Treading New Waters

Neo Arcturus' link to the open water of the Freshwater Sea. Despite it's usage as a modest port, it retains a full breadth of aquatic life beneath the waves thanks for the Conservatory's deliberate effort. That's here and head out on the waves and bring back a souvenir!
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Qarinah
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Re: Treading New Waters

Post by Qarinah »

Qarinah let the chaos of the electric trunade waft over her without so much as batting an eye. Zero's counter attack was quick, practically instant, but she soaked in as much of it as she could. The brilliant lights coloring her face followed by echoes of blistered the earth. The thunderous force barreling over and through her fluttering gown until it crashed into the shore behind her, commanding the tides into the clouds above. She found the light show exciting of course, but what truly returned the devils grin was watching Zero march through the dust and sediment with no pause in his strut.
Zero’s glossy body landed light as a feather, strutting forward into the aftermath of his strike against the gorgon’s blade. Electricity danced around him, up and down his body, across his limbs and down to his finger and toetips. He was charged up and ready to roll.
"Oh? You're approaching me? No sneaky attack? No elborate tactic?"

Qarinah jeered as her pupils narrowed into fine slits. She poised herself to engage, but took no formal stance.

She hung her arms at her sides, just above her waist with both of her palms open toward the encroaching storm of white/lavender. But strangely, she didnt look like she was anticipating his attack, so much as it seemed like she just wanted him to hit her. Her demeanor was calm, but her nails silently sharpened into mutated talons as her lips welcomed their volatile clash.

..Finally

She mumbled to herself, no longer able to keep her smirk from curling along her cheeks. The battlefield, boiled into molten gravel and crumbled rock was about to get its first drop of blood and she couldn't look more excited.

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Zero Venkage
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Re: Treading New Waters

Post by Zero Venkage »

“We’re clearly not the tactic types,” Zero chrotled through his nose as he raised his left hand to the darkened sky. An orb of electricity formed in his palm that he reached and dipped two fingers into with his other hand. He gripped the orb and lowered his arm to point directly at the encroaching gorgon beast. His thunder drenched fingers pulled back close to his eye and he took an archer’s aim directly at the creature’s chest. The lavender bolt he drew extended from beyond his pointer and behind his right shoulder, making a high pitched whine that was music to his ears, the sound and frequency of unadulterated energy, electricity.

“Let’s just get to the point,” he said casually, letting the arc loose at the monster. Their trades already had them at a zero-sum game, even on the battlefield. Zero needed to keep his range to stay out of her sight, just in case she wanted to blink him into a snowman. That’s assuming being struck by a bolt of lightning didn’t almost put her down by itself. Her power was fierce, that vacuum definitely would have made an issue if Zero didn’t already clear his airspace, and that was just with a toss. He needed to assess what kind of move would end this nightmare, so he started with a simple idea: dodge lightning.

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Qarinah
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Re: Treading New Waters

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He gripped the orb and lowered his arm to point directly at the encroaching gorgon beast. His thunder drenched fingers pulled back close to his eye and he took an archer’s aim directly at the creature’s chest. The lavender bolt he drew extended from beyond his pointer and behind his right shoulder, making a high pitched whine that was music to his ears, the sound and frequency of unadulterated energy, electricity.

Qarinah's approach was slow and deliberate. Her feet barely touched ashened earth as she admired the vibrant wizard from afar. He'd finally wound up close enough for her to truly appreciate the subtle delicacies of his features. Athletics and combat molded his physical definitions. And the fine creases of arrogance along his cheeks truly complimented his youthful charm. He was a looker, too. Which helped when you were a performer already confident in your craft. But despite his flair, to no one's surprise, this high voltage circuis was beginning to bore Qarinah and the novelty of the chase had already run its course. Qarinah wanted her hands dirty.. which was why she smiled watching Zero  stop to mold another one of his hand held storms into an impromptu bow and arrow. He was adamant about his keeping his distance, it seemed to be where he was most comfortable.

