Echo [v] November

[Dire Wolf]

The immortal sands of the dune sea. They are hot, timeless, and unforgiving. As is the scorn of a woman, in this case a former assassin that faces off against one of her former brethren for the affections of another. The wind does little more than blow the hot air against the exposed splotches of the two combatants face and the sand only reflects the heat and sweltering sun.

Echo [v] November
Ex-assassin [v] Ex-assassin
6 Rounds
Challenger goes first

*mortal kombat themesong plays* FIGHT!!!

[Squee]

The sun burned down on her relentlessly, heating up her exposed skin. The sand was remarkably white instead of tanned by the scorching rays of the boiling ball of flame over her head. She kicked at it, stirring up a small storm of dust. The wind picked up the dust and whisked it away, spreading the particles too thin to notice the cloud that the aggravated woman had summoned with the toe of her boot. Yes, she was aggravated. Aggravated at many things. Aggravated the way her skin would be burned after standing out here. Aggravated at the heat waves that confused her keen vision, the mirages that filled up the endless rows of sea dunes. And simply at the sun because she thought he burned too fiercely down on her, the heat as mean as the long strands of her fiery colored hair. The wind buffeted at the hair, and her gray eyes stared further out as the awakened mirages as the currents of air sculpted new patterns into the sand. Several long minutes she watched the invisible artist’s hand as he manipulated the dune art. It seemed every few seconds the artist was dissatisfied with his work, and continued to blow away the excess and model another form.

And that was just kind of it. Was there some artist out there that created her? Watched her every movement, knew her every thought, understood every emotion, and he was currently dissatisfied with her? Was that why she was feeling the way she was? Was she being hated? WHY in the galaxy did she feel this way! It was undesired! She was the art of someone who wanted something but didn’t know why!

It had to be that other woman. That other woman they ran into. She hadn’t had these feelings before, feelings of such urgency entering her heart and mind and body. It was that other woman’s fault. She was a pretty attractive young lady. She had lovely skin, great, blonde-like hair and such green eyes that stood out it was hard not to look at anything else on the woman. The woman was smart, smarter than Echo. Echo knew this. She had grown up around this woman as she had twenty-four other people. Including him.

That was just what this was all about. Him. She knew him better than any of the others. She knew his flaws and his strengths. Her understanding of when to help him and when to not overruled any other he may have worked with. They matched. Somehow. Someway. She knew his common moodiness. She knew and understood most of his intentions. And he knew and understood her. He knew the basic functions of her workings. He could cover her weaknesses with his strengths. It was him. He was there. He was stability for her. He was a crutch when she was crippled. He was a loyal friend that never wandered too far from her side. He was a shield when she needed the protection. And then when she slept, and nightmares of evil, vile creatures haunted her every dreaming moment, he was her stuffed animal when she woke up in cold sweat and shrieking at the height of her lungs. When the horrors struck he was everything from the crutch to the stuffed animal.

And damned be she if she was going to let this November woman take him away from her! Pha!

With such a noise thundering loudly in her mind, Echo kicked out strongly against the sand. It spluttered up, the wind catching it and throwing it back at her. It was misfortune that the ex-assassin had decided to be snarling just then, baring her canines at the distance. She spent the next minutes angry that she had done such a stupid thing. There was sand itching its way in the clothing, tucking down even in her pants. Her teeth gnashed down on sand grains that she attempted at spitting out, finally using a finger to clear the way. Echo violently tussled up her hair, scattering more than just a couple hundred grains back into the wind artist. He blew them away, setting them off to help in his newest sculpture in the several thousand dunes.
Why oh why was the master of creation so unforgiving at this very moment?

Echo had invited the woman, November, out here, planning on warning the woman to back off. Or perhaps to lay waste to her. It was kind of an odd thing to ask, being out in the middle of total no where and asking the other woman to join her as smoothly as inviting someone over for a cup of tea. Echo hoped to be as burning as whiskey. The woman was not going to find anymore pleasure being all the way out here to have Echo talk to her in private. Hell, this wasn’t even Echo’s ideal location. It was simply here. And it was out of the way.

