Session Start: Sun Aug 30 17:07:55 2009
Session Ident: #ColosseumIC
JP ON>
Location: New Kohana, Anetheronn Colosseum
At the attack by the Arena champion, the scuttler initially hit wobbled a little on it's legs, trying to remain up, but with it's circuit board fried by the electricity, it was not able to continue and fell over onto it's side, the light in it's single eyes dimming. The same fate fell upon the other three scuttlers that were hit by the arc of electricity. The Scientist roared in anger as he watched his creations fall, screaming like a madman, "You'll pay for that, you'll pay for harming my little babies." And with that he too would join the fray, loping forward like a wild animal to try and catch up with Eric's retreating. Mistwalker on the other hand was still dancing and singing her dirge, pulling a curved dagger from sheathes on either thigh. She would start adding them to the dancing, light flashing off of the metal blades as she whirled them through the air.
"The tactics have changed." Nelew turned her head toward the Mercenary but kept her eyes on her targets, rapidly ranking them in order of priority based on distance with secondary priority based on perceived threat. "They are not separating, but cooperating. We must do the same." She nodded toward the Scientist, who was rapidly gaining on them. "Either run or attack him. I will keep the others back." She hoped he knew what she was trying to do for him and would plan accordingly. "Keep moving. We must keep Mistwalker away from us!" The urgency in her voice rose notably with the last statement.
As the two of them backed away, Nel darted to the side as the Scientist passed her on his way toward Eric, even if she had been the one to actually damage his scuttlers....her foot flashed out in a flying side-kick that was intended to push him further forward on his trajectory and render him airborn, calculated to arch over Eric's head and land some yards away, giving the two of them more space to face off one-on-one. However, the Scientist could have other ideas when faced with that move...
Eric turned so his eyes could see The Scientist after his voice rang out above the roar of the crowd. His ice blue orbs narrowing slightly as their one opponent lopped easily toward them. "I don't know, seems like the general idea is still being carried out. I'll attack him." As the two of them separated and the Scientist continued to charge him his mouth flipped up at the corners when he saw his partner's attack land to send the scientist flying over his head. He lashed upward with his chain, aiming to whip it across the Scientist's face as he flew overhead. And once his opponent landed Eric would be moving quickly to where the madman was, his chain whirling at high speed for another strike.
The scientist didn't just sit by idly as he was sent up into the air. For the first moment or two, he was in fact taken by surprise, but after that passed, he brought his metal arms up to block the attack that was sure to be coming. He didn't take the chain to the face, but Eric did get rewarded as the chain wrapped around his arms, and when the slack was pulled out, the Scientist found himself quickly inverted, slamming upside down into the stone wall to fall on the top of his head with a grunt as he slowly kicked off the wall like a child throwing a tantrum, sliding a small distance away as expletives flowed from his maw in native tongue.
---
With the two set apart from the scuttlers, mech-monstrosities, zombies, and terror terriers, Nel turned her attention to keeping that separation intact. Noting that Mistwalker was in no apparent hurry to get to her, Nel left a mental tag on her as she dealt with the swarming minions.
Crowd-control was a mere matter of choosing out of several options. The electrical charge was effective on the scuttlers, but Nel was unsure how long she could keep that up and whether the same charge would take down the larger mechanicals. An easier weakness would need to be found. The four zombies, shambler-type, were as much danger as Mistwalker in terms of speed at the moment, so she ignored those. The terror-spawn of the tracker monster were a concern, however, and she wasn't sure what they were like yet. Preliminary scans suggested flesh-and-blood, so Nelew decided to deal with them as such.
As the scuttlers rapidly approached on the heels of their master, Nel marked them in order of approach and flew into a blur of motion. With rushes of air marking her movements, she sequentially performed open-hand strikes on the core point of each scuttler's forward momentum, effectively reversing that motion while amplifying it a small bit to send each scuttler back twenty yards to land momentarily disoriented but unharmed.
The scuttlers were knocked backwards, their spindly legs sliding through the loose dirt and some even had them bend or break, leading to a macabre limping motion to come back towards Nel. But as they did so, the large jagged metal constructs came within range as well and attempted to crush the woman beneath fists the size of 50 gallon barrels. The zombie protection of the voodoo queen began to separate with two shuffling off to the right, while the left most would head off in that direction, but they didn't seem to be going for either combatant, they seemed to just be trying to reach the arena wall behind them. Of course, this meant that the weasel femme was standing alone, still prancing in place and tossing her arms and head to the sides or forward in time with her dance. Then, she slammed both feet down in a fighter's stance and tossed off the shawl she had been wearing with a shrug of her shoulders, daggers held at the ready before her as she started to weave and bob in a
capoera ginga.
