View source for 2020-04-17: The Martial Artist's Bodyguard

*'''Log: The Martial Artist's Bodyguard'''
*'''Cast:''' [[Character :: Zed]], [[Character :: Pearl]]
*'''Where: Meria Boule''' 
*'''Date:''' April 17, 2020
*'''Summary''': ''The masked attacker of Meria wants to se if the body guard of a former opponent is worth her time.''

----


 <Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
<poem>Rumors have circulated in recent days that the scion of the illustrious Everstead-Rey family has fallen ill! Maybe it's just a flu. Maybe it's some kind of exotic disease! But some of the more exotic rumors are claiming that circumstances are far spicier than some run of the mill illness. Maybe it's the inevitable and inglorious result of a long-term tryst...! Maybe it's that she accidentally unleashed a horrible plague from the depths of an ancient ruin that humanity was never meant to uncover......!

Maybe... She's just entered into a fabled strange mood and will emerge any day now with a masterpiece of ARMsmithing.

Whatever the case, these rumors have been consistent about one thing-- that she is being watched over by a mysterious new bodyguard of great and terrible prowess. The kind of bodyguard who could leap from the top of a Granasian cathedral and not even flinch on landing. The kind that is rumored to have the strength of a true demon! The kind... that can eat an entire mountain of eclairs unsupported...!

"Mmf, these things are tasty!" Zed, notorious METAL DEMON and apparent eclair fiend declares from around a tasty, creamy pastry. "Mmmmf, it's too bad Ida's too sick to come down n' share, but that just leaves more for us, right partners!?"

Bark says a strange, heavily armored, vaguely canine-shaped creature sitting in the chair next to the swordsman. The one in the chair across from him says nothing, because... It is a sword. There is a sword there, with an eclair on a plate. It hasn't been touched, because this is a goddamn sword. Bark says the Metal Beast, as it spears the uneaten eclair with a shoulder-mounted claw and shoves the tasty treat into its jagged, toothy maw. "Ahahahaha! You said it Goldie!"

...This...

...Is the bodyguard...!?
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
<poem>
    From atop a roof nearby, someone watches. It is light out- not the ideal circumstances - but they hide in the shadow cast by another building and their own personal darkness. Moments later, they are joined. Whisper quiet, the smaller person speaks. "....This is the guy. Are you sure about this one?" There's a short nod from the larger one. "...But he's... He looks such-"

    "An idiot. Correct." The larger figure draws something from her belt. "He is a metal demon. Perhaps he will serve as better prey than his charge."

    "You know, I could just-" The smaller figure starts, but she is cut off by a shake of the head.

    "Maintain the illusion. I would rather as few people see us as possible." There's a 'harrumph' from the smaller figure at that, and the light around where Zed is sitting glimmers ever so briefly. The larger figure nods, and throws a small sphere that lands nicely on the table.

    And then it starts billowing smoke, fast and thick. The area becomes filled with smoke, as though there's a sudden fire. Something to scatter people. Well, most people. In the cover of shadows, a figure moves, and in a moment moves to strike Zed from behind with an open hand strike, aimed at the back of the neck. It's swift, brutal, and quite possibly how the assissin likes to test the waters.
</poem>

 GS: Pearl has attacked Zed with Night's Wrath!
 GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo!
 GS: Pearl has completed her action.
 GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Pearl's Night's Wrath for 132 hit points!
 GS: Cripple! applied to Zed!

 <Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
<poem>Perhaps imperceptible to all but the most attentive of observers, the air around Zed's table shimmers and flickers. But even ''more'' imperceptible is the subtle movement of his eyes as the world changes. In moments, he is submerged in a dense plume of smoke. People panic, scurrying off to find someone of authority to complain to. Zed does not. He sits there, ready and waiting, anticipating...

An attack--!

                                  THWANG!!                                  

If Pearl doesn't yet know what punching a steel wall feels like-- well! Now she does! It's not pleasant. The impact resonates and reverberates through the air like a struck gong. Zed's head... Has moved ''just'' so to absorb a direct hit to his spinal column...!

Normally this wouldn't have helped, but Zed's skull is ''notoriously'' dense. "Ow," he says with a quiet huff. "Well, that wasn't very nice. You know, usually ninjas are supposed to introduce themselves before they a--"

Zed vanishes.