She hated telling Delta one thing when she meant another. It was lying. If there was one person she would never like to lie to again it would be Delta. He was a clueless boy sometimes, rather gullible especially when Echo put on her “I-mean-business” face. The boy couldn’t lie over a communication device, let alone to her face. But she had managed to spill over an instantly thought excuse right to his face. She was less than pleased with herself. Echo was rather disgusted.

But, jealousy could be a stubborn emotion in many women. Jealousy was toying her magic with Echo. She was managing to infiltrate the highly sensitive mind frame, twist words into lies, shove her into believing something that might not even be existing. Already, Jealousy had made her lie to the one she wanted to keep and tell another lie to the woman she wanted removed from her life.

Jealousy was that strong urge Echo kept acting upon.

It made her hurt.

She wanted it gone.

But the way to do that was by getting rid of November.

Because November had brought it. There was no other way of explaining it.

“Do you know the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well, gotta know the enemy, wah hey.”

[Kella]

Sand. Air, sun, heat. Sand. These things permeated every pore of November's senses. The light flashed off the white sand, raking across her eyes. The sun's rays burned on her skin... November couldn't remember ever having been in a place so hot... so barren...

Then again, November couldn't remember being anywhere, except for the facility. At least, until she'd escaped. But she'd thought about those events so much that she was weary of the subject.

Everyplace was new, and different, and this was no exception. November still hadn't decided whether she liked this sort of new, or not...

And she didn't want to decide. Like, dislike, satisfaction, they were all emotions. All things that made her flawed, that-- that made her imperfect. She hated them. Oh how she ha--

They were inconsequential. They were inefficient, they didn't matter...

That downward spiral was enough to make November go mad some days. It was like her logic was deserting her... she needed her logic. She needed her facts. She needed her numbers. And yet, they'd been harder and harder to find lately... Her thoughts wouldn't listen to her! They kept drifting to things when she didn't tell them to...

Namely Delta. And Echo. If only she could just view them as allies, with no emotional strings attached... both of them. November's expression drifted into a grimace as the sand worked its way into her boots. It hadn't been long after her escape that she'd managed to find Delta and Echo...

The emotions attached to the former she still hadn't figured out... why did things have to be so... so complicated. If only emotions would follow a rational pattern, then November could deal with them. But they didn't. Even Pi was more predictable than they were... November had to hope, had to believe, that in the end, she's find a pattern... surely it was there somewhere... otherwise, the irrationality would drive her insane. And whatever 'insane' meant, she didn't know, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant. Or logical.

November was interrupted from this train of thought by a strand of auburn hair that fell into her face. Stopping, November took a moment to methodically tuck the strand back into its braid, hair dry and flaxen in the heat. Today, her hair was woven into two braids which crossed at the base of her skull, then came back up to fasten just above her forehead; reminiscent of a crown. As much as November tried to dwell on the technical, if only for a moment, her train of thought ultimately resumed itself.

The emotions surrounding Echo were just as complicated, but November had managed to puzzle them out just a little bit more. In light of November's self-doubt, she'd been looking for someone to compare herself to. To see where she stood. Echo was her competition, and Delta was the judge. And it seemed to November that Echo was winning. Delta comforted Echo, Delta agreed with Echo, Delta praised Echo. They seemed to have some sort of mutual understanding, some sort of bond... and all November could figure about that, was she wanted it. She wanted it so much. This... this feeling of being alone, so terribly alone was almost too much for her to bear...

November sighed, and the hot air raked along her throat. TAINT, her dart gun, was strapped across her back, and the familiar weight was beginning to become a burden. Why had Echo wanted to meet her out here? It was not an advantageous place, in any regards. Dehydration would come quickly; the Wraids could be quite dangerous... However, it would be impossible to sneak up on someone. Even as November crested another dune, she could see Echo's form, not a hundred yards away. A moment of still observation, and November was content that the silhouette wasn't a mirage...