No more of that.
“Let’s just get to the point,”

He said casually, letting the arc loose at the monster. Which prompted Qarinah's laser thin pupils to pulsate in response. From the beginning of their dance, she'd been fixated on every inch and centimeter of her opposite. She'd grown accustom to the explosive sounds his muscles made when they contracted. How his brown flesh literally beamed under moonlight. But beneath the beauty and aethetics of his techniques, Qarinah was hunting for weaknesses. Patterns. Faults in his discipline that she could exploit.

But once Zero's fingers let off his assault, Qarinah found what she was looking for. It was a tiny window he gave her but the second that arrow of plasma left his bow, Qarinah's 6' frame materialized in its place.

Zero would notice, hopefully too late, that this was no wild feat of speed. Qarinah teleported in front of him the second his contracting muscles in his back, chest, shoulders and biceps gave her the signal. Dodging lightning wasn't easy, mostly in part to its speed, but largely due to its temperamental nature. Unpredictability masked its incalculable velocity, making it a force of nature to be reckoned with. Therefore, the problem with trapping lightning in a bottle of course.. is the cracks in the bottle.

It took little effort anticipating when he'd let loose his bolt, and she didn't bother to look at the chaos it let off behind her. No she reappeared focused, with her right leg strategically placed in between Zero's left leg in attempts to thwart any hasty escapes before he hatched them, and trap him in place. Face to face with this dwarfing nightmare.

"Let's."

Her voice was soft, eeriely intimate behind her ghastly fangs and crazed expression. But those words would probably never reach Zero in time. Her talons, shearing through wind and sediment would have found him long before then. With both hands, she'd unleash a deadly ballet of swipes. Each strike strong enough to rip earth from soil with a familiar vacuum of force and she exponentially magnified her ferocity as she persisted. She was so eager to bleed him she couldn't keep her tongue in her mouth. If she got him, even a little bit, she wanted to lap up anything he'd spill for her. But by the time she let up, the force of her barrage would have buried the both of them in a crumbling basin, and what was left of her target would have been dripping off her face.

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Zero Venkage
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Re: Treading New Waters

Post by Zero Venkage »

Oh.

And she appeared in front of him with a flurry of carnal strikes tearing through the wind to rend his skin from bone. What surprised him more was how close she got to him in an instant. No wind moved around her before she changed positions, his bolt loosed into empty space flying out into the Freshwater Sea. His heavenly arrow barely made it from his fingertips before the talons were rushing to bleed him dry. Normally, being in such close quarters was a choice he avoided just for the sake of throwing things at people. Often his battles were decided with a decisive strike from above or below, depending on the terrain and battlefield. But this gorgon proved to be a foe with options. He didn’t notice her move until she already began her attack, but Zero could feel the suffocating power she brought to him point-blank.
Let’s.
Zero bobbed and weaved with an electrifying grace akin to lightning itself. Naturally, his reflexes evaded her frenzied and increasingly more terrifying strikes. The high voltage movements flitted him around each attack, lightning dancing through the violently ascending debris. Her vehement volley ravaged the former foundation of his home, scorched off the face of Vescrutia by their exchange of menacing pleasantries. He had endured battles against foes of this caliber before, but none of them as laser focused as this. He could have zapped himself out of range in a lightning’s instant, but she would definitely still stay on his ass with a furious assault, so he evaded her initial strikes, but grew to block her more incensed attacks from inside her reach. Her dance of blades grew to its climax, sweeping more of their battlefield away in a vicious vacuum, but flowing around his blazing movements. The air grew blazing hot around them, vaporizing the dust and sand into a shimmering haze at the core of their hazy clash. Girded his loins and took whole forearm strikes to either side of him, reminding him fondly of a Boulder he once sparred with time and time again. Getting a good look at her crazed expression, thirsty for carnage, waiting for a single drop of his lifeblood brought a sinister smile to his own face.