There's a whirling of wind. A flicker of movement. Steel scythes out through the smokescreen, striking up and under his assailant's chin to cut through her neck. "--ttack," the Metal Demon finishes with a grin, his blade's killer edge glittering in his hands. "Ha-ha! You're not the only one who can perform a surprise attack maneuver!!"
</poem>

 GS: Zed has attacked Pearl with Miracle Strike - Phantom Bite!
 GS: Zed has completed his action.
 GS: Pearl takes a solid hit from Zed's Miracle Strike - Phantom Bite for 118 hit points!
 GS: Cripple! applied to Pearl!

 <Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
<poem>
    "Hmph. You actually reacted." It's clear that that impact should have hurt, but if she's in pain she doesn't show it. The only part of the figure visible is her cold grey eyes. She draws her hand back, in an attempt to deny Zed the opportunity to counterattack against her arm.

    This is largely a good idea, because Zed goes straight for a decapitation. Pearl twists her body, assess what wound she could take and keep fighting in seconds. As it is, Zed's sword drives into her left shoulder, drawing a massive spurt of blood.

    Once again, she has no reaction of pain. Even as the sword slides free, slicing further, she remains resolute. "You start strong. Do not dissapoint me, Demon." And with a sudden action, she turns, her hand in a claw grip.

    Dark purple ki surrounds her hand, cruel and sharpm cutting and brutal. Should it connect, it will cut as sharp as any blade. It is an extension of her will and rage, a power made purely for killing.
</poem>

 GS: Pearl has attacked Zed with Inverse Claw!
 GS: Pearl has gained 2 Combo!
 GS: Pearl has completed her action.
 GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Pearl's Inverse Claw for 148 hit points!

 <Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
<poem>
    "Demon, huh?" Zed answers with a grin that can only be called manic. "That's funny, I'm pretty sure you're the one acting like a demon here. What else do you call someone who interrupts Eclair Time? There are no better words! Demon is the best one!" Of course, the only reason he has time and wherewithal to banter is that his opponent managed to deflect his attempted killer blow, instead turning it into simply a maiming blow.

What she does next makes him go quiet, though. Her claw digs into Hyadean flesh, digging a silvery gash from hip to shoulder. A gout of quicksilver blood spurts across the quaint little specials menu set up in front of the cafe. "Heh, I know that kind of power. Power made just for killing. You're the type who has made herself into a sword, aren't you?"

Something cuts through the violent impulse. Otherworldly light floods up the length of Zed's blade and across his arms and shoulders. It's a bright, twinkling glow- something that shines in a color that exists only in the night's sky when all the earth has gone dark. Zed strikes, brilliant energy scything out from his blade in a crescent of razor-sharp light. "Nhahaha! You really are more of a demon than I am! You're going to be paying for these eclairs!"
</poem>

 GS: Zed has attacked Pearl with Saint Arts - Starstrider's Valor!
 GS: Zed has gained 2 Combo!
 GS: Zed assumes the Avenger stance!
 GS: Zed has completed his action.
 GS: Pearl completely evades a hit from Zed's Saint Arts - Starstrider's Valor!

 <Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
<poem>
    Energy flies from Zed's blade, as he scythes through, that brilliant crescent of energy striking for Pearl. Her movements are exact and precise. She turns her body just enough that the blade slides past her rather than through her, slicing through the cobblestones that make the streets of Meria like they were the sweetest cream inside a delicious eclair. 

    Still, she seems to step back, but there is the slightest presence of a sneer. "We are both tools for killing, Metal Demon. Do not pretend to be anything else." As she steps backward, shadow starts to surround her, and suddenly there are two of her. Another step, and there's three. "I've no interest in a blade that's rusted through." One final step, and there are four. "Do not disappoint me."

    And the Assassin and her shadows leap into the air, and launch flying kicks from four directions. Each image possesses as much force as the real thing. The only linger for moments more, returning to dust and shadows, as the assassin prepares to continue.
</poem>

 GS: Pearl has attacked Zed with Needle Kick!
 GS: Pearl has completed her action.
 GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Pearl's Needle Kick for 89 hit points!
 GS: Break! applied to Zed!

 <Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
<poem>
    "I think you have the wrong Hyadean," Zed answers with a grin that just doesn't seem to want to leave his face. Not even when his opponent disappears into a flurry of individual shadows, each of the four leaping into the air. Each launching a deadly kick. Each...

Striking home.

Metal Demons are resilient things, tools that were made to kill a world. They bleed metal, and their bruises blossom silver and brown. It's only for this reason that Zed isn't a pile of pulverized meat. But even then, bruised ribs and all, his smile remains plastered defiantly to his face. "You're human, right? Something that's born into the world with infinite potential... And you became a blade. Something meant only to kill. But me-- I'm the opposite!"

