1 vs 1 Battle Arena

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

The branch caught her in the ribs. It was probably lucky that he was so close. It didn't have much time to build up velocity at this range. Then the dirt slid out from under her, toppling Maria onto the ground near his feet.

The arm warped again. The teeth vanished and the blade announced which the ran sharped to a crude cone point. Then she willed it to shift, like she had her previous weapon, just in the area that would have been her wrist. Still prone, she lifted herself with one arm and drove the drill into one of Damian's knees.

[Philote]

The golem let out a low drawn out bellow. Damian was still not sure how this body was able to interpret pain, but the drill in his knee felt very real.

"Oh no" Damian thought to himself.

The golem's mind began to drift to the forefront, like a landslide gaining speed each moment until it eclipsed Damian's control. The gravitational energy flows until each of the golem's veins is filled and the energy is released into a large unfocused bubble around the creature.

Damian tries to exert some amount of control back onto the situation in the only way left available to him. Within his mind, he focuses on the ring and draws the creature back in, starting the process of turning back to human.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

She couldn't breath.

Maria was a heavy girl. But unlike most who used he old excuse, most of the weight really was just her bones. But this, this was heavier than anything she'd ever felt. She felt her skin, her muscles, pressing down on her bones, which stayed rigidly in place like rocks. If she didn't turn purple from the oxygen derivation, she would anyway just from the all over bruise if this kept up.

[Philote]

Damian opened his eyes as soon as he had his own to open again. The energy from the golem dissipates rather quickly and by the time Damian is back in his human body, all that is left are winds rushing back into the low pressure zone.

Looking down, he sees the girl still standing so close to him and he takes some reactionary steps back in response. "You're tough. I was not expecting for you to remain unbudged from that" He says to her as the larger gold ring materializes in his hand again.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Maria picks herself up from the dirt as the pressure subsides, hacking and coughing and gulping air like it's a luxury.

"haa..Oh..haa..y'know..haaa..someone important is watching..haaa..."

The arm morphs back into it's proper shape, and Maria swings for the face.

[Philote]

The fast forwarding effect kicks in again and Damian ducks under the swipe.

"You can surrender if you want" Damian says trying to taunt her "I seem to be wearing you down and you have the collective health pool of all my bodies to go through."

Damian points the ring towards the girl and a group of small blue darts materializes from it and shoot towards the girl to keep her on her toes.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Her finger stretch long and thin, and she wills them to spin as she holds the arm in front of her. The darts are chopped to bits or flung away.

"Nah. I mean, it's not like you've really done any real damage yet. Sure, there's a lot of hurt waiting for me in the morning. But at this point, it's pretty much just hurt."

The finger stop and shoot forward, attempting to latch onto the ring.

[Philote]

"Noted" Damian replies as the darts break into slivers of ice against the girl's arm.

The girl's fingers jet out and latch onto the golden ring that Damian is wielding and he releases it without struggle. The ring dissipates and a new one forms in his hand. He would have to remain focused fighting her while he was still in human form. Damian points the newly formed ring towards the girl again to keep the pressure on her and a larger blue bullet of ice launches out. As it flies, the ring takes on an orange tint and the golem's gravitational energy pulls on the girl's left foot.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

The ice flies and Maria dodges. Or tries to, but the weight on her foot holds her in place. So instead she ducks, and the shard goes flying overhead.

She swings her arm back again, the same attack that had crippled the wolfs arm. She reaches out with her normal arm to grasp the front of his shirt as the arm comes reeling back in for the blow.

[Philote]

The smaller ring bites into Damian's finger again.

"This is going to hurt" Damian thinks

"Now wouldn't you have rather had her stab you when you were in my body?" Red asks somewhere further back in Damian's mind than when they shared the same body.

The girl's arm flies forward and punctures out the back of Damian's chest. Damian's body goes limp as he hangs on the strange material that makes up the girl's arm. The flesh around the hole begins to rot.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Well, that was gruesome.  

Very gruesome.

Not a whole lot of things you see where that gruesome.

She had always know, on a purely intellectual level, that she would end up in a situation like this if she kept using that attack. She never thought, however, that she would end up with a cadaver wrapped around her arm. She lets go and pulls out, letting him slump to the floor. Blood and viscera and what looked like bits of bits covered it from fist to forearm.

Snow came up behind her. "Well?'