November found comfort in thinking about mirages. Though they were illusions, and mysteries to some, there was a factual explanation. The sun struck the sand, causing the sand to heat, the sand then transferred the energy to the air. The heated air would rise, causing eddied currents and a sharp difference in atmospheric pressure at different points near the ground. This change in density would bend the light, causing the illusion of reflectivity of the ground. The sentient mind, made desperate by dehydration, concluded the effect by imagining the reflectivity to be a pool of water, or other similar shape.

If only people could be that simple!

November attempted to soothe her frustration, coming up over the crest of the final dune. Her frustration fled indeed, replaced by a hollow feeling of inadequacy, spurred by the sight of Echo. She stopped when only three yards separated them.

"What is it that you want?"

The not-knowing was killing November... Then again, it was the knowing that probably would.

[Dire Wolf]

Round 1

Echo - Squee
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 1/5
Bonus: --
Comments: Never mind the coolness, its hard to capture a guy's attention without some kind of fighting. xD

November - Kellaishleya
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 2/5
Coolness: 2/5
Bonus: --
Comments: I liked the scientific explanation of mirages. Appealed to my inner nerd. Anyways, I'm going to be a nazi on this one... if I wasn't you'd all be getting nothing but 4s and 5s.

Total:
Echo - 14
Nov. - 13

[Squee]

Boiling. That’s all Echo felt at the moment. Boiling. It squeezed around her heart like a death-bringing snake. Evil coils in circles, and the more the snake spread his body, the more of Echo’s heart he grasped. The more his body stretched, the more her heart conformed to meet his demands, narrowing, still beating, pulsing beneath skin and ribs. Angry. It crawled beneath her skin. Her blood was a thick, fast flowing river speeding in the fine restraints that were her veins. It felt delicious in a very morbid point of view. Hot. Sweat rolled down the side of her face, the center of her back beneath the coat, down the small define of her deltoid exposed due to the sleeve-less-ness of the coat. Her thoughts burned slowly, but their ashes went against natural course and built back up into wood. Her eyes scraped across the sand dunes. Her battlefield.

The woman November was coming.

Echo had only seen it from the corner of her eye, the form that didn’t belong in the common gold tan as it bobbed up high from the crest of the neighboring dune. She had finally decided to arrive. A sneer floated across Echo’s lower face, lips twisting ugly for but a few seconds. Now it was time to lay down the law in this town. Echo was going to make sure she remained in charge from now on.

Unfortunately for November, Echo’s thoughts had been about what vexed her about the other woman. Her persistence in lingering around Delta. Her cute little smiles and wily comments that made Echo feel dumb because she was so smart. Her eyes. Simply the emeralds of the woman’s eyes made Echo frown and rub the fine hairs of her arms the wrong direction. They stood out so. Echo had gray. What kind of lively color was gray? It wasn’t. Gray was dull. Green was pretty. Red hair stood apart. Red hair also brought out stereotypes. Just like blond did. Red hair meant a fighter. Blond hair was more subtle, better liked, especially November’s hair.

Echo’s vexations were getting a hold of her. Rationality tried to intervene, but Echo didn’t want it. She didn’t want to lose her anger. It fueled from the heat of the sun. The auburn straights looked to be set on fire and Echo’s eyes were the warm stones that held it in place. However, fire was winning beneath the surface. It was building to dangerous levels. It was a firecracker ready to explode. Maybe November would hold the ignition, flick her wrist, and set off the small firework. Maybe.

“What do I want?” Echo repeated the phrase, niceties left out of the near snarl. “I will be honest. I want you gone. You are a guest here on our ship. We nicely welcomed you because you were a sister. Now I honestly do not know if I shall believe that much further.” There was a pause and the woman with the boiling insides took steps forward, bringing them a couple of feet closer. “I see you. You go around, hopping everywhere on the ship, playing with your chemicals, and spend time close to Delta. Let me make this abundantly clear: I am Delta’s partner. If you… you… you…”

Echo didn’t know exactly how her words were forming. It most certainly couldn’t be a decent speech. There was a strain against her voice, words seething, hisses punctuating every ‘s’. Jerkily, Echo’s knife-edged hand chopped at the air as she tried to know how to say these next words. The woman had come just another foot and a half closer. Her other hand was planted firmly close to her hip, fingers halfway curled around her pistol, her muscles tensed.