The energy swirling around the Hyadean shifts. Starlight flows like a rushing river, cascading around the Metal Demon's bleeding and bruised body... And begins to capture the lingering motes of shadow twisting through the air. It sweeps them along in its current, concentrating those little tongues of darkness into a thin sheet that wraps tight around Zed's blade.

Something pulses from within that lethal steel. A blast of stolen killing intent rushes outward, carried by a flood of pure misfortune and shining starlight. "I was a weapon, born into this world as a thing made only to kill it! But now, I am so much more! You've come to the wrong place if all you expected to find was a sword to break!"
</poem>

 GS: Zed spends 1 Combo on Poison!
 GS: Zed has attacked Pearl with Unsealed Blade - Demon Breaker!
 GS: Zed has gained 2 Combo!
 GS: Cripple expired!
 GS: Zed has completed his action.
 GS: Zed heals Pearl! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
 GS: Poison! applied to Pearl!
 GS: Formation! Zed has attacked Pearl with Animation Error - Fixed In The Bluray!
 GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo!
 GS: Zed has completed his action.
 GS: Sneak! The true nature of Zed's attack becomes clear!
 GS: Pearl takes a glancing hit from Zed's Ultimate Attack of the Week for 91 hit points!

 <Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
<poem>
    As the assassin whirls back to face Zed, there is something in her eyes. It looks like rage. "Infinite potential? Do not mock me." There's a growl in her distorted voice. "We are what we a forged into. There is no room for 'potential'."

    The momentary lapse gives Zed the opening he needs, and blade meets flesh. The pulse of energy, the feel of something trying to corrode her utterly. It feels painfully familiar. That feeling soaks into her flesh, eating a at her. It's very cloe to what she had been taught. But she could feel it, the killing intent. It's harder to tell that it's stolen. "I had thought a warrior of the Metal Demons would understand the purpose of power. But you seem entirely the buffoon you act."

    The assassin plants her feet, and looks directly at Zed. She places her hands down and out to the side. Energy starts flowing through her. That purple ki surrounds her hands. "If you are something more, then show it. Otherwise, stop wasting my time." And now, she focuses, thrusting her hands out in front of her. A beam of purple energy heads straight for Zed, and the surrounding area. It cuts through the slowly thinning smoke, and the veil of light that surrounds it. Pure, unfettered hatred radiates from the blast, mixed with furious anger. It is destructive force, with no other purpose.
</poem>

 GS: Pearl spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling!
 GS: Pearl has attacked Zed with Shadow Dragon Wave!
 GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo!
 GS: Pearl takes 23 damage from Poison!
 GS: Pearl has completed her action.
 GS: Pierce!! Pearl's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 0 remain!
 GS: Zed takes a glancing hit from Pearl's Shadow Dragon Wave for 104 hit points!
 GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

 <Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
<poem>A beam of pure hatred, of violent intent rendered into tangible form, slams into the Hyadean. It slams into his blade, splitting like a prism into a spectrum of wrath and enmity. Wrath cuts a line of silvery blood across his cheek, carves deep gashes into the cobblestone boulevard and burns his arms black around his white hot blade.

When the light passes, when the violent, violet glow fades, it leaves the swordsman standing there, smoldering. His arms are charred to the shoulders. Something like that... Would incapacitate a hardened warrior for months, years even, if they ever recovered at all.

But Hyadeans-- Metal Demons-- were made to be weapons.

Zed turns, his blade held at his side, parallel to the ground. "Hah, so you say!" He says, with that same fearless grin plastered onto his face. "But for you to have been made into anything, you had to have the potential to become that thing. And you have potential even now. That's the beauty of life. As long as you can still take a step forward, it's up to you where that foot will fall!"

Zed lunges forward, faster than the eye can follow. One step, grasping the earth. "You talk about power-- let me tell you! A wise man once said that power is pure! Pure power is nothing without a will to wield it! It can be used to destroy, to protect, to create, or anything else under the sun!" A second step. Suddenly he is ''there'' and his blade whirls like a hurricane of deadly steel, tracing a constellation of starlight across the empty air. "Those were the words of the greatest of us. If you are truly just a weapon, then why would you seek me out? A weapon with a will is not a weapon at all!"
</poem>

 GS: Zed spends 1 Combo on Link!
 GS: Zed has attacked Pearl with Secret Sword - Lightning Flash!
 GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo!
 GS: Zed has launched an attack Link!