Should have learned Global Fist when I had the chance…

The hunter in him recognized the malice in her eyes as this creature bore down on him with genocidal force. And in that predatory moment, Zero found the opening he needed in an ill advised trade. He ducked under a wide sweeping swing and slid backward in a short retreat, just to gain some space. She followed with more fervor, more ferocity, more carnal violence than he ever wanted to deal with on that sleepy evening. Zero’s gambit only took a fraction of a moment, feigning a block and tossing his hand forward to get nicked by her fearsome blades. He wagered if she even got a feeling that her hit confirmed she’d move in for the kill. He aimed to end the creature with an equal and opposite force, a high flying front kick risen from the molten earth straight up through her body. The force sent him floating into a backflip, its speed turning him over quick enough to spot the aftermath.

The force was worth the trade, a drop of blood for a kick that snapped with the speed of lighting and a thunderous aftermath that roiled the beach behind her. The Freshwater Sea peeled from the shore in the same movement, water rolling away from the Neo into the sky in a sharp arrow heading out into the open water. The sand looked like it was carved into with a giant’s blade, a pitch black ridge running along the seafloor for miles. The molten air around them cooled from the change in air pressure, glass particles shimmering around the pair in a pillowy cloud billowing behind the gorgon, static electricity bouncing between some of the glossy bits. Zero knew the risk, her claws could carry some frosty toxin as gorgons are commonly cursed creatures with many tricks up their sleeve, but his confidence in his speed made up for the risk. The speedy trickster had ways to deal with a little bit of poison.

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Qarinah
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Re: Treading New Waters

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The force of Zero's strike levitated Qarinah from the molten soil and sailed her through the star spangled void as if she were a weightless doll. But she didn't travel too far.

Despite the defeaning thunderclap that echoed the attack, Qarinah was barely launched a hundred feet in the air before her body stopped on a dime. Stiff as a board, she floated idl and horizontal. The fiery exhaust from Zero's foot was still steaming around her head, but when the electrical plume faded away, her flawless skin and obsessive gaze remained fixated on her foe below her. Aside from her gown, which had become more of a tattered robe at this point, Qarinah's body was unscathed from Zero's teraforming attack.

She teleported again. This time about twenty yards above Zero, hovering with her tattered robe still managing to tastefully cover her lady bits.

"And I'd thought this would be boring!"

She exclaimed through a toothy grin, still reeling with excitement from their blistering exchange. For a moment, Qarinah was exhausting every ounce of her being into hitting her mark. During her onslaught, she masterfully shifted between crazed and orthodoxed disciplines to take advantage of Zero's more impulsive movements. But instincts, experience and tactics be damned. This circuit of trial and error taught Qarinah that Zero was more than just fast. He was beyond reproach; In fact, she theorized his agility alone severed him from the physical realm entirely.

And tasting that small amount of his blood still trickling down her finger reassured her theory.. and then some. This was why Zeik spoke so highly of him.

"I wonder if he'd come all the way here to save you if I got carried away.."

She mumbled with her finger still in her mouth, taking her time to savor the tiny taste of Venkage blood she had stolen. With which she got more indepth analysis on who stood before her. Or more precisely, a brief highlight reel of his greatest hits. His closest tethers. And his greatest fears.

"..it seems it wouldn't be the first time. The two of you grew pretty close in the Abyss, huh?"

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Zero Venkage
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Re: Treading New Waters

Post by Zero Venkage »

Zero looked up into the flickering face of a specter he still didn't recognize from a place he never knew. Gorgons weren't exactly a dime a dozen outside of their native spaces.

"What's your deal?" he spat into the barely dressed female figure attempting to loom over him. Scanning her revealing form gave him no hints to where she came from or why she chose his home to descend upon with intensely intimate carnage. He recognized a certain charm in her eyes, an allure that beckoned a force from deep within his soul to the surface. A force he learned fairly recently to temper and focus, but becomes more and more troublesome as battles like this are drawn out. And drawn out is a relative time frame, the man is a speedster so even a few moments of nuisance wear on him like hours of tedium.
"I wonder if he'd come all the way here to save you if I got carried away... it seems it wouldn't be the first time. The two of you grew pretty close in the Abyss, huh?"
Fuck, she's psychic... ish... Big ol' pile o' nope.

