ROUND 1 - 1 ;; BATTLE LOG

[lufenia]

Who: Everyone. Every single character in dissideo so far.
When: Midnight, Friday morning.
Where: The Archylte Steppe. (Details below.)
What: For the first time, the forces of Cosmos and Chaos come together on the battlefield. AKA: Round 1, ding!
Type: Either log or action-tag.
Notes/Warnings: There will be fighting. And probably swearing, too. Who knows.

Comments

[motherkn0wsbest]

It was rather inconvenient that she had been dropped rather randomly in the setting of this 'battle', especially when the lines had not been set on who was friend or foe. Luckily, she didn't define friend and foe from which side they belonged to, but who was fortunate enough to bear her cells. Those children she knew were out there, pinpointing them with just a soft tingle of recognition. Soon enough, she would gather the flock.

JENOVA turned in a complete circle, and she spotted numerous warriors engaging each other in some blind contest of strength. Foolishness, she thought and looked for an easier target to prey upon. The chaos of battle would allow her to infect others, drive them mad or control them like puppets. This would please her well.

Of course, her interest piqued when a mental sweep of the area allowed her to sense at least one close by who was open to mental chattering. She started towards the source, no more clothed now than she had been when she arrived. Her silver hair swished silently as she walked around fights without so much as a glance before she found herself staring down at a little child.

"Laying about will result in your death, and that is a waste of flesh and purpose," she murmured simply. "Yet... you are different from the weak parasites. What is your purpose?"

[learneditall]

A completely sane person would have fled. An even moderately intelligent person would have risen, hefted their weapon, taken a stance as the enemy approached (particularly when the enemy was a naked, unearthly woman who seemed completely unconcerned with the battle beginning to grumble to life around them).

River Tam, however, was a genius who could kill things with her mind.

Her legs relaxed a hair, one pulling back and the other sliding forward, not unlike a dancer preparing to spring to life at the top of a number. The fingers on her khopesh remained light, almost idle, a delicacy to her grip mimicking the apparent fragility of her long girlish limbs. For a moment she simply stared, eyes out of focus, at the creature before her.

And the voices were screaming, more than usual, the sort of endless cacophony of a million deaths, of a million lives swarming in a single point and it was so much worse than her arrival here because it was not the humming of a hive of people it was a hive a hive that was screaming and angry and more patient than the mountains because mountains would break and this would not just press onward until there was nothing--

River breathed in a rather sharper breath than she'd intended to. "If you wanted to know, you already would," she heard herself murmur somewhere far far away. "Just now, I'm on the ground."

[motherkn0wsbest]

She had to smirk subtly when there was a return of brief mental contact, and her billions of cells chattered noisily to one another about their purpose and the roll that they would soon serve. Aside from Sephiroth and possibly Cloud, there hadn't been anyone with the capabilities or openness to make such a mental connection. It was... intriguing.

JENOVA wanted this one. Yes, it was a unanimous decision from the chorus of voices. This one would make a nice puppet, warrior, wave of madness.

"Which means you don't yet have a purpose," she replied simply. Slowly, she purposefully slipped into a crouch before the young one, mismatched eyes focusing on such a young doll face. "Would you like to know our purpose?"

[learneditall]

Ah. That was a look she knew.

River's body was in a state of rebellion. Her self that was still herself that was still a girl who lived and breathed and cried and bled was straining, jerking at her muscles to move back, move away, get far from this thing that was giving her the same look the men with blue gloves gave her when they were close enough to be seen. The animal in her fought back with a calculated rage, the curious need to see what colour this particular anomaly of a creature bled. So her fingers closed tight around the axe-sword and her weight shifted back. Then she was frozen, ready, breakable, in ambush.

"...you collect."

[motherkn0wsbest]

There it was. An image as clear as the sun that planets coursed around bubbled up in this girl's mind. Blue gloves and men in suits that only wanted and searched; they were the new hunters but not present in this world. Not yet at least. It took her only a second to have the imagine analyzed by every cell in her body before that struggle of power seemed to be underway.

A girl and a monster? What a wonderful combination. It was far more effective than that useless scientist.

"We harvest and destroy," she corrected simply. Without warning, long tendrils of silver hair whipped out from under her arms in an attempt to slam into the girl's sides. "Shall you be a puppet, a monster, or a weapon? Perhaps all in one?"

[learneditall]

It was like being crashed into with waves faster than water could ever possibly hope to ebb. River's already scattered brain was scattering further at all the echoes, the painfully loud mutter of something that wasn't the creature before her's brain (it didn't have a brain it had a will it had a presence it was too loud to read everything was slipping out of her control).

And then, for one perfect moment, everything stopped and there was just the words and once again River knew.

She didn't scream. A little girl would have screamed, but her body forgot to completely. Instead she simply moved, faster than her frail body appeared able--not fast enough to stop the silver ropes that sought her to lash down hard on her body. She didn't cry out in pain or surprise (but she could already feel it that it was going to leech inside of her that the battle was over before it began that this was so much worse than the cuffs on her wrists and the scalpel above her because the doctors who freed this into the world were stupid stupid horrible idiots). Instead she squirmed in her breakneck fit of speed, whipping against the tendrils as her arm flashed into the air with a bright glint of metal and swung the hefted sword-axe down hard.

An uncoordinated attack, aim vague, intention almost blind with the rage and terror she couldn't stop from flooding her system. But at such a close range, who needed to be precise?

[motherkn0wsbest]

She struck, and it was beautiful. The tendrils of hair shifted into strong muscles and pointed edges, burrowing into flesh even as the child moved with such speed that she closed her orbital sensory organs off with eyelids. She didn't need to see to know where those muscles were flexing and extending, where limbs were going.

Just as quickly, she summoned up a brisk will of apoptosis to break off the tendrils that had penetrated into flesh that would become hers. Her hair withdrew even as that blade hurled towards her flesh, and she knew that it was a required action to experience.

Shifting nerves so that their impulses wouldn't bother the rest of the unit, JENOVA held out an arm that took the strike. Her flesh separated around the hack of the blade, causing her left forearm with attached hand to leave its place from the greater whole and fall to the ground between them. The limb curled up on itself.

JENOVA ignored the severed limb and with a dramatic wave of her hand, the limb twisted and shifted so that it took on a miniture version of herself. It twisted and danced like a puppet before darting away from the battle as the full version lifted a hand to summon an innate spell from her memories. Energy gathered around her only remaining hand. "We will not kill you... yet. You serve a greater purpose now."

[learneditall]

It was all far too fast. River was quick--her limbs could be pushed beyond human capacity, her mind had always raced to a different beat of the drum--but to move like a virus, like this alien parasite... it was too fast.

The sinking didn't hurt at much as she expected, but she cried out in rage and pain anyway. It helped that her attack found purchase, offered the brief sick satisfaction of rending flesh, but then the waves began to hit her. She became acutely aware of her side, of bruising muscle, of something twisting and turning and defusing inside her that was beyond her control and taking control.

Removing the amygdala was a brilliant way to insert a trigger. It was also a horrible way to create a little girl. Hot waves of panic and pain crashed through River at lightening speed as she wrenched herself back, almost blinded and deaf to the world but for the soft murmured words of the horrible creature that she couldn't help but hear. Her scramble to her feet was uncharacteristically inelegant, the weapon in her hand almost too heavy as she lurched upright. "No!"