to the Kai in front of him. A show, naturally, to prove to Inna that he would not be scared away by one of her people come to retrieve her. Besides: even she no longer possessed the unilateral right to up and leave.
He would hardly grant it to some white-haired stranger.
“And if you’re here for her?” He glanced over to Inna a third time.
“Then I’ll just shove this spear so far up your ass that you’ll need every single one of those fancy powers of yours to get it back out.”
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Post by Inna on Feb 7, 2019 21:35:17 GMT -6
Like a fly swatted from the sky, their attacker was sent plummeting to the rocky, dry plateaus that hung around the lake they had been living at. And as his body pierced through the air with a shrill noise, she caught a glimpse of just a few of his features.
Are you serious? The thought took control of her mind, eyes widened in both frustration and shock. It had to be him of all people, didn't it?
As Methus made his way to the ground, she hesitated. Desperately, more than anything, she wished she had picked up on that telepathy trick so many other Kai had shown her. She wanted to scream into Methus' mind that this wasn't a fight they could win. Despite everything he knew and despite his pride, they needed to just run.
Slowly -- very slowly -- she trailed behind Methus and barely registered Achi's droning voice. Something something, you're a disgrace, yadda yadda, how dare you. Typical things she would expect from him, though now laced with a sort of passion she didn't even knew could exist in someone who had appeared to be so soulless.
Tinanna's death must have shook him harder than she had imagined.
Inna hovered a few feet in the air just behind Methus. A stern expression was all she could do to hide the swelling fear in her chest. Achi was not only far older than her -- more experienced in many things -- but he was one of the few Kai who took pleasure in fighting. One of the few who was formidable with a weapon in his hand.
Her fingers trembled as she gripped her lance, holding it at a downward angle at her side.
This was the part where she was supposed to say something witty. Snark at him a few coy lines and then spin her lance in a show of power. A cool smile should splatter across her face and then the fight she had been waiting for -- onE that shook her to her core -- would ensue.
But in that moment, she couldn't find any words. She wondered, briefly, if Methus noticed her fear and suddenly thought less of her. She felt her breath get caught in her chest as him and Achi exchanged a few words -- Achi's more mellow voice a cool contrast to the more gravely and masculine of Methus.
While she desperately tried to get her mind out of the growing panic, she spun her lance in front of her, letting the warm metal of the shaft slap into her open palm. One hand held the bottom low to the ground while the other guided the head of the lance up towards the sky, making for a decent defensive stance in case Achi wanted to try another attack for her.
Quietly -- perhaps not even loud enough for him to actually hear -- she let a couple words fall from her lips:
"Be careful, Methus."
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Post by Achi on Feb 7, 2019 22:08:36 GMT -6
Inna refused to surrender and the man, apparently called “Methus,” refused to back off. Achi, both himself and his clone, sighed in unison at the sight of the defiant mortal and his Kai compatriot. In a way, it seemed fitting that she chose such a gruff, violent man to spend her time with. A murderer such as her no-doubt found a sense of companionship among people similar to her. Achi possessed no doubt that this Methus owned a rather large list of murder victims himself. Everything about him suggested it, whereas Achi never once took a life, in combat or otherwise. His hands remained clean and he wanted to keep them that way for as long as he reasonably could.
Until recently.
A white glow erupted around both Achi and his duplicate. His robes whipped in the wind as he stared down the duo, both of whom tapped into the absolute peaks of their own strength as well. In his current state, only the man would prove to be a challenge. Inna, despite whatever Kai powers she possessed, was still weaker than him even in his split-in-half state. He could dispatch her first, he decided, and then deal with the man after she had been rendered unconscious.
Only unconscious. He made it a point to repeat that in his mind again and again. He refused to stain his hands with the blood of one of his own—that would make him nearly as awful as Inna herself.
He refused to be anything like her.
“As you wish, mortal,” he resigned himself to the fate chosen for them.