Only about fifteen of the twenty scuttlers were dealt with by the time the mechanicals --
Designation: Mashers -- arrived in range. Four strikes snapped four more scuttlers into the background while the fifth found itself an unfortunate replacement for Nel as she slid out of the way of the first heavy-landing fist.
Scuttler Count: 19
Four seconds remained before the first of the survivors would arrive, Nel regained her upright stance and began side-stepping the whack-a-mole attempts at smashing her as she watched the scuttlers. Her tags on the zombies and Mistwalker began to separate, which made her pause for a mental moment. Hm. Maybe crowd control was not the best option, at least for the mechanicals. The organics were hanging back, were they perhaps the stronger ones, either in force or resilience?
The pale woman reset her sequence for scuttler control and began flicking them back with the open-palm strikes, but this time dodging hammer-blows from mashers. Then one of them tried to grab her instead. Five scuttlers broke through Nel's line before Nel's reinforced skeleton and resilient muscular system bent back the fingers of the masher enough to slip through, leaving it unable to fully close its hand but not unable to continue swatting at her.
The masher that Nelew attacked first roared in pain, and that distracted the scientist for a moment, but the scuttlers and mashers still moved to try and attack the femme as she started her knocking them back. But with Nel focusing on them, rather than Mistwalker, the female Kohanian would make her move closer, cartwheeling and flipping closer to slash with both daggers while dropping down into a sort of crouch that would give her a perfect opportunity to kick at both Nel's knees simultaneously if the knives were blocked. The zombies kept up their shambling to the sides, now the first two were perpendicular to the battles going on and kept circling, Mistwalker obviously had a plan.
---
Eric knew that Nel was going to have her hands full with the minions and Mistress Mistwalker, so he wouldn't have much time to waste with The Scientist. He was currently laying on the ground face up with his shoulders toward the Merc. So Eric raised the chain up and brought it lashing down. If the Scientist didn't do anything it would slam into his face, but as the attack moved a single thought flashed through Eric's mind.
Block like you did before.
The scientist was acting on instinct, and when the chain came down he did the first thing he could think of, bringing his hands up in an X type block while trying to snatch the chain between the top portion of the X.
As the Scientist brought his hands up to block the chain came down and twisted around the arms, locking them in their X shaped position. The Merc, then hauled hard on his chain in an attempt to pull his opponent closer to him with his arms stretched out above his head. Eric would then step forward and place his foot on the chain near where it wrapped around the Scientist's hands as his left fist came up, still wrapped tightly in the other end of the chain. From this position the wandering male would drive his fist downward, followed by all the weight and strength in his body, to slam that metal wrapped limb into the jaw of the Scientist.
The Scientist, after his momentary distraction, was brought back to the battle by Eric jerking on the chain that held his wrists. Using the momentum he had just been given like a gift, he arched his back upwards, and then pushed off with his feet in an attempt to catch Eric on the side of the head as he came down with the punch. If successful, it would send Eric's head snapping down to his chest, and possibly off his feet. If it failed, or was too slow, the male would try to move his head to the side to at least lessen the direct damage.
---
The roar caught Nel off-guard, and she glanced at the mechanical monster for a moment longer than she probably should have.
Proximity Alert.
Mistwalker's tracking tag on Nel's mental map suddenly darted forward, abandoning the slow, steady, but erratic movement it had shown thus far, abruptly joining the mashers and scuttlers in a mass around her. The mink was now in her vision, knives flashing, body sliding inside Nel's perimeter, and she still had the mashers and scuttlers to avoid. There was a breeze that tugged lightly at Mistwalker's hair and fur as Nel slid back away from Mistwalker quickly enough to leave a rush of air in her wake. The champion looked disoriented herself for a moment, as if the movement was not of her own volition, but recovered. Bumping up her processing speed a bit more, Nel began perceiving things in proper slow motion, where things had not yet stopped moving. However, there was now a growing lag between perception and her physical reactions.
