WHO: Lizor and you!
WHERE: Around the city. (I left it as open as I could to not limit characters by location that might want to tag :D)
WHEN: Current times! (after he parts ways with Lora
in this post)
WHAT: Lizor has been wandering around the core sectors of the city after discovering viral traces at the End of Line club (resulting from
this
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Read more... )
The sudden sound chilled him right down to his source code.
His planning and processes came to a halt, and he stopped in his tracks - glancing around alertly with narrowed eyes. A flicker caught his eye from a nearby alley and he slowly walked over to get a better line of sight inside despite his scans screaming warnings...
THE VIRUS!
Again, he stopped in his tracks - the alley had been one of the first areas he had mapped after noting the damage at the End of Line a short walking distance away. Now....the tall black body...the cracked yellow circuits. It all came flooding back in his processes. He was the one! The one he had spotted across the square during Radia's ceremony. He recognized the patterns and the hood. The flowing cloak.
The warrior hadn't gone right up to the mouth of the alley, but he was glitching close enough - all he could do was slowly back up and hope the Virus didn't spot him. He had to get to a comm station and warn Anon and the others! There was no fear on Lizor's face - just shocked recognition as he moved his hand back to deposit the map hex in a safe place at his lower back. Horribly uneasy, his combat subroutines flared online and though his instinct was to fight - he knew that it would be too much to do so by himself.
Aadi...be ready to get help...I am so sorry Beloved.. He knew she wouldn't be able to hear him - but she'd be able to tell any status changes that happened.
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The black helm fixed on Lizor, and like any predator focusing on prey, the faceless mask betrayed nothing. No, it was the tensing of broad shoulders, and the viral command prompt screaming through Abraxas' code that has the rest of his body following to turn, and home in.
"What are you looking at?!"
Not waiting for a reply to the demand, one of those clawed hands reaches over Abraxas' shoulder to undock his damaged disk. It was supremely uncomfortable to even try to keep the thing in dock anyway, and only by virtue of the new rezz was it there in the first place.
Advancing on Lizor, Abraxas' cloak fanned behind him, making him look like some warped bird of prey spreading it's night-black, corrupted wings to frighten it's prey into freezing.
This, of course, is not the intent. There is no intent. Only the focus on a fix to relieve even a small portion of the relentless Pain.
Abraxas hoped this program was no coward. He didn't think he could cope with another example of weak, imperfect, useless programming.
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The moment the virus reached back for his disc, the warrior's disc was in his hand and flaring at full power without much conscious thought - his helm rezzing with its clear face guard sliding into place. His awareness and scans spread out around him, and he was grateful there was no one in the immediate vicinity. It was a quiet part of the cycle - less chances of anyone getting hurt or worse on the outskirts of the fight. He had to either slow Abraxas down or use the environment to his advantage. Get him in somewhere tight to cut off his long range. However, the danger of that would be it would be easier for the creature to reach Lizor.
Most importantly - he had to get out of the open like this, where anyone could come along, or other vehicles. Again, his rapid fire processes cut off as the Virus sarted moving towards him. Deciding to test the waters and attack first - Lizor heaved his blazing disc towards the corrupted target before diving into a agile roll in case the yellow crackling disc came flying at him before his disc rebounded. Better to keep moving....maybe he could wear the thing down...
There was just so many maybe's...and it wasn't looking good.
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Lizor is not one of them.
The thrown disk is locked onto, tracked, and with a violent swipe of Abraxas’ fractured disk, deflected without so much of a twitch of that blackened mask to follow it’s trajectory. Yet, in that handful of moments between the blue disk being thrown off course, and on it’s return? Lizor is now unarmed.
A handful of moments is all Abraxas needed. Insensate rage gives him an extra burst of speed - speed he usually would have forgone in most other circumstances - and as Lizor’s disk was returning to him, Abraxas ducked beneath the recalled disk, let it soar over his hood, and dropped into a roll.
One long roll from start to finish, but now the wave of corruption blossoming outward from everything Abraxas touched was spreading behind him like a grotesque shadow. Not only that, but it put Abraxas close enough to Lizor that as the virus regained his feet, his disk was coming toward the program in an uppercut-slash. It’s not even really meant to connect, only to through the program off his aim, and hopefully activate those combat reflexes.
Where the program is thinking of herding Abraxas into an enclosed space, so too has Abraxas decided to her this program back, beat him down, and no simple derezz for this one. Oh no. This one would know the true meaning of Pain.
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There was no time to process anything in the quick nano's of combat. And as they tended to in high stress situations, the tiny increments of time slowed to a crawl. Lizor was defenseless and vulnerable until his disc returned, angled on a new trajectory after hitting a building when getting deflected.
The warrior had thought he was quite fast and agile for one of his build - but the speed of the Virus was incredible and at once terrifying. Lizor skidded back a step, seeing the corruption blossoming on the ground in his wake. But Abraxas was much taller, and so his speed in combination with his roll - had him practically in Lizor's personal space while he jerked backwards.
