Erzabet turned to the tank, considering the patchwork man within. When she speaks, it is to Ythros, in an intimate manner, and this only adds to Cain's inner rage;
RP fragment. Not sure why it was this one in particular though.
Yeah... I copied this down from one of my instant messager accounts to put into the bio of my x-box live account (which I may have to re-do, since all my gamerscore for some reason didn't carry over, as well as all the save files, maps, ranks in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and armour in Halo 3)
I considered adding links to songs to play while reading, but i figured this was about literary ability more than a fancy gimmick.
I am sorry this is broken into such small paragraphs, they are in fact decently sized in MS word and ill be damned if i re-write it to fit the layout of this page.
I await the Logician with much anticipation, i know he has PM'd his to Sorrow so he cannot change it now it has already been written. I trust him, but i would also not be me if i did not plug every opportunity for an unfair advantage.
Enjoy.
Duels were not impressive. There was no substance to them... no power...
It took a good score of men in a melee to build the song into something impressive, to make it flourish as a weapon or act as a shield. A duel had only a steady beat of ringing blades and the occasional grunt of pain.
Duels were not developed. There was no potential to them... no flair...
If there was no music to conduct than the armored conductor that was the knight had no chance of wielding it like a blade.
And he would need to wield it... Sutacross was a walking demolition crew. Fast, strong, skilled and armored in unbreakable mail...
Was he the unstoppable force? Or the immovable object? It was irrelevant really, he was the foe in front of the Knight and as such needed to be removed. The only difference between this and any other fight was that the Knight was not certain he would emerge the victor. He could only hope he would be killed in the act and not have to suffer the burning agony of mercy.
Once again the Iron Gate was before him, hanging still ready to unleash him onto the battle for the pleasure of the crowd. Parasites, not a day in the maelstrom between them! But they came to indulge their inner warrior despite the fact they could unleash it in truth with but one simple act!
He would show them how paltry their dreams were... how insignificant were their little hopes for glory.
Glory could not be hoped for. It was not an opportunity. Glory came from making opportunities. That is what separated it from a regular victory.
Rhapsody was silent, but a touch from his hand had it singing softly like the worlds most lethal tuning fork. A conduit of the Song as was its master. It would roar this day.
The gate opened with a clank and rattle, the little sounds sending trills down the Knight's spine as they echoed through his head. Those sounds painted a picture of how the mechanism worked, he saw the gears move from the sounds they made, felt the shape of them. But they were not Song, the slightest hint of it could be felt as his boots crunched earth, a march to war was an opening crescendo.
The footfalls of the opponent an answering riff.
Sutacross stood before him, sword in sheath and hands settled into a martial pose. His inhuman strength could push one of those fists through a lesser man and he had the skill to wield them as weapons more lethal than any common blade.
Fortunately, he also had an uncommon blade, the Merrik, a razor of a sword with an uncanny ability to find gaps in armor. The Knight knew it by reputation.
The Knight wasted no time, drawing Rhapsody in a long note of potential and grounding himself. There would be no contest here, to enter into a direct conflict with a man faster than the eye would be madness, he had to trust to the Song and find a flaw in Sutacross' style.
And there was always a flaw. No style could be perfect, to strike was to be vulnerable and to move was to be imbalanced. There was no magic formula to ensure victory, And the Song would find flaws and punish them.
The Knight stood still and awaited the first move of Sutacross, waiting for the battle to begin.
...
Ten minutes later he was still standing there, unmoving and unflinching, Sutacross doing the same. Evidently they were each one adamant that the other would move and expose a flaw. Two master swordsman with the conviction to outlast the other.
Such iron wills, were they the unstoppable forces? Or the immovable objects?
It was a third party that broke the cycle, a drunk in the stands who bellowed in frustration and hurled a beer bottle at the silent duo.
It arced over the crowd and headed for the helmet of the Knight. And within the helmet he heard the Song wrapped around the bottle, it was thrown in rage and now it was imbued with war.
The knight danced back and with a gentle scoop of his sword shepherded the bottle directly at the other warrior in the ring, the Massive Knight oddly agile as he sent the alcohol stained glass at the martial artist.
The battle began, the stalemate shattered and broken as the bottle sped towards the Warrior. A deft flick and pirouette sent the beverage screaming back at the Knight who once again caught it on his blade and pushed it around him to go hurtling back.