“You get in between that, I will put a bullet through your head. I will enforce a need for only one woman aboard that ship, even if I have to toss your body out of an airlock first to prove it to even Delta.”

Echo had cut the distance dangerously close and her eyes bore into the taller woman. “In other words, you stay the hell away from him or so help me MAKER…” She didn't know much else to say. The heat made her mind blank, and only the unconsciousness of rationality could hope that the point could have gotten across, logically and understandably.

“Violence is an energy
Against the enemy
Violence is an energy

Bringing on the fury
The choir infantry
Revolt against the honor to obey”

[Kella]

As soon as Echo said, 'I want you gone', November's mind began to whirl. Only half of it was occupied with actually listening to her words, and the other half began to whir ahead; two partitions of a harddrive, each vying for more attention. From the tone of her voice and the set of her expression, November inferred that Echo would not be listening to reason. But... what was the reason in this situation? November was uncertain. She hated being uncertain. And so she shoved those thoughts away.

But not quickly enough. Maybe Echo was right... perhaps November had overstepped her boundaries... what were her boundaries? What was right and acceptable? Never, never had November been in a situation like this before. She didn't know what to trust. Maybe Echo was right... perhaps she should just leave...

No. That wasn't the pattern. In this pattern, Echo was the competitor, and Delta was the judge. She had observed this pattern before. The competitor would make taunts, and say things of logical fallacy, in an effort to make the opponent angry, and therefore illogical, and therefore prone to mistakes.

November didn't make mistakes. Or, at least, she didn't previously. But now it seemed like she was making mistakes all the time. And some of them hurt her inside, though she denied it. Maybe this is why the White-Coats had taken her emotions away. To protect her from the harsh ones, the hurtful ones.

But this was no time to think about emotions! November had concluded that since Echo was not the Judge, that in this pattern, her opinion didn't particularly matter. Echo didn't have facts, and that was a fact. (What a peculiar sentence...) And November listened only to facts. She wanted to only listen to facts. And right now, the fact of the matter was, Echo was not going to back down. Which gave November two choices. Run, or fight.

And may she be damned for all eternity if she was going to run.

Which meant that November was going to fight.

"If you... you... you..."

Two things coupled to allow the emotional side of November's brain to cut in. Firstly, the half of her brain that was listening to Echo had suddenly lost a bit of a job. And secondly, November had just made a conclusion with the other half. And so those duo hard-drives were now corrupted with a virus. So, in a bond, there was only room for two people. Only room for Delta and Echo. No room for November. But... but that couldn't be right. Why couldn't one person be bonded to more than one other? Choosing a favorite seemed very inefficient. And it seemed like that would drastically cut back on one's allies. So no, that couldn't be right. But what if it was? If that's the way these things worked, maybe November didn't want to be a part of a bond... what if she hurt someone else the way Echo was trying to hurt her now? Was that wrong? Or was it the way things worked? She just... didn't... know... the not-knowing was awful. November was supposed to know everything. But she didn't. And that hurt. So who could she trust as a judge? Who could tell her how these things worked? ... Delta, of course. Delta didn't seem to have a problem with her. If Delta told her to leave, then fine. She'd leave. But Echo was not going to tell her what to do. And that was final.

"In other words, you stay the hell away from him or so help me MAKER…”

It stung. It hurt. It burned. November hated this feeling of rejection, this feeling that flared up inside her chest like a rearing beast, this feeling that suddenly and violently threatened to scramble at her gut. Echo was rejecting her. But Delta hadn't yet... and there was an alternate outcome in that. An alternate outcome that allowed her to deny herself those feelings of rejection. It was her first brush with hope, but she didn't have a name for it. But now her mind could flare back to the factual, the analytical. All of her mind.