In the same moment there was a flash of blue - and the warrior's hand snapped up and was barely able to catch his disc in time as Abraxas's disc came up in an uppercut slash with the momentum of his roll. With an audible grunt from Lizor's throat - his disc met the Virus's in a shower of sparks - and the shock from the blow rattled him from head to foot. The force of it knocked him backwards causing him to land flat on his back. He only just managed to turn it into a back breakfall - rolling back over his head and landing in a low squat. Oh this was bad...very bad. His disc had been struck so hard - he wasn't sure if it was damaged or not. It was a miracle it didn't snap in half.
Despite everything - Lizor showed no fear. Only steely determination in the face of a nightmare. Aadi, I'm so sorry...
He steeled himself for another attack - disc at the ready as he slipped into a defensive position while trying to rapid fire process a new strategy. All of his plans at trying to guide the fight along to slow down the Virus or get him out of the open was out the window now. Now it was just defensive tactics and survival. Abraxas clearly had the upper hand, but Lizor was stubborn, and was not planning on giving up.
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Lizor was knocked back, knocked down, and barely avoided the secondary swipe with that fractured, yellowed disk by rolling backwards, and regaining his footing in a crouch, but where he stayed low, Abraxas went high.
Another shift of weight, carrying through on the same inexorable forward momentum had Abraxas standing in one fluid move, and now towering over Lizor to bring his disk downward and from the right in another powerful strike--
But that was a feint. A distraction meant to draw Lizor's attention toward Abraxas' disk, and occupy the program's own disk in the parry. Because in that same moment of rising to stand fully, Abraxas' cloak half-hid his free hand, but it moved now. Viper-quick; snatching in from the opposite side of the right handed disk strike to slap yellowed claws against Lizor's face mask. The clear mask shattered with the hard impact, and Abraxas' clawed hand snatched hold of Lizor's face.
"What do you SEE, program?!"
Ruthlessly, the clawed hand squeezed, feeling shards of Lizor's mask destabilize, and glitch under his corrosive touch. Like red-hot glass being ground into the program's face right along with the rage, the Pain, and the acidic burn of viral corruption.
Hate giving him strength, Abraxas lifted Lizor by the searing hold on his face up, all but completely holding Lizor off his feet as the virus snarled louder;
"Look at me, and tell me what you see!"
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The force of the Virus's hand snatching around the warrior's helm with an audible crunch, was enough to nearly snap the program's head back as he uttered a strangled "Guhh!" in reaction. Within moments, Lizor knew nothing but searing pain as helm and face guard depixellized in corrupt yellow chunks and dug into the skin of his face and scalp - burning and dripping down his hair like a sickly thick yellow molten liquid.
Save for his experiences being tortured and interrogated during his captivity - Lizor had never experienced pain quite like this. He almost did not register Abraxas' voice, nor the fact he was squeezing his head harder - due to the fact that it all ready felt as if he was splitting apart. He hadn't even had time to scream. The burning viral code pressed against his own - searing his face, feeling as if his eyes were being burned away as it spread inward and outward until all Lizor was aware of was sparks of sickly yellow and flaring white agony. It was almost as if he didn't have a sense of self for a few moments. Only pain.
His surface render actually flickered and wavered as if threatening to dissolve as his circuits dulled - but miraculously, the dense code of his structure managed to keep him together as the Virus hauled him upward by the head - adding horrible pressure to his neck. But the warrior noticed none of that. Just the utter agony flowing down his limbs - as he dangled in the clawed grasp with hoarse code chilling screams. It was amazing enough, that his disc was still held in a vice like grip while his body convulsed with spasms.
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"Louder, I didn't quite catch that!"
The program screamed, loud, and long, and pained as his ( it, it, only a thing, only a fix to spread the Pain to ) face shield melted, as his face burned. Thrashing with the harsh, viral override now. Not long before there would be nothing left of it.
Abraxas even let out a chilling bark of mirthless laughter when Lizor's hands tried to grab at his forearm, and only came away equally as corrupted.
Surface render was flickering, yellow sparks rioting through face, and head. Oh, but holding on longer would mean a quicker derezz. No, not for this foolish program.
Drawing his arm in, Abraxas' warped voice whispered, in a complete perversion of empathy, at the little hitching, gagging sounds Lizor was making.
"You see nothing. You will see nothing. And before the end comes, you will know exactly what real pain is."
Drawing his arm back, Abraxas turned, and bodily hurled the glitching, corrupted program away from himself, away, and through a destabilized wall of construct that had already been weakened by his acidic corrosion.
Turning on his heel, the virus left more glitching, yellowed footprints in his wake, but left Lizor wherever he lay. The program would be overridden, and viral to the core soon enough. Let him writhe, and feel the viral code consume him.
Slowly.
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