With a great burst of speed, both Achi and his clone vanished from his place on the ground, next to the crater her formed. Yet, instead of splitting up, they appeared on either side of Inna, mid-air. The clone got behind her, blade alight with white energy, while Achi himself appeared in front of her. Both held their weapons with both hands, pulled back, and swung in opposing directions across her back and chest. They swung with such force that yet another boom rushed out over the grass and dirt beneath them, kicking even more brown dust into the air, and announced to the world just how far the protectors of the universe had fallen on this day.
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Methus
Rising Soul
PL: 32,000
Kingsblood (x4P)
Tag: @protheus
Posts: 114
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Post by Methus on Feb 8, 2019 8:16:35 GMT -6
Unlike before, Methus’ eyes managed to follow the movements of the Kai man. He watched as both he and his cloned threw themselves back into the sky. A small trail of dust trailed behind them both, attached to their white boots, but vanished by the time they reached Inna’s height—both of them. They both went right for her, the focus of their visit to this backwater world, and readied two massive swings with their swords.
Methus couldn’t stop them, he realized, not completely. The sheer amount of raw power that coiled around his black blade clearly announced itself as too powerful for him to stop outright. The Kai simply possessed too much strength for the Phaethonian man to overpower. He couldn’t save Inna from either of those strikes, let alone both.
Instead, a different plan came to mind, and his preferred: To focus on just a single target instead of trying to defend either of them. If he could not help but get hit, he would hit back harder, until his opponent could not stand, while he still could.
The only method of combat he really knew.
“Kill the original! Methus shouted as his red glow doubled in size right before he burst from the ground. Grass trailed behind him in his wake and followed his diagonal path into the sky after the white-haired Kai. He focused on the man who existed before the duplicate appeared on the opposite side of the crater: the supposed original, unless another trick masked his actual position.
He reached Inna and Achi both just as the Kai’s blades aimed to split open her back and stomach alike. His eyes, contracted to pinpoints, honed in on his exposed side, and he aimed his thrust—roaring with red energy—straight for the man’s ribs. With a little luck, he would impale two or three vital organs. Or, if nothing else, he would make sure that it hurt like hell.
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Post by Inna on Feb 8, 2019 9:56:36 GMT -6
In the moment before his blades found purchase, the reflection of a blooming smile appeared in Achi's eyes. And then his and his clone's blades cracked against Inna's body with such force that, for only the briefest of moments, the momentum cancelled out completely and she did not move. It was only when one of them shifted their weight to respond to Methus did the energy move in just the right way for Inna to be slapped to the ground below.
Though she fell from such a short distance, the ground caved under the force of the blow leaving spider-webbed cracks all from around the girl who had landed less than spectacularly on her rump.
Her mind felt dazed and too slow to keep up with what was happening. Was she scared anymore? If she was, why did her cheeks hurt? Why did it feel like she was grinning from ear to ear? She didn't -- couldn't -- give those thoughts any time.
Just as Methus' spear sought it's target, the fair-skinned Kai dug her feet into the ground, steadied herself and bounced back into an upright position. Violet ki burned at her hands and then coiled it's wispy tendrils around the shaft of her lance. Rapidly, the energy condensed at the head of the weapon, bubbling and spilling over with elated anticipation.
Her chest shuddered as she drew in a few, tender breaths and did her best to calm the way her heart desperately pounded into her chest. Was it from the pain? Or from the way her fear had so suddenly turned into excitement for whatever reason? She wasn't really thinking -- didn't really care.
The next thing she knew, she had kicked off from the ground and further shattered the barren land. Body hugging her weapon in a stance not too dissimilar to Methus' own, she rushed for who she thought to be the true Achi.