November inferred that this would come to a physical confrontation. That was unavoidable, in her mind. And because it was, she was going to make the first move. Her pattern now was incapacitate, and remove. She could not kill Echo. That would hurt Delta. And if November hurt Delta, then he would never accept her. She wasn't sure if her motivations were selfish or selfless, but that meant little -- meant nothing to her now. In fact, the reason in and of itself would mean nothing in mere moments. All that mattered was the pattern.

Incapacitate. Remove. Do Not Kill.

Yet even as she made this decision, she wavered. Maybe Echo was right... November could see herself now, imitating the pattern, borrowing words. 'You're right', she would say, 'I stepped over the line,' she would say. 'I'll... I'll leave now,' she would say, with the proper stammer. And then she would hang her head, stare at her toes and dig her boot into the sand. And then she would say, 'I'm sorry'. And then she would walk off. And that would be the end of that.

But no. No, that was wrong. November had done nothing wrong! She... she was sure of it. No she wasn't. But she couldn't tell herself that. All the facts said that she had attacked nobody. And the pattern! She had already figured this pattern! So why was she still doubting herself? November's mind rebelled against this doubt, and her resolve was solidified. She was still somewhat shaken, however. But she needed to make the first move.

"I have done nothing to wrong you," she said.

But it was less of a defense, and more of a distraction. She took a half-step forward, hoping Echo would focus on her movement and on her words, and less on the hand that snaked behind her back and touched the canister on her belt. The metal was blazing hot to the touch, but November didn't care. Her mind began to sink into that analytical, technical place, where all that mattered were the facts, and the patterns.

It was sweet heaven.

Part of her mind wanted to stray to the emotional again, but she filled it with the technical. Her canister. It was her invention, and it satisfied her greatly. Six centimeters tall, it was, and three in diameter. When secured, the mechanism on one end looked like a cap. If one were to twist it, just as November did behind her back, then the canister was primed. A special gel within the mechanism worked as both a lubricant and a resistor, and the speed of the mechanism was precisely even. The canister deployed when the cap reached the end of its rotation. The time until deployment was directly proportionate to the number of degrees the mechanism was turned. November barely twisted it.

"I came, and I'll I've done, all I've tried to do is help. I never intended to harm anybody."

The true genius of the canister lay in the fact that it was re-usable. One loaded the canister with the desired content, the desired poison, in its liquid form, with a catch. A reactor was added to the liquid, and upon being secured into the canister, the reactant was released. The result? Liquid to gas. Pressurized Gas.

"But something tells me you don't want to resolve this civilly."

Her voice grew deadly quiet. Echo was so close, November could see her own face reflected in the woman's stormy grey eyes. And then she dropped the canister. It was a small movement, perhaps too small for Echo to notice. Or perhaps still far too obvious. There was hardly a whisper as it landed on the ground between the two women.

Three... Two... One...

November's diaphragm tightened as she ceased to breathe. White smoke, almost the same color as the dune sea dust rose suddenly, viciously into the air, billowing, as if it longed to be like the clouds above. Yet its purpose was far different. The gas was opaque, and She couldn't see Echo... November leapt back, and in that moment, she whipped the dart-gun off her back. She began to load the first tri-clip as the cloud began to clear, breaking into wisps that rose and undulated toward the sun.

But she could not fire yet. There were too many variables. She'd been having issues stabilizing the tranq formula. The effects could range from slowing Echo's reaction time for only a few seconds, or be a severe as knocking her out cold. There was no way for November to predict it, at this point, so complex were these particular variables, including any remaining functionality of Echo's RELIC, and if the woman had managed to hold her breath, for this particular poison relied in inhalation. And so she could not shoot. If the effects were strong, an over-dose of tranq could slow Echo's heart to potentially fatal sluggishness. And November was not to kill her.

However, November knew Echo to be deadly hand-to-hand. If November were to loose her dart-gun, her disadvantage would be severe. The probability of her survival would fall drastically. She had only two other canisters, and only three tri-clips. Two of which were filled with deadly neurotoxin. Which meant November had three shots. Three shots between her and death.

