last despair calls first hope

[ringwizard]

Date & Time: July 2nd & 3rd
Location: Initiative Library, Room 701, around the apartments
Characters: Haruto Souma (ringwizard), Kousuke Nitoh (ringbeast), Oriko Mikuni (precludes)
Summary: Haruto witches out gets the d(espair) hits his breaking point, becomes despair monster.
Warnings: Upupupupu. Depression, despair, a dickbag monster, at least one fight, Chimaera being a tool, references to mass murders, references to not so mass murders, possibly suicidal ideation, character death. Oriko's sense of priorities.


Haruto leaves the Initiative's Hold early in the morning with a certain spring to his step. He's gotten a little tan--his time in 2050 had done him some good, a lingering scrape on the back of his right hand aside, and it's obvious. Being back in the city again leaves a lingering malaise to his mood, but he forces it away. With things to be done all around, he's got to keep moving forward, right? There's a lot of hustle and bustle outside the Hold with the still-lingering confusion of new arrivals, as far as he can tell, and he steps around people talking as he opens his tablet and messages Nitoh.

Are you still asleep?

Comments

[ringwizard]

"Would you prefer wizard, instead?" Dragon asks, "the White Wizard doomed him to this, so I thought to avoid it, for your sake. Perhaps it is more apt than I thought?"

Slowly, he begins to shift forms, walking inexorably toward her. "I will decide where I come and where I go, Oriko Mikuni. Kousuke Nitoh was unable to remove me, and so too shall you. Even with foreknowledge, you were too weak to kill me." There's no doubt in his mind that she knew. He doesn't know how, or why, but her expression and attitude had been so determinedly deadly in Haruto's memories that he can see it.

[precludes]

They should not have tried to stand alone.

"I am neither," she says; though his dig stings, she will not let it show.

Haruto's death had been inevitable, not like the bloody miasma waiting in the future. She knows that Nitoh will stand again and act, and that people called to arms will sometimes rise up like violent swarms. But she can see the harm Dragon will cause rolling out from him as if she stands on the sidelines of the battle itself.

"You will find it difficult to go where you please in this city. You will only be exposed." He means to go there, and she may not be able to wait.

[ringwizard]

"Is that for you to say?" he wonders.

Dragon's sense of inevitability has always been personal. The inevitable slide down the scale of despair, Haruto's inexorable walk into darkness. Those things were inevitable. Beyond them, death is a vague concept. Certainly he understands it, desires to avoid it--but pleasure is infinitely preferable to fear, insofar as he can experience them.

"I think I will not," he answers, "as for exposing me, there are solutions. Phantoms have long survived among humans." He raises one claw, bright with gold magic, and stretches green wind-formed wings, launching at her.

[precludes]

It is not for him to say, either.

If it had all been wrong, each action leading up to the this one, there isn't the time to well on it. What matters is the ending.

Better for him to come at her first, for Oriko's strategy; better to know how and where he will be next, what strikes to expect.

Haruto she had hoped to fell with the advantages of surprise and weakness, but neither of those are on Oriko's side now. She guards herself first, small spheres raised like a shield as she darts for footholds to get on higher ground.

It would be worse for her to draw it out, though, a deadly strain and surely fatal.

that icon is fucking creepy just ftr

[ringwizard]

Dragon intends on tearing her apart. Like this, the core of what he identifies as her mana, centered as it is in her Soul Gem, is a small, mobile pit of despair. He wonders what she is. Perhaps a doll reanimated by magic, like Haruto's assistant, or some other kind of abomination. He favors the latter, himself.

Her shielding spheres slow him down a beat, as he has to beat them away with claws and tail. As he closes in, he considers lightning, then discards it. Ice, he thinks, ice for an ice queen. He shoots blue magic at her, ready to hit her in the side with his claws as he had Nitoh, in Haruto's Underworld.

thanks

[precludes]

How he can spend time thinking about showmanship, on the flash and style of the battle - it's insulting, in its way. And harder to predict. His existence is loathsome.

Between magic and a physical attack, one will break her down faster than the other, and she knows. Block the magic, dodge the swipe. Prediction is the best ground she has to stand on here.

Her feet are off the ground when his claws reach her, and the dig sends her back to the earth hard, bloody. It's good these things don't hurt, much. Dragon wouldn't expect her to kick, perhaps (she thinks), but she does, to utilize the momentum of her fall.