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Post by Achi on Feb 8, 2019 17:16:51 GMT -6
Droplets of blood floated in the air for a moment. The whole world stilled as the gentle vibrations of the mirrored strikes hung in perfectly symmetry for just a moment. Even as Inna’s gut and back alike split open and spilled the divine blood of a Kai into the air between the two of them everything felt serene, and the perfectly balanced, white glow of the twinned Achi’s energies saturated both of their bodies. For a moment, it felt like the world had snapped back into balance, corrected from its damaged state by the pain and suffering of Inna, whose wide eyes suggested that the pain had yet to sink in, despite the blood on the curved tips of the thin, black falchions.
The slightest, imperfect movement broke the flawless balance of energy in the air. Another shockwave burst out from around Inna and immediately propelled her—hard—into the ground below. The air rushed over Achi’s face and carried two or three drops of her blood onto his cheek, while his clone remained completely clean, save the stain on his sword.
Searing pain in one of his ribs ended the blissful moment. Instead, red-hot agony replaced it as the Kai felt the bladed tip of a spear stab right into one of his ribs. It pierced no further than a couple centimeters, but the pain of impaled bone lanced through his body, dragged out a deep grunt through his clenched teeth, and immediately stained his side with blood that soaked a small, wet patch into his clothes.
Achi’s head snapped in that direction and saw the rage-filled eyes of the mortal man, Methus.
“I told you: This isn’t your fight, mortal,” Achi growled at the man and, for a moment, his voice resembled a wild animal more than a divine being. Then, his violet eyes glanced to his doppelganger and then back over to Methus.
The message got through loud and clear.
The thunder of air sounded when the clone drew back its blade and charged through the sky at Methus. It swung forward at the man and either caught him against his spear or struck the man directly—Achi missed the details. All he knew was that the clone dragged Methus away and put some distance between the alien and the Kai man here to complete a simple mission.
He turned to face the direction where Inna fell, just in time to feel—and hear—her power roar back to life once again. By the time his neck finished turning his head, she reached his height again and, with a stunningly perfect thrust, rammed the tip of her lance into his gut. The impact shoved the Kai back half a meter in the air and he felt the weapon plunge through his abdominals, stopped by the muscle before it punched through to any of the organs inside of him. He doubled over, groaned more loudly, and gripped the shaft of the lance until his knuckles turned white enough to match the energy that erupted back into view around his body.
“That could have killed me. You realize that?” He grunted through his clenched teeth as he lifted his head back up and looked Inna in her disgusting eyes. “No hesitation at all. After just one murder, killing your kin has become that easy for you, has it?”
While the words went on, Achi gripped the shaft of her lance harder yet. He pried it back out of his body, even as blood spilled from the latest wound, and twisted the blade off to the side with his left hand. Slowly, he raised his black blade high over his head—and over Inna’s own.
“Be smart,” he implored her as the white glow returned to his weapon. His breathing became labored and he felt a cold sweat bead at his forehead, but none of it caused his voice to waver. “After this blow? Stay down, surrender.”
He glanced back in the direction of his clone and where it dragged its battle with Methus off to.
“For his sake.”
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Methus
Rising Soul
PL: 32,000
Kingsblood (x4P)
Tag: @protheus
Posts: 114
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Post by Methus on Feb 8, 2019 20:43:10 GMT -6
The coordination between the copies proved, immediately, to be beyond Methus’ wildest imagination. The moment he rammed his spear into the white-haired man’s ribs, and listened to the man insist that Methus walked away from this battle, the clone sprung into action. Before Methus even had a chance to draw his spear back, it charged him down, and swung his sword down at his shoulder while white energy rippled and rolled off it.
Methus felt the metal split his skin and some of the bone beneath before he felt the burn of the energy wash over it. After the blade drew the blood, the wave of burning-hot, white power rushed over his body, flaked away his skin-tight battle suit and immediately made the flesh sizzle and cauterize immediately. The entire time, the clone pushed forward, and dragged Methus back through the air. Wind whipped at the back of his head and threw his blue hair around while his body screamed in agony at being carried along by the edge of an unreasonably sharp, blade sword. A handful of seconds passed before Methus twisted out of the grip of the infernal weapon.