"Imagine how much fun we could've had if you let me know you were coming?! I don't think I'll need any saving, though."

She moved like a phantasm, flickering from one place to the next silently, instantly. She caught him off guard once already, but seeing it in action steeled his resolve and focus, every move he made needed cunning decisiveness. The creature knew of Zero's time spent in the Abyss, although any number of factors could have influenced her allusion to his stint as a gladiator there. Somebody she met along her own travels also frequented the ancient battleground and that only confirmed Zero's assumption that he needed to finish her quickly. Anyone from that time in his life either wanted him dead or wanted something from him, the reputation he built over the years at sea and on the battlefield of Scholars made it very difficult to keep a low profile in some places across Vescrutia.

Zero laughed, expecting more carnage to befall him on a moment’s notice at the bottom of this glass cored crater. He gently, calmly placed his recently sliced hand into the opposite palm. The connection danced with a jolt of electricity for a moment, electricity dissipating into a faint glow in the heart of his palm. Sure the energy movement would pique her interest, Zero watched her carefully, not moving a muscle. Predators have a hard time hunting when their prey knows where they are.

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Qarinah
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Re: Treading New Waters

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"Imagine how much fun we could've had if you let me know you were coming?!
"Oh. Am I boring you?"

She asked coyly, all the while sensually sucking his blood stain from her finger before sliding it out of her mouth, down her lips, and resting it just at the crest of her upper chest.

"Let's see you dodge this, then."

She then lined him beneath her extended palm as if it were primed to fire some sort of malicious projectile at him. But her next attack was intended to goad out Zero's more intuitive instincts. In the time they've clash with each other, it became painfully obvious that there wasn't much Qarinah had in her arsenal of abilities that Zero couldn't simply avoid with another display of fancy footwork. But she was sure, this time, he literally wouldn't see it coming until it was too late.

Her challenge descended upon him instantly, without truly having to descend on him at all. Despite how much she truly loved immersing herself in the wet work, Qarinah didn't need to move a muscle to brutalize her target. All she needed to do was focus on them to unleash an inescapable hell of telekinetic firepower.  Which in Zero's circumstances began with the sensation of astronomical units of pressure crashing into him from above, capable of jarring bone into powder, trying to flatten him through the glass crater he stood on and into the molten core of planet. Usually, she found it easier to manipulate inanimate objects but tasting the blood of organic life made controlling them a hundred times easier. This was her go to counter attack for opponents whose speed and agility couldn't be contested. Her strength of mind almost outmatched her dominant physical power, but the strain it placed on her almost outweighed its usefulness. Today, she wanted to exercise that weining muscle of hers and was interested to see how Zero would survive it.

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Zero Venkage
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Re: Treading New Waters

Post by Zero Venkage »

Let’s see you dodge this, then.
Her outstretched hand laid above Zero and his silvery aura flickered as she channeled her connection to him. As easily as she moved from one place to another, an invisible force slammed down on him. Not from above, it didn’t move like a wave or a beam, his body seemed to draw itself toward the ground. Untold atmospheres of pressure cast onto him like a leaden net. The glassy beach beneath him buckled beneath the telekinetic pressure imposed, his own glossy aura rippling like the surface of a placid lake.

Being psychic has got to be cheating.

With his eyes trained on his opponent, Zero’s body stood as tall as the moment before, even as his feet plowed into the blend of sand and shards beneath him. The glow from inside his palm ignited to a white mass of seething Naten while the glossy aura around him sprayed the atmosphere, her telekinetic force smacking into his own energy field, a whale of power breaching the surface of his own sea of strength. His focus shifted from his hands to his feet, keeping them from being forced into the sand. Even if he could stand, that was almost all he could do to keep from being cast into the core of Vescrutia. The flaming mass of Naten he held dimmed, its glow tracing a path through his body down into his feet and the force pushing back on the shifting earth below shot out over the crater’s rim, excavating more material and carving deeper into Vescrutia’s bedrock.

I just need one shot.