Accelerating all the time, the Bottle flew back and forth, the pair needing to adapt to using the ever more unwieldy vessel as it accelerated past speeds it had been designed for.
Shattering in mid air, the pieces slammed into the Knight as he charged through them.
It Began.
They met in a burst of clattering sound, the Warrior ducking Under the Knight and slamming him off his feet with a withering open handed punch. The Knight called out in pain and the sound of his own undoing carried him into a roll back onto his feet.
He had been too Eager, this foe was a master of the perfect strike and he must treat him as such.
The Knight decided that restraint was now of no use. He spun and struck overhand with all the force he could muster, and in his head began a hymn that never ceased.
Sutacross acted with perfect timing, dodging the clumsy blow and preparing to knock the knights head off... When the sword was suddenly there again. The strike had not stopped, it had been carried along for a further rendition, a verse in this Song that knew no pause.
Once again Sutacross moved out of the way and moved to counter, when the sword once again came ringing back.
This was not fighting... he was dancing!, the brute had started to dance! Steps without pause or cease in time to the rhythm of battle! One long, endless strike carried by an absurd style that did not look out of place in a ballroom. The Knight was light on his feet and moved with a fluidity that was at odds with his leviathan frame.
The Knight slipped into the dance, a perfect chorus of action and reaction, a neverending strike that knew no weakness.
Sutacross knew a weakness.
The Knight began to chant, adding more noise to the scuffle of boots, the roar of the crowd and the clang of metal. Paltry noises, but enough to allow him to read its tides.
Sutacross moved with the speed of an arrow, darting away from strikes so fast the air clapped as he moved. He knew how he could break the behemothian juggernaut. It was about balance.
The Knight danced to compensate for his lack of control and speed, but Sutacross fought to augment his already god-like ability.
He ran, in spirals around the Knight he ran, so fast the air was tortured into a cacophony of bangs and sonic explosions. And as he ran the sand below him went berserk, a whipping maelstrom of sand and gravel that shook and quivered at every footfall.
The Knight was confused, he could not see and could not hear, the crowd and sand and wind blinding his ears severing him from the Song. He could not find a noise to latch onto, the roar of the sandstorm and the hiss of the spectators drowning out any audible sign of the Warrior as he ran like an earth-bound comet.
Right into the Knight
Sutacross leapt from his earthen smokescreen and smashed his palm into the helm, before falling back into the sand and grit. The Knight had only just recovered his footing when a kick to level a building blasted his face against he visor, the back of his head reeling like a gong.
So much noise, but no pattern, no battle... no... no... rhythm
Rhapsody whined in yearning for the Song with a note like a wineglass as sand screamed about it and Sutacross came from the side to break the Knight left arm with a grappling toss a demon would have regretted suffering.
No sound but the roar of sand and wind... no sound but the roar of the crowd...
Not sound... came a thought. An instrument
The Idea hit him as hard as a brutal kick from Sutacross that slammed him into a wall, the entire Arena pit was not a cauldron of whipping sand, the crowd still roaring in one long note.
One note was not interference. It was an instrument.
Glory was making your own Opportunity.
The Knight held Rhapsody out into the maelstrom. It jerked in the wind... and then he turned it.
Suddenly, sand across its silver surface sang in a harmony with the Whipping storm, the crowd undulated with the sight of his glowing blade and he felt the power of the noise fill his ears.
Sutacross had made a storm, and now he would play upon it
He charged into the sand as it curled around him, swinging Rhapsody in perfect harmonies that send waves of Song bounding out from him.
"There Is Power Here, For Those Who Have The Ability To Seize It!" He called out in joy.
He heard the note approaching high on his left, from behind, a discord in the purity of the sandstorm and a slight rise in the crowd as they saw it.
Betrayed by his own movement and the sounds of the crowd, Sutacross leapt into the sand to crush the Knight from above, to suddenly find the Visor staring up at him in anticipation.
A gauntlet like a titans claw smashed forward to savagely grab Sutacross around the neck. The scene was set, the Warrior and the Knight ready to fight to the death amid a storm that continued to grow in a reaction like a gods engine.
"And I Have Seized It" Finished the Knight, tossing Sutacross into the wall and driving his massive shoulder into the warrior as he sprawled against it.
The Knight lifted his sword for a killing blow, when a noise in discord with the Song rang out, and the Merrik caught Rhapsody on the descent.