Immediately, he wished he didn’t, as it tore away more blood and flesh with it. They fluttered through the air as Methus floated backward through the air and marveled, for a moment, at how far the clone managed to drag him. It just stared at Methus for a moment as a mix of his and Inna’s blood dripped from the edge of the weapon and down towards the blue grass below. Methus looked over at the original just in time to see Inna, burning with violet power not unlike Thenia’s, rushed right back at her would-be oppressor, despite the odds.
But she couldn’t defeat him. Just as a single glance, he knew how their battle would end, even with the inferior skill the Kai possessed compared to himself.
Then, Methus turned his attention back to the copy of the Kai that floated right in front of him. As much as this enforcer of divine law seemed like he wanted to defeat Inna quickly, keeping Methus away appeared to become a new priority. The clone didn’t care how or why that happened—and it made sense.
Methus planned to make that as difficult as possible.
He charged right back at the duplicate, spear drawn back, as the red energy flared back up around him. He grit his teeth together and felt a smile spread across his lips as he charged and forced the duplicate back into a ready stance as the floated in front of one another.
Next, Methus vanished. He dropped straight down the moment he got his spear within ranged and curved his flight path. He peeled away under the copy as quickly as his energy could carry him through the sky, only to curve back up and head straight for the original, weapon ready to strike from below and join Inna’s latest counterattack.
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Post by Inna on Feb 8, 2019 20:59:26 GMT -6
Eyes locked with Achi's, the woman dared to push her weapon just a tiny bit further into his gut and tempted the idea of twisting it so the spade-shape head would rip at his flesh all the more.
His words clawed into her mind, ravaging the muddy forefront of her thoughts and bringing a momentary glimpse of sanity. His grunting, strained voice and the way he spoke as if he stood on some platform high above her made her own stomach feel like it had something lodged within it.
A grimace started to cut through the wild grin.
"Pretty high and mighty words for someone who's been making a pretty convincing try at killing me," she said back, surprised at how weak her own words were. They came out wispy and low, like a weak mimicry of a hiss or growl.
Despite that, she felt great. The beating of her heart was like a drum of war, booming and filling her with static excitement. It's rhythm, proud and strong, urged a sense of confidence that grounded her and kept each of her movements sure and powerful.
So why did she sound like she had just gotten the shit kicked out of her?
With a sudden yank, Achi pulled himself free of her lance. The force since both of them floating away from each other before coming to a smooth stop. She watched with no shortage of excitement as a particularly thick clump of blood dropped from his gut and plummeted to the ground unceremoniously. Despite his words and his arrogant talk about being above all of this and so much better than her, he bled like any mortal being.
Her eyes flicked to the head of her lance to see how it glimmered in the bright light. But something else caught her eye. The pure whites of her robes that hung loosely against her body seemed different. Something looked odd and it made her gaze instantly snap to her shoulder to--
When had she gotten so much blood on her robes?
Shock started to set in the moment before Achi's blade came down. In the time it took for him to finish the swing she had loosened her grip, ready to grab at her bloodied shoulder, but quickly realized what had happened and then made an attempt to block. Needless to say, her muddled and confused response hardly gave her any time to defend.
Achi's blade landed with a wet crack onto the exact same shoulder he had hit moments ago. Something sounded off about the way it made contact, but neither got a chance to really process what exactly had happened before Inna’s body crumpled in the air and dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The much slower descent gave her just enough time to twist in the air to fall on her less damaged side. A motion she regretted the moment her body bounced against the unforgiving soil of Namek.
Pain wrecked her body, bones groaning as they took the full brunt of the fall and a sharp, ripping pain from her other shoulder instantly had her coiling in on herself. One hand clawed at the freshly struck shoulder while the other wrapped around her now sore side.
A cough shook her body, delivering more pain than any of Achi's blows. The taste of blood poisoned her lips and splattered over her chin.