It was time to dismantle a few things. The area was getting very crowded as every minion began mobbing her trying to get through to Eric. Nel drew a blade and began using her shield to bash scuttlers, removing five from commission before she began to scale the nearest masher, analyzing it for wires, gears, or joints to jam or sever. Meanwhile she kept Mistwalker on priority tracking...but the zombies were still low-priority targets.
---
As the Scientist was dragged toward Eric, the mercenary noted that his opponent was arching his back. His fist came down as the Scientist's feet came up and he had to tuck his head in order to avoid having two clawed feet driving themselves into his temple. But even with his chin tucked to his chest he couldn't avoid the blow fully. The Scientist's claws raking across the top of his shoulder, leaving eight bloody gashes. Now his body weight wasn't directly above his punch because of his hit and the glancing blow, greatly reducing the power of his strike. A growl rumbled through the Merc's throat as he opened his left hand to grip the top of the Scientist's head. His right hand gripped the middle of the chain and he attempted to wrap it around his opponent's throat.
The Scientist let his body go limp so when the mercenary wrapped the chain around him he would not strain muscles in resisting. After all, there was another trick that the scientist possessed. With a sick grin, he turned his head, even as the chain wrapped around it. "So you think you have won? I have not yet even begun to toy with you, my prey." Blood, dark in the low lights, ran from the side of his face, as he clenched his fists and braced his legs beneath him, a growl rumbling from his lupine muzzle as a sneer crossed it.
…FSSHHHHHH…
Two hissing sounds could be heard from the metal arms wrapped around the flesh of the prone scientist's body. Above and behind Eric the familiar voice of a very tired friend could be heard. "GET AWAY! ERIC GET OFF HIM!" Zero yelled as loud as he could, but the crowd was out for blood, so all that could be heard was "...Away...Eric, Get...him".
---
Nel, on the other hand, was not finding much better luck. Her search for an exploitable weakness to the constructs would come up pretty fruitless. Of course the creatures would have joints, but within them was nothing but open space. Within the chests of the creations however, were glowing red stones that pulsed like hearts. The containment devices bound to the great things, the souls of the assistants The Scientist sacrificed to create the lumbering weapons.
So this battle was a study in futility as far as information went. If there was one thing that the Warrior Maiden, Daughter of the Don, Champion of the Colosseum, could find it within her to hate, it was not knowing what she was fighting. In her IPG training days, she had thought she knew what she was fighting on several occasions, and had been soundly refuted on more than one of them with all of the others barely ending in victories usually because of a teammate's quick action. This situation was becoming too similar to those experiences for her to recognize this as an easy victory.
Thus far, Nel had played her cards close to her chest, fought conservatively and succeeded as far as damage went. She had cleared a little over a quarter of the scuttlers (which she was now realizing were the lowest on the priority list: Dangerous if they swarmed but ultimately only because they opened their target to attack from the more dangerous opponents; otherwise they did no damage), damaged the fingers of a masher (but when there are four of those behemoths, things got crowded quickly), and had successfully, if unintentionally, evaded the first strike of her intended primary opponent. No damage on her part, minor damage inflicted on the enemy. Meanwhile she noted that Eric was only holding his own against the Scientist. Both were trading blows, neither overly serious, but things were escalating quickly against the Mercenary's favor.
She reached the peak of one of the mashers, and stood puzzled at the top. Glowing stones that radiated no known energy, and metal that hovered without any known source or cause. What
was this? But that new primary concern was nothing compared with what began to occur next.
While Nel searched, Mistwalker looked to her zombie minions who now stood at either side of the battle, and one directly across from her. All of them looked like disgusting, oozing statues, but Mistwalker just smiled as she clapped her paw palms together and bowed her head, a low hum starting to run through the entirety of the arena as the oppressive feeling of great magic began to build. The crowd began to panic a little, looking around at their friends and neighbors for some sort of explanation. From the far side of the arena, where the Voodoo Queen and her tag team partner entered, the yelping cry of the small copies of her pet could be heard as the mist began to drift over their feet, sucking them down into it. As this happened more and more, the mist got thicker, and it's wall got taller, slipping nearer and nearer to the battle at hand. Standing at the halfway point, the massive tracking hound stood solidly, staring straight ahead. As the mist washed over it, it gave a death howl that rumbled and echoed around the arena and then was gone, but thick lines began to appear connecting each of the zombies to their mistress, a circle appearing in the very dust beneath all who found themselves on the battlefield. Within the circle were two smaller circles, with Kohanian symbols appearing between each, sick green light pulsing brighter the closer to the middle a circle got.