Had November's conscience been more than a misty whisper, it might have bothered her to make the first move. In technicality, the blame of the altercation would lie on her. However, November was not a creature of blame. She was a creature of survival. And so she watched, and she waited, to see if hitting Echo with a tranq would be an option. Six seconds of eternity had passed since November had leapt backwards. Another three, and her gun would be loaded...

[Dire Wolf]

Round 1

Echo - Squee
Effort: 5/5
Fairness: 4/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 3/5
Bonus: --
Comments: I liked the description of anger ^^ keep it up

November - Kellaishleya
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 4/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 4/5
Bonus: --
Comments: Good post, I guess the whole "nazi" thing kinda failed... didn't it >.> anyways, keep it up. Both of you are making great posts. ^_^

Total:
Echo - 30
Nov. - 29

[Squee]

“I’ve done nothing to wrong you…”

Logic said this was more or less true. Maybe November did not mean her actions as it was appearing to Echo. Perhaps she was just discovering what she could do, how others reacted to her, just as Echo had had to do. And Echo was still figuring out what impacts her words and actions made on other people. She was still trying to control herself, attempting to control the impulses of wild emotions that surged and overloaded her mind more often than not. But logic didn’t belong to Echo at the moment. Logic was merely a floating whisper, drowned and crushed behind the berserk roar of anger that exploded toward November’s return words.

Stiffly, Echo stood before November, her hard stone eyes watching the woman’s face, staring into the pretty green eyes that bore back at her. Instinctively, her hands had curled, shifting into tight fists, knuckles failing to keep their pigmented color against the thinly stretched skin. Echo didn’t shift stances, her gaze hardly twitching, as she noticed November move a half a step toward her. It was as if she had momentarily turned to a statue, as if the wind artist had simply made her out of the surrounding sand and the sun had baked her into a standing and very realistically tinted glass. The muscles contracted around her throat as she swallowed the foamed moisture around her tongue, the motion, as well as the faint flicker of eyes, defying the term of statue. A nagging thought slithered into her mind, a hissing snake that Echo’s emotional beast picked up, ripped off the head, and chowed down on the rest of the snake’s body.

“Really?” the statue replied in a rumble, her head tilting to the side. The hood pulled over her head stretched, holding most of her hair in place to her intimidating gaze shot daggers at the blond haired woman. Storm gray flickered again, to the woman’s shoulder and then lightning shocked the movement and Echo’s stare locked with November’s once again.

The only tendril of thought that Echo’s angry beast could not best and devour was her unconscious thought. Unconsciousness held everything Echo had ever done in her life, everything that was drilled repeatedly into her mind or seared an imprint of an image that would flash hotly before her eyes from time to time. Her unconscious thought was almost like a sixth sense. Every slight motion November made registered in the enhanced vision Echo had. She knew November was reaching behind her back. The slower the woman moved, the more the movement stood out to Echo. Slow movement was easier to see than fast movement. The faster something was, the harder it was to track and react to. Echo could look at November’s eyes and watch the muscles around the shoulder to know she was thinking and plotting.

Yet Echo did not move.

Unconscious thoughts stimulated and raced across Echo’s mind, reminding her to keep a tab on the woman’s movement. Ignore the words for the most part; continue to listen with one ear shut so the words would not escape, so she would remember them later. The grayness of Echo’s eyes became a lens for a photograph, snapping mini-shots, the background black though the sun blazed high and yellow over their heads. All Echo could see was November and none of the hot, glittering sand or the strong mirages. Her anger shied from standing in front of instinct and instead stood in the background, giving fuel to keep Echo’s trained mind on a straight pathway.

Novemeber said her last statement, in a very small voice. Echo’s eyes narrowed and a rather crazed grin spread across her lips. The other ex-assassin was about to prepare her assault. Echo waited and refused to move her tense muscles. As sweat rolled from her temple, her eyes lazily followed down the other woman’s face, curving around the edge of the arm and down to the… hand. There was a small glint of a reflected sun’s ray that burned a blind spot into Echo’s vision. She winced at it, closing her eye, the other one racing to find what November had done.