The wound on her shoulder felt like it had dug straight to the bone by now. The flesh cut cleanly thanks to the sharpness of his blade. Her back, alongside the opposite shoulder, was a thinner slash that crossed from the top of her shoulder and met somewhere near her spine. It now only hurt thanks to her pressing it into the rocks and debris of the plateau.
In that moment, the pain was all that she could feel. The way her breath seemed to drain her of more and more life. The sight of her ethereal blood staining her white robes and soaking into the thirsty soil.
Through the pain and the blurry eyes she saw the world with, it all seemed rather beautiful.
Shuddering, Inna dared to move her body but found it too straining for now. She could feel it -- the power to stand back up and defy Achi's wishes -- but not right now. As the dust settled around her, she let her purple eyes simply watch as her blood oozed from her body and listened as Methus picked up her slack.
Just for a few seconds. That's all she needed.
Quietly, unmoving as she reveled in the peace her motionless state brought, she felt the tendrils of her power wrap around her. It coiled and tucked itself under her arms and hid deep within her soul. More and more, she drew it in close to suppress the energy she had once been letting flow from her freely.
For just a few seconds, please think I'm unconscious.
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Post by Achi on Feb 9, 2019 10:05:40 GMT -6
This time, her body lacked the strength to resist. His sword finished splitting in two the shoulder that he struck before. The skin gave way, followed by the muscle, then the bone beneath. A spray erupted from her and painted half of Achi’s face with her color. For a moment, Inna seemed like she hardly noticed, her eyes wide with the intoxication of battle. To him, she looked quite literally like that: an addict, someone lost in the rush of it all who paid no mind to anything else, or the consequences of their actions.
He wondered: Is that what Tinanna died for?
Strength left her body a moment later and gravity took over. Her body fell like a sack of rocks after Achi ripped the blade back out of her split-open flesh. He watched the blood trail through the air before she thudded against the dirt and grass below, cracked the land, and left the smallest crater of the battle so far.
After something like that, all he had to do was knock her out and finish off this “Methus” who seemed to insist on throwing his body and life away for her.
Or so he thought.
Blood pooled more and more around Inna. It soaked into the ground and leaked like an open faucet from her shoulder, even as she clung to it. Her power plummeted as the stain beneath the dirt grew, spread across his cheek, and soaked into even more of her loose robes on the side she laid on. Achi watched, his eyes slowly going wide, as her strength dipped lower—lower—lower.
Until it flickered out completely and her whole body went soft and still.
“He’s coming!” he heard his own voice shout across the sky, just in time to see the mortal man once again. It interrupted his thoughts, the realization, the twisting in his gut that it caused when the reality of the situation began to sink in.
It gave him a reprieve from facing what he had just done.
Once more, his blade turned white and the energy surrounded his power. The wind buffeted out from him, shoved around the clothes on Inna’s motionless body, and tore at the grass. Dirt and rocks floated into the air as Achi raised his blade and gripped the handle with both hands. Behind the charging mortal, his clone did the same, even while flying at top speed, and their twinned energies coiled together in the air and ripped up small twisters that ravaged the fields below.
“Why do you insist on this!” He shouted as the wind-whipping of the energy reached a crescendo and the ache of his own wounds sank deep into his body. “All for a murderer!”
In perfect sync, he and his doppelgänger dropped their blades. White waves of energy tore forward, off the edges of the black katchin, and rushed in two crush Methus from either side.
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Methus
Rising Soul
PL: 32,000
Kingsblood (x4P)
Tag: @protheus
Posts: 114
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Post by Methus on Feb 9, 2019 12:01:57 GMT -6
No, no, no, no, no, nonononononon— The panic spread through Methus’ wide eyes as he watched the energy-wrapped blade split open Inna’s shoulder. Blood spewed in every direction, splattered across half of the other Kai’s face, and painted the grass. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed her body towards the ground, where it hit and made a new, small crater of its own. He watched, as he rushed through the air with the clone in hot pursuit, as Inna writhed on the ground and blood spread out all around her. He watched as she slowly stopped moving.