The zombies had been remaining still for some time, not attacking, but no longer moving either. Nel had dismissed them as threats, but still kept their locations tagged. The tracker beast and its spawn had also been relegated to the lowest threat level. She looked down at Mistwalker as the mysterious mink-lady clapped her hands together.
Then the hum began. Nel did not even wait for the rest of the situation to unfold, she jumped from the top of the masher to stand behind Eric and whispered in his ear.
"Do a barrel roll."
A hand flashed forward from behind him with the intent to plant a blade through the lower jaw of the Scientist. If Eric did not immediately move, he would find himself on his own as Nel lead a mad dash back, along the wall, to the center of the arena, stopping just outside the outer perimeter of the growing number of menacingly arranged marks on the Colosseum floor. If he did move, he could roll to the outside and get clear for the dash toward the center of the arena as well.
---
The chain wrapped tightly around the Scientist's neck and the mercenary let go with his left hand to bring it down so it could hold onto the chain around the Scientist's neck. But as the Scientist spoke his words Eric remembered the words Zero had told him before the match started, about the transformation that the Scientist went through thanks to the serum he had. It was almost as if he could hear the stallion in his head telling him to run away.
However this was the moment that augments were at their weakest, when they started to use their enhanced abilities and thinking it gives them an undeniable edge. So as the Merc's hand gripped the both sides if the chain around the Scientist's neck his right hand drew back and snaked forward. Two fingers targeted themselves toward the inside corner of the Scientist's eye socket, seeking to drive themselves deep into his opponent's flesh and past the skull through the eye socket. It was at this point that Eric would try something that in many ways bordered on insane simply because he didn't know if it would work or what it would do. He would reach within himself, attempt to grab just a small amount of the magical energy that he appeared to be able to use, and just release it from his finger tips that were inside the Scientist's head. No spell, no guidance, just the raw energy of elemental lightning going off, about enough that would make a 40 watt bulb flicker for a few seconds. It was then that Nel whispered into his ear to do a barrel roll which he attempted to do while getting his weapon untangled from the Scientist. Then he noticed the glowing circle that was now marked on the floor of the arena. And while it might not be the best move, if he couldn't get his chain untangled from the scientist he simply dropped it and dashed as quickly as he could to the edge of the circle. Jumping the last few feet to avoid touching the ground as he cleared the magical markings.
The Scientist tried to fight off the move, but with his hands bound as they were, there was really nothing that he could do to stop his eye from being jabbed. And then when the burst of magic hit him there was again no defense, and he screamed bloody murder as he was actually fully conscious and feeling as his brain literally got fried. His body started convulsing and twitching as blood oozed out of his eye sockets and ears, the electricity totally frying his whole system. As the body fell limp to the ground, and the chain was unwound, Lenwe stood up to call the fight, as already it was passed the stopping point of incapacitation. But without looking over her shoulder, Mistwalker raised her left fist, stopping Lenwe in his tracks as the fog rolled into the circle, filling the entire outer circle just as Eric lept over it, the almost palpable air seeming to reach out for the mercenary's body. But as it filled the circles, at the center came a swirling vortex of green light and energy, and from that, a single paw snaked through to thud against the ground. It would have kicked up mist and dust, but Mistwalker was completely in control of all within her summoning circle. Another paw came out, slamming into the ground on the other side, and then a head, snarling and fierce broke the surface, eyes burning like coals. Then another head next to it, and a third on the other side. Then shoulders that stretched the vortex out to the center circle, followed by chest, and a narrowing haunch. Within a span of two minutes, a massive hellhound had been pulled from the Planes of Darkness.
But that was not the end of this hellish show. As the vortex began to close, there came a scream that turned to groan, which became a howl as slowly from the mist, The Scientist rose, blood still oozing out of his now useless eye socket, his body hunched, muzzle sporting two elongated saber fangs. With each pant of breath, his whole body, which had an odd slump to the right and included a hang of his head slightly in that direction, shuddered. He grinned, his teeth yellowed and disgusting as he raised his left hand and pointed to Eric. "You thought you had killed me boy, when I fight with the queen of the dead?" And then a high pitched cackle of a laugh was given as the last bit of his sanity slipped away.
PAUSE>