She skids a good distance farther than she might have made it on foot, rolling to her feet with some of the pavement still scraping up her skin.

welc. if you need more summary than i've been giving you let me know btw.

[ringwizard]

Dragon is pleased enough by his claws impacting her body, though it's more thud than rip or tear. He doesn't expect a kick from her--Kosuke Nitoh, perhaps, but he was, as Beast implied, more animal than magician. Oriko, however... Oriko is a weaver, of magics and careful facades both. No wonder Haruto had liked her.

The surprise of the kick more than anything else knocks him back a step as she goes flying, and he summons up fire as a gift to follow her recovery, blasting three fireballs from left to right. His claws crackle green, and lightning follows his breath. He seeks to corner her, to distract her with her magical defense long enough to surprise her.

He draws closer, step by step. He does not run.

i think!! we're good. also feel free to like commence. curbstomping. you have my blessing

[precludes]

Surprise would be an advantage for either of them, but those few seconds of good standing a minor physical attack have gained her are easily lost.

She cannot lose her composure. It had been a mistake the one time she had, in grave desperation. Even in the face of wretched odds, she will treat this battle the same as she started it.

Oriko blasts magic in response to his lightning, and where the powers meet it kicks back tense and sharp and explosive. He knows as well as she does that a direct assault will overpower her - why toy with her?

Misery, probably. Despair.

But should she alter the outcome even a little, would it be enough to keep her from despairing?

She looks to the wall flanking her left side and fires her magic again, this time as an offensive.

UPUPUPUPUPU

[ringwizard]

There is only so long this can amuse him, and he's reached that limit as he bats away her truly disappointing attempt at offense.

He doesn't run. He flies, drawing his ax from within the well of his mana. He attacks with the staff side first, knocking her toward the wall, hard, and follows with the flat of it, pushing her up against it.

When they're close, he blasts out, with a surge of his not inconsiderable mana. At this range, it's likely to kill her provided she's human, and not monster. He's pleased.

[precludes]

She is at least one of those things.

There's a crack when she hits the wall (it comes from her and wall itself), and while she can avoid the pain of the injury, the shock of it still strikes her. It's nigh impossible to think of magical resources in the midst of battle, but, not for the first time, the lack of magical corruption is of aid to her. And, while she can't break away to heal, there's a certain amount of magic that must go into keeping her supported.

Oriko heaves a breath and reaches down to wrap her fingers around the handle of his ax.

"I suppose," she says, "you think you were right," and makes her next target the side of his head. But her magic is waning and spread thin over several things.

[ringwizard]

The crack is satisfying, resonating through him, and he feels the flickering and pulsing of her magic. Her attempt at defiance curves his beck so he can fix bright red eyes on her face. Her attack swipes a wound across the side of his snout, cracking purple to show further purple glow below his armored skin.

"Of course," he says, and slams her again with the ax. Quickly, before she can react, he lifts his claw, blue and icy, and catches at her throat in a shove only possible with his monstrous, superhuman strength. He wants to see her go right through the wall, if he can manage it.

good thing we agreed to let him toss her through the wall then

[precludes]

"That's not the truth at all." It's the last thing she is able to say; his next strike winds her, and she coughs low in her lungs.

Nitoh can succeed - she couldn't stop the transformation, but his conviction is so strong.

Oriko loses control of her pain tolerance for just a second, but it's long enough to sweep the consciousness from her. The wall is old and bombed-out, and there's less tension in her body with her losing awareness. Before she passes out, she fights him one last time, her last defiance wrenching him towards the collapsing rubble.

Then it's dark, not much difference from death when bound to a soul gem.

:D :D :D

[ringwizard]

"I suppose we shall see," he hums, and her final struggle sends him with her, stumbling over her as she slides across the floor and to the ground.

He straightens, after a moment, and laughs, dark. Slowly, he moves toward her, smelling the sweet scent of her despair, contained--he follows his snout, then his human nose, as he shifts forms. He squats, looking, and finds the ring on her finger.

He slides it off with care, cradling it in his palm. He curls his fingers over it and lifts his hand to his nose, sucking in another breath. Despair, potent and sweet, unblemished by her attempts at cover. She is so like Haruto.

Dragon stands, holding her Soul Gem to his chest, and turns away. As he ducks through the hole in the wall she'd so graciously opened with her body, he looks back. Without her body to see her reactions, the ring in his fist seems less attractive a prospect of keeping. He looks down on it, and then he tosses it away, skittering across the warehouse floor.