What the, how’d that canister get there? Echo hissed, finally shifting her leg back and sucking in a large breath as the canister began to leak a bleached cloud into the air. November, she recalled, centered herself around poisons and her own developed weapons. She was big into chemistry. Which meant that the woman was capable of coming up with some funky and nasty stuff. If she remembered right, the woman had one thing that Echo truly had to be afraid of: her firing weapon. Poison, absolutely, and none of it could touch Echo unless she wanted out of this fight. There was no way Echo was going to let this fight end soon because of some stupid poison. She had to get close to November and perform her best disarming practice, separate the mistress from her greatest power.

Echo had dropped to the sand, bowing her arms in a push up position. Her breath was still held, her eyes staring at the thick white cloud that obscured the sight of November, hiding her. This was good. This meant that November couldn’t see Echo. And when someone couldn’t see Echo, that’s when Echo did her worst. This also meant that if November fired her weapon at where she had last seen Echo, she would miss, and her poison would be harmless.

Echo’s plan formulated her mind. Her eyes were half closed as she concentrated, those pictures of where and how November had stood. But then unconscious thought reminded Echo that November wasn’t a stupid woman. She was very intelligent, and also one of the twenty-six. The only way an attack would truly work would be if Echo could see exactly where November stood. And the gas prevented that at the moment. She couldn’t wait too long however, her breath would run out.

But she could wait a few more milliseconds, make her opponent wonder where she was. Echo bent her knees and bunched her muscles. She pushed off with her arms and legs, leaping over the sand. Her arms rotated forward, lunging before her as if she were doing the butterfly stroke in a competition. Her hands impacted the sand clouded by the gas and she tucked her legs to her, bowing her head. She rolled forward, her hands burning from contact with the sand, the heat blazing across her back. Her boots smacked down into the unstable sand, sliding a bit. Echo dug her toes in, forcing her body to whip up and forward again, her mind’s eye taking a picture of November. Hands touched the sand again and every muscle obeyed in time to perform a half roll as Echo pushed harder with her arms to forward her momentum. Her back contacted the ground and she slid slightly, feet first, and covered the distance November had tried to put between her and the gas. Echo rolled slightly to her side, her right leg spread far from her left. She scissored her legs, the right heel striking harshly at the back of the woman’s knee, trying to force it to buckle. Her left shin struck the side of the woman’s calf, attempting at helping her own right leg by sweeping out the foot.

“Gun, gun, gun… get it, get it, get it… don’t kill, don’t kill, don’t kill… teach lesson, teach lesson, teach lesson…”

“Overthrow the effigy
The vast majority
Well, burning down the foreman of control

Silence is the enemy
Against your urgency
So rally up the demons of your soul”

[Kella]

ooc// I hope I've properly interpreted Echo's actions... if not, zap me a PM and I'll tidy it up in a flash. And sorry for taking so long to post: I figured you'd rather wait for something decent than get crud quick. X) //

To say that Echo was fast would be an understatement. November's brain registered the movement when she was two feet exposed. Her conscious mind registered this two feet later. Her mental plan began to form at six feet, and even before her neurons could pelt away their signals, Echo was at her feet. November felt her leg begin to buckle, and then she was falling...

And then her mind entered that place. That state of deadly efficiency where very neuron, every synapse was working at absolute top capacity. She was in that place where her thoughts raced so quickly, time slowed in relation. There was calm, simple nothing in her mind. No surprise, no fear, no anger. She was a droid. Calculations, probabilities, the numbers flashed through her mind. Currents, flows of sand, trajectories; not a detail escaped from her supercomputer. Her muscles were contracting at exactly this rate, cartilage bending at exactly that rate, she could bend to precisely this degree...