"I think I won." Maria manages to stammer out. She turns away from the gruesome tableau to look at the far more pleasant Snow. "How was this suppose to help my self confidence, again?"

"Well, for one thing, you've learned that you can literally punch through a man."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess..."

[Philote]

The dead body rolls over, the black rot growing and spreading from its chest. The gold ring on Damian's finger sinks into his flesh and gets sucked up into his body.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"I don't feel anymore confident."

Snow places her hand against her chin. "Maybe" she says, an idea spawning in her brain, "maybe legit character development can't happen in places like this, where nothing matters?"

"So I killed this guy for no reason!?"

"Yeah, I guess. But nothing really happens here. So he's fine. You know, in a place that isn't here in this vaguely defined forest."

"But here he's dead?"

"Yes."

Maria leans up against a tree, face in her normal hand. She lets out a long sigh.

[Philote]

"I'm not dead" Damian says as he pushes himself up "Interesting thing though, I found out that transformations take longer if I'm severely wounded."

The black rotting flesh had moved completely over Damian's body and he was a head taller than he was before. "Oh, and don't count me out just yet, I still have plenty of tricks up my sleeve."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"Wow, this guy is tough. Alright then, let's start round two!" Snow says, raising a hand in the air between them.

Maria slaps it, and starts making her way over to the tree. Snow face falls. She brings her hand down, and stares at it as the horrible reality of what just happened begins to dawn on her. Her eyes shift up to Maria's retreating back.

"Uh, Maria....Did we just...?"

Maria waves her bloodied hand over her head. "I have to go wash this or I'm going to be sick. Come get me when you've beaten two of him."

Maria disappears into the woods, presumably to find a stream, as Snow raises her eyes to Damien. "So uh.... you do this shapechanger thing often?"

[Philote]

(Tell me if I begin to draw this out too long. There is a very specific number of transformations he has so it is not like I'm pulling out random forms to draw this out endlessly.)

Damian finishes out the sequence of the transformation. His facial features and physiology had taken on the appearance of an ogre and his hair was long and grey. This was the tallest of the transformations yet, with its head reaching slightly over that of the golem's.

The flesh ogre's mind sat willingly chained in the back of Damian's own. The creature was much more tame now than when it first joined with Damian, but Damian could still not let it run freely.

"It has become practically second nature by now, but I was not always joined to these bodies" Damian says walking away from the new challenger and then facing off against her again "Let round two begin, come at me when you're ready."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

(No worries, Phi. These sort of things are actually my favorite roleplaying game.)

"O-o-o-oh, ok. N-n-n-ni-nice to know." This struck Snow as really passive aggressive on Maria's part. I mean, she had only shown up to support her, tagging her in like this wasn't fair at all. Well, okay, technically Maria was the weaker class of changeling. External deformities instead of internalized power. That still didn't mean Snow was the better combatant.

The first thing she did was leap away from the towering figure, entering a typical Soul Arts stance. She breathed in and out, focusing her will and extending it outwards. The air gained a noticeable chill as her aura, the part of her spirit she pushed outside of her body, flared up around her, invisible save for the grass freezing under her feet.

She opened her palm and pushed forward, willing her spirit outward, the grass freezing up as the invisible wave of cold shot toward the ogre.

[Philote]

The ogre raises its arms and its fingers stretch out as they lift. Its torso begins to stretch and rise as well. The ogre's face elongates and green scales replace the rotting flesh. The feet meld into a single long tail and the arms finish off their transformation into wings.

The chained mind of the ogre moves back and a quicker mind moves forward, one that jumps erratically around Damian's mind.

The winged snake rises into the air above the forming ice and begins to circle through the branches above the girl. Inhaling, the snake breaths out a stream of green clouds like a dragon breathing out flames.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Snow brings her aura back within herself, focusing it. All of her spirit concentrated within, she to took a deep breath and exhaled her own steam of freezing mist. The two clouds meet, swirling together.

All around her, sickly green snow begins falling softly onto the forest floor.

[Philote]

Damian shifts again. The flying snake splits apart at the head and three new ones grow out. The heads grow Hydra-like as Damian dives towards the girl. Large fangs and spikes grow as the first head bites down on the girl's arm. The second moves in and rips flesh from the girl's side while the third, poison streaming from its mouth, engulfs the girl's head.

Damian hopes the hallucination will hold as the winged snake circles around the girl and spits out a green glob towards her.