The message from the mute was clear "Not so easy"
Sutacross was the better swordsman, but the Knight was fueled by a storm that stretched now to the heavens, the Crowd cowering under stands, their cries of fear just as potent as their shrieks of elation.
At the centre of the tornado the Knight and the Warrior dueled.
Unstoppable forces and Immovable objects.
The Twister rippled and crackled with lightning, dancing blasts of electricity from the friction it generated snapped back and forth and the thunder above them was another harmony for the Knight.
Where their blades met, lighting blasted out, a spear of pure white that lit up the core of the tornado and made it glow. As the pair stretched themselves to the limits of their skills, they struck with such speed and force that the very air around them sang with power.
The blades met over and over, rippling with power as they drew in the lightning, twin thunderbolts smashing together with a sound like a soul torn in two.
And then, with a mighty twin thrust, the points of their swords met.
The lightning discharged and they were thrown back into the winds.
Torn upwards, now no longer in the eye of the storm but staring into each others eyes a mile up from the other sides of a hurricane of lighting.
A storm of sound.
The Knight could read the sounds of a battle, and with enough, even control it.
But with heights of power that were now around him, he was one with it.
Angling toward one another, the duelists smashed like storm fronts, The Knight singing above the storm in a song of death and war, his throat blue with electricity as both warriors were bathed in lethal blue light.
They smashed together again and again, the Warriors skill and the Knights power evenly matched.
Each now felt an unwavering respect for the other, the Warrior for the fury and wrath of the Knight. And the Knight for the discipline and martial perfection of the Warrior.
But the Knight was confused. The mind of the Warrior was a discord in the Song, the one he was dueling and focusing his rage upon, but it was fractured, a twin un-harmony working in concert against him.
They were unmaking the Song. He could not draw from the noises of the tornado with a duel obstruction in his path, somehow the Warriors soul defied him twice over.
Immovable objects, neither could break the other.
Unstoppable forces, neither would break themselves.
They needed an equalizer, bathed in lightning amid the roaring of a twister in the clouds... one was readily available.
The Knight drew power to himself, a hymn of calling on his lips and his sword outstretched, the storm dimmed as the Lightning was drawn into him and he stared at his opposite.
He spoke a word of power. A tune of lightning. A rhyme of ending.
The blast shattered to storm, it was blown outward and dissipated into nonexistence as the pair fell towards the ground.
Gravity was the equalizer. It was the unstoppable force.
The ground was the immovable object.
The pair grappled as they fell, Merrik flashing and Rhapsody singing as they tried to crawl atop one another to get away from the ground.
Spinning like a falling eagle they still dueled in a spray of sparks as they hit the ground and raised a new cloud of sand in the thunderous impact.
When it cleared, both lay battered and broken.
Sutcross was shattered, his organs protected by his chain mail but his bones harshly open to the ravages of impact. He breathed blood and his body slowly dimmed to black.
The knight was broken, his every facet protected by his massive armor, his body inside it was one with the steel, there was no distinction between him and his shell of plate. And while it had bent and twisted, it was intact.
The knight dragged himself to his feet, remnants of the lighting still dancing across his armor as he limped in agony towards his foe.
"You... Fought... Well..." He Said To The Fallen Foe "And... That Was... Your... Undoing"
He began to limp out of the ring, to the cheers of the crowd. They had been untouched by the storm and now they returned to the stands to scream salvation.
Parasites Though the Knight as he left. But not before scooping up the Merrik as he passed it. He always took a trophy.
He left, declared the victor.
And behind him, Sutacross began to breathe... in... and out...
No, Sutacross is alive, i imagine he wants Merrik back and now he has plenty off fluff to come get it. Assuming i win, otherwise this is just an alternate reality that never flew.
Fire, lightning... i wonder which element i can use next (Don't think i didn't consider fire again, a duel in a mile-high-flaming-pillar-of-hell-tornado would have been mighty epic. But i figured one glowing blue because it was so stuffed with lightning was equally cool and nowhere near as 'done'.
Dammit Ultrajoe.
Stop winning threads.
What are the rest of us supposed to do?
Here's your stinking prize (coincedentaly this was on CTRL V for me, well I did change bits of it)
[http://imageshack.us]
[sup] This is an official Iron Ninja Cigar.
Released under the "Winning yet another thread" act of 07/10/08
Copyrighted with the protection that comes from legions of loyal crab warriors
Unlicensed copying of this cigar will result in dire pain for you and all that you know
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NewClassic might have made the original prototype [/sup]
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