He felt, the entire time, as her Battle Power lowered and lowered until it blipped out of existence entirely.
With a wound like that? He knew what it meant. He watched it countless times before.
A guttural roar escaped his throat and tore at the flesh. His vocal cords threatened to rip apart and screamed in agony right along with him. His body lurched forward through the air as his energy dug even deeper into itself to find a new burst of speed. Even as the Kai readied a blast of energy from his blade, from either end, Methus refused to slow down.
Forward, only forward. The only thing on his mind was to get within range, to wrap his hands around that man’s neck, to crush the life out of him until absolutely nothing remained. He had to do it, he needed to feel his life slip away while he crushed his throat.
Even when the first wave of the Kai’s blast hit him, he only roared louder. It burned against his skin, tore away the rest of the blue suit that covered his chest. The energy even had an edge to it that drew blood as it tried to carve out part of his flesh. The blast from behind caught up just a second later and burned against his back while it dug into his shoulders blades. The white energy tried to crush him, all while the red glow around his body pulsed and raged right along with him.
Then, even slowed by the techniques, Methus moved forward, then again. He pushed through the sheer force of the Kai’s strike and listened to the energy itself groan as it tried to hold him back, shoved against his chest, and tried to crush him from behind.
Thunder echoed next as the two techniques exploded, with Methus in the middle. A black cloud of fiery smoke immediately enveloped the Phaethonian man and covered his body entirely as the blasts let out the rest of their power all at once, broken by his incessant rush forward and their inability to hold him back.
For a moment, the cloud hung in the air, and only slowly began to dissipate.
A red spear tip flashed in the light of the triplet suns above and the cloud split in twain. The bladed weapon lurched forward from the dust, across the rest of the distance, and straight for the Kai’s chest. His chest looked burnt and mangled, black flesh already started to flake off in places, but it all failed to slow him down.
Its owner loosed one more, wild, untamed bellow as the weapon finally reached Achi: “I don’t care how many lives she’s taken!”
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Post by Inna on Feb 9, 2019 15:33:40 GMT -6
A roar, primal and guttural, shook the very core of the planet they fought on. Unbridled rage and agony pulled out the sound of a monster so thoroughly focused on destruction that nothing could calm his mourning.
In that moment, Inna wondered if she maybe did too good of a job pretending to be out of the fight. The blood alone was likely more than enough to signal her as down and out, but to snuff out her presence and appear as nothing more than a leaky bag of flesh?
Well, at least Achi wasn't coming after her anymore. Not him nor his clone seemed focused on her anymore, leaving her there to wallow in her pain and do everything in her power to not writhe around like a dying snake.
Everything still hurt so badly. Sheltered up in the world of the Kais, the most pain she had suffered was a few scraped knees and a particularly painful paper cut. To feel her shoulder split open, gushing out blood like it was made to do just that, was something beyond words.
Maybe she'd take just a few more seconds to recover.
An explosion shook the ground as white burned against Methus' body. She could only just barely see him claw through the attack, eyes wide like a feral animal. It was hard to believe that she had managed to invoke such a reaction from him. His people didn't really care about others in the most human of ways. She was always more of a convenience to him as opposed to a living thing he enjoyed being around.
Though his actions seemed to imply otherwise. At least, they did from her perspective.
Gently, she squeezed her shoulder, finding some comfort in putting pressure on the wound. It stung, sure, but somehow felt like that was the right thing to do. Thin fingers dug into the uncut flesh as if to pull it back together.
Just a few more seconds. Surely she'd find the strength to stand. To get back in the fight when Methus needed her most. Wouldn't that be dramatic? To rise from supposed death just before Achi were to deliver the fatal blow to Methus?
Briefly she humored the idea of doing just that.
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