Enemy Within [.xvi.] [Locked to Silvermane]
The writing on the wall had been clear enough. Show up at the junkyard tonight, with the promise of information. That was certainly an offer Thirst couldn't refuse -- then again, she would have been an idiot to assume the person behind the messages was entirely benevolent in nature. Having learned from her fight with Ophelia, the Homunculus now
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Thirst licked her lips. Excellent. Perhaps now there would be an actual fight to have. It strikes her that her knives might not be her best friend in this situation, but she's still keeping them on her person. Her first move, then? Well, it would be pretty stupid to go straight up, or she'd risk getting impaled. Same if she stayed still. So she slammed her heel into the ground as hard as she possibly could, cracking the earth pretty significantly. It was not, however, enough to get her out of the way of the oncoming spear quickly enough, which she recognized -- so the much simpler solution struck her and she just ducked it by staying low to the ground, then starting to dig at the crack she'd made.
She was, of course, completely confident in her abilities. But she was also smart enough to know that if someone called herself the Dragon of Metal and made it very clear she had the skills to back it up, it was not a good idea to be surrounded by metal. (Or use metal as your primary weapon. Or wear metal. Okay, she wasn't smart enough for those.)
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Directing some of her power at Thirst's costume and knives, she pulled the homunculus up off of the ground by the metal plates on her costume and held her suspended in the air. In case she realized that it was the plates in her costume that kept her dangling up in the air, the Dragon summoned the chains from the earlier battle, wrapping them tightly around Thirst's legs, arms and hair.
Almost as an afterthought, she pulled the knives away, holding them floating in front of Thirst's face.
"Were these the knives you used on the Dragons? On the homeless?" she questioned.
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She laughed. "No. Those blades dulled over time. I prefer my weaponry as sharp as possible. It makes their suffering so much more... exquisite." At that, she made a mental note to obtain a sawtooth knife at some point in the near future.
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She clenched the chains entrapping Thirst a little tighter.
"If you think suffering is so exquisite, then yours will be especially so."
And with that, the spears came. One after another, from all different angles. Before long, Thirst would look more like giant pincushion than a humanoid female.
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For as long as she could, she screamed, though it was more in hatred than pain. Not that there wasn't a lot of pain in there, because getting attacked like that? Hurt. Really, really hurt. But unless the Dragon happened to have Terra on hand, it wouldn't kill.
From ground zero of the attack came a voice, weakened but by no means any less wicked. "You will have to try harder than that."
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Holding Thirst in the air with the chains, she examined the homunculus.
"I wonder what I should try this time. Decapitation, suffocation, crushing...it's obvious that you heal too quickly to bleed you to death."
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But, of course, everything came second to the arrogance, the ego, the sheer self-confidence she radiated with her laughter. "Try all three. If you're clever you'll do them all at once. And I will still live." Being left to verbal taunts seemed degrading, but there wasn't much she could do otherwise. "I will never die. Burn me; freeze me; drown me. You will fail, as you always do, and I will remain. I will slay everyone you've ever been foolish enough to love."
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Well, congratulations went to Thirst. She'd just guaranteed that Silvermane wouldn't be regaining control of her temper anytime soon and that she'd be dealing with the Dragon of Metal's tender mercies.
"We will see if you really are immortal. I have all night. And if you really are, then I will settle for making you suffer, then imprisoning you."
If Thirst hadn't already concluded that wearing metal bits on her costume was a bad idea, she'd figure it out at this point. With one single clap of her hands, the Dragon pushed the metal bits on either side of Thirst's head together. CRUNCH. SQUISH.
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All hypothetical, though, because Thirst was a bit preoccupied suffering massive head trauma. The Dragon was inventive, she would have thought if she weren't busy being as close to dead as her physiology would allow. As long as the metal bits obstructed the area where her head would grow back, it wouldn't -- but as soon as the coast was clear, muscles, bone, ligaments, tendons... everything started to rebuild itself from the ground up, so to speak.
Thirst's right eye reformed first, glaring out at the Dragon, then was joined by her left. Instead of further taunting, she just flashed a twisted grin.
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Next, she tackled the girl's chestplate and shoulder pads. The Dragon's steel-skin fingers clenched, though she took care not to crush as she had done with the head pieces. This was slower - suffocation. Once she saw if she could suffocate her, she'd move on. Perhaps decapitation. Perhaps something a little more grandiose, and involving the construction equipment nearby.
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With a simple motion of her hands, the edges surrounding Thirst's neck became sharp, and the Dragon made them cave in on the vicious homunculus' neck with a clean slice from all angles. The head would drop off...though, given Thirst's track record, it would either regrow or be reattached in under a minute, anyhow.
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Oh, that's right. A few feet straight down. But never fear; the Philosopher's Stone is here! It took a few seconds more than it would have to heal a normal wound, but before long a skull formed out of practically nothing, and from there it didn't take long at all. A half-finished face laughed while the deadly hair grew out again; suddenly, a few locks lashed forward at the Dragon. The still-recovering Homunculus wasn't sure what good it would do, but it was of course worth a shot.
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"I might not be able to kill you," said the Dragon, "but you can't even hurt me right now."
She might come to regret that statement later on, but it was much more likely that Silvermane would regret that statement while the Dragon would regret nothing.
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"It is far, far more than you not being able to kill me, Dragon." The one thing that couldn't be taken away from her was her voice. Her words. And sometimes, that was the deadliest weapon one could use under certain circumstances. "You cannot. Your friends cannot. Time and even God himself could not strike me down. The fact of the matter is that I am immortal and you are sadly not. If you plan to hold me here for eternity and play the waiting game, do not plan to win. Time is only a factor for you."
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Clenching her fists and rising into the air, the junkyard's metal, and even nearby boats from the docks and nearby construction equipment rose with her. Everything swirled around as if caught in a windless cyclone generated entirely by the Dragon.
Raising one hand, the Dragon brought the chained up Thirst up into the eye of the metallic storm with her.
"Jump City is under my protection. If you ever manage to escape the prison I make you, don't come back. Otherwise, I will make the things I did to you today seem gentle by comparison."
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