His seething shoes steadily slid the sand away while his shimmering stance had waves of energy cascade from head to toe. His gaze never shifted off of his opponent. Once he lost focus, she might get the jump on him and in this gravity well, he thought it best to be on terra firma. He found himself against a wall he rarely met. With his mobility severely hindered, he juggled the next moments in his head. Would he have to stay afloat in the depression their greeting carved into Vescrutia? Her oppressive psychic force had a single target and it took a synergy of physical strength and a thick dose of Mistral Stream to stay above the sandy, sharded abyss. With her impressive speed, almost instant chilling frosts, and phantasmal movement techniques, Zero had limited resources while pinned in place. If she closed the distance between them, he could work with that range but from her stance in the air that was getting more and more distant as her psychic power laid into him. Like a shooting star crashing into a planet the crater’s rim grew to engulf a good chunk of the coast, misting the water’s edge.. The foundation of his home and some of the bordering frozen forest melted away and created a thick fog behind him and stretching down the Jade Shores. And he still had no idea who she was or where she came from.

Where’s the opening?

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Qarinah
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Re: Treading New Waters

Post by Qarinah »

Qarinah's eyes squinted into quivering slits trying to keep Zero beneath her psionic thumb but the amount of resistance she experienced was.. Alarming. Using telekinetic force placed an unimaginable caliber of strain on her body, especially when used in such an impetuous manner.

This was not how this meeting was supposed to go. Qarinah originally approached Zero for his expertise in foriegn, old, and powerful antiquities. But once again, blood lust skewed her calculated mind into another carnal endeavor. She was fully prepared to watch Zero explode into a puddle of gore and goo after meeting her psychic hammer. But he endured. Something that must have woke her up..

"..I think that's quite enough!"

That or the amount of strain her body was hiding behind her snobbish smile and cheek. Blood was leaking out of her nose before her hand dropped back down to the wayside and she teleported unto a nearby region of stable earth. The invisible onslaught Zero was clashing with would vanish instantly.

"I'd say that was pretty fun.. For a first impression.. Wouldn't you?"

She yelled out to the vertical tunnel where Zero was buried, in between a few scattered breaths. With a twirl of her fingers, exposed body was concealed in crimson robe that flowed well passed her toes.

"Sorry if you're hurt down there! I was warned you would be strong.. And I like to play hunter so.."

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Zero Venkage
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Re: Treading New Waters

Post by Zero Venkage »

Her psychic force let up and Zero’s body felt multitudes lighter instantly. The Naten he concentrated into his feet bounced, nearly teleporting him to the edge of the depression the gorgon appeared after releasing him from her psychic clutch. Light Flashed and his aura splashed when he met her face to face, panting and bleeding with a satisfied look on her face. Floating there, suspended in light with a hook kick chambered to shoot her straight off the surface of the planet, Zero paused.
"I'd say that was pretty fun.. For a first impression.. Wouldn't you? Sorry if you're hurt down there! I was warned you would be strong.. And I like to play hunter so.."
Eyes alight, body burning with fresh unleashed power he gathered to muscle through her psionic grip, Zero waited. He looked her dead in the eyes, fully intent on letting loose the kick that would send her into the infinite abyss above. But he couldn’t let himself do it. He should have averted his gaze, but the risk associated with her ferocity was too high. For all he wanted to believe she wanted to call a truce, he couldn’t ignore the past thirty seconds, half of which he spent being drilled into a hole. First impressions are everything around these parts and he did want to continue to repair his reputation on the Jade Shores. If she was an emissary of a nearby community, history shows relationships are easier to build than rebuild. He sighed and his eyes’ glow relaxed to their normal amber shimmer.

“So what? You try to slice, dice, and ice me just to say hello?”

Zero sighed and leaned back into an air chair, giving him and the demon some space. With her impression made, he knew they were going to be seeing each other at least once more in the future. There’s infinite time for a kick to the face. It must have been a sight, glowing man lounging on thin air with a shining pair of shoes, mean mugging a lady in a red dress in a crater on a beach at the edge of a frozen forest. Zero chuckled to himself, he couldn’t wait to tell this story to someone.

"Nice dress."

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