 <Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
<poem>A third step. He surges past, carving a single, final line through the storm of starlight. It pulls the haze of light into a fatal ribbon of shining energy-- like the brilliance of the Milky Way bisecting the night sky...! "So what are you, a weapon, or a ''warrior!?''"
</poem>

 GS: Zed has attacked Pearl with Forbidden Move - Astral Dance!
 GS: Zed enters a Counter stance!
 GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo!
 GS: Break expired!
 GS: Zed has completed his action.
 GS: Pearl has activated a Force Action!
 GS: You have activated the Force Action Accelerate!
 GS: CRITICAL! Pearl completely evades a hit from Zed's Secret Sword - Lightning Flash!
 GS: Mighty! applied to Zed!
 GS: Pearl takes a glancing hit from Zed's Forbidden Move - Astral Dance for 81 hit points!
 GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!

 <Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
<poem>
    "You survived." There's not exactly surprise in her voice, so much as intrigue. It is true that these Metal Demons are made of Sterner Stuff. There is no care for potential collateral damage, or even particularly herself, in the way she has fought so far. She gives Zed a moment. And in that moment he starts talking. The assassin's eyes seem to become harder, angrier for every word that comes out of his mouth. She doesn't speak. But her hand shakes with fury. It's obvious in the way she reacts. Every word from Zed feels like anathema.

    "How lucky for you," she says, resentment in her voice, "that you have had the luxury of choice."

    Zed comes at her like a hurricane of blades, and she responds by moving like the wind herself. Slices nick the clothes she wears, but flesh is spared the bite of Zed's slashes. It's almost like a dance that few can follow due to the sped it moves at. And it is, of course, far more lethal than any ordinary dance.

    And it is the assassin who makes the misstep in the final step of that dance. Zed's shining bright slash drives across the assassin's midsection, and blood mars the beautiful galaxy. But still she stands, fury overtaking her. "You will have your answer soon enough, Metal Demon.

    And then she steps forward, driving one palm towards Zed's midsection covered in the hideous, corrosive purple energy of the Shadow Dragon cult. An attack to turn one's own ki against them, make it reject the body that contains it.

    It is not a fighting art.

    It is a killing art.
</poem>

 GS: Pearl has attacked Zed with Shadow Dragon Palm!
 GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo!
 GS: Pearl has completed her action.
 GS: Zed has activated a Force Action!
 GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Pearl's Shadow Dragon Palm for 196 hit points!
 GS: Zed has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!

 <Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
<poem>"Do you think I always knew that I could choose?" Zed asks, more excited and curious than incredulous-- that this woman managed to survive his fatal dance of blows. "No-- it wasn't until I realized that I had that freedom that I really WAS free! You have that choice, too. All that strength of yours, all you need to do is reach out with it and ''take'' your freedom!"

But battle is a fickle thing. A single lapse of concentration is all that it takes to seize victory. And, for all Zed has learned over the years, there is one bad habit that he will never, ever be able to break.

He just doesn't know when to stop talking.

Zed's eyes widen as Pearl's fist slams into his abdomen. He makes a noise of surprise, corruptive energies burning around the assassin's final blow. It surges through his chakras, subverting the energy it finds there, turning it inside out, turning it--

Wait.

No. This is wrong.

This is something ''different.''

The alien physiology of the Hyadean people is well documented, but not so much their spirituality. It turns out that it's... Different. Different in a way that naturally doesn't play so well with human spiritual architecture. Different enough that both Pearl and Zed are subjected to the uncanny sight of two warring halos of light connecting, intertwining, and finally &#42;erupting&#42; in an eye-searing surge of power...

...That sends Zed sailing, still smoldering, a hundred of feet into the sky. He sails limply through the air, consciousness blasted out of his skull by the catastrophe of warring energies. About the only thing that isn't flailing helplessly is his one arm, still gripping tight to his blade. Even so, he's a sitting duck, ripe to be finished off-- or to simply slam helplessly into the ground...

Until he disappears in a rushing flash of red and orange and white. A colossal, humanoid war machine turns its head to stare down at what used to be a peaceful pastry shop... Before flying off into the horizon. 

A Gear...?

But... who's piloting it...?

                                 MEANWHILE                                  

Sitting in Surtr's cockpit, there is a distinctly gold-plated Metal Beast. Her tongue lolls happily out of her jagged, toothy maw. It's slobbering all over the place. Her tail is waggling in an undeniably happy sort of way.

...And next to her... is a box of take-out.

Full of eclairs.

Bark, Goldie says cheerfully, before chomping down on a well-deserved pastry.
</poem>

[[Category:Logs]]
[[Category:Chapter 2]]
[[Category:Chapter 2, Act 2]]