Instead of simply falling, November threw herself backwards, hip crushing the sand beneath. In this same motion, she threw her feet upward, yanking them from Echo's scissor-hold. The momentum of the falling, coupled with this swift motion was enough to bring her feet up and over, just as she had predicted. November cradled her dart-gun to her chest (the sand would easily gumm the gears), contracting all the muscles of her core at just the right moment to continue her momentum. The sand was fire-hot against her neck as she continued in this backwards-roll. Yet she knew it was not hot enough to burn, and the RELIC was still partly functional. And so she paid the pain no further attention.

Her knees sunk into the sand as November righted herself. Precisely .76 seconds later, the fluid in her ears had settled, and she was oriented once more. From this low angle, November raised her dart-gun, sparing only half a second to line up the scope. Her fingers hovered over the one dial, the one setting. Power. To little, and it would be slow enough to be dodged. Too fast, and the dart would tear through flesh and into bone, causing more physical damage than chemical. November wanted neither, and so with a grudging estimation of two barrels, she quickly set the dial.

Her finger moved no more than 9/17ths of an inch, and the trigger had been tripped. Silently, this moved the mechanism of the well-oiled weapon. A hammer struck the back of the loaded dart, the force slamming it forward and snapping its connection to the rest of the clip. Its momentum would have soon died if not for the powerful magnets that hummed to life around it, and the dart hovered in its barrels, touching nothing. Alternating currents drove it forward, pull-push-pull-push until its velocity was incredibly fast. The air hardly parted around it, so sleek was its shape, so unassuming. There was a whisper as quiet as an butterfly's wing as the dart departed the barrel, arrowing toward Echo. It cut an angle near-parallel to the ground, but slightly downward; an awkward angle to dodge from Echo's position at or near the ground. It was aimed to strike her upper abdomen.

Exactly o.5 seconds from the first hammer-tick, a new round had sunk into the chamber. Again, November twitched her finger. Such power. Such a small motion. This time, however, the dart was aimed 3 degrees to the right of the first, so as to space them by one foot when they reached Echo; harder to dodge, but not impossible.

For the average human, the percentage of a dodge would have been .05%. For a trained soldier, 10%. For one of the 26, 24.5%. For Echo, 53.6%, with a 4% margin of error. Echo was fast. Very fast. Yet, even a scratch from one of the needles would slow her. Not enough to stop her, no. But perhaps enough to dull her senses, so that November could make use of this final shot in her clip.

And so, this perfectly timed pair of shots had a 46.4% probability of success. November did not like these odds. But if those odds played out in her favor, she would be satisfied. Very satisfied. And perhaps, she considered, actions that satisfied her might satisfy another. Or bring their approval. Another like Delta. Maybe, this was a test. And maybe if she won... just maybe... then Delta would choose her. Already the thought filled her with a sense of satisfaction, a sensation that tickled her mind in a most peculiar way.

These thoughts dripped into her mind like blood into clear water, clouding it.

Hisssssh...

That sound-- ah! One of her darts had hit the sand. One, at least, maybe two. November realized that she had lost precious moments, wasted precious time lost in her thoughts. Damn these emotions! She could keep her mind in check, this should not have been a problem!

And yet these feelings of frustration clouded her mind even more, and for a moment, November was seized by a sudden bout of confusion, disorientation. And then she snapped her mind loose, eyes scanning, forcing herself to be machine once again. She had lost two seconds; time enough to Echo to dodge, and begin a counter attack. Begin, but not complete...

Echo was a master of hand-to-hand combat. And so that was what November needed to focus on, remember. If she lost her gun, her chances of victory would be severely diminished, the probabilities stacking in Echo's favor. November could not let this happen.

She would lock onto Echo, she would predict her movements, she would react accordingly. And the water of her mind began to settle.

But it was not yet clear.

[Dire Wolf]

Round 3

Echo - Squee
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 3/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 5/5
Bonus: --
Comments: Keep up the good work ^_^ I'm a bit iffy on the footsweep attack connecting, that is why your fairness is a bit low.

November - Kellaishleya
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 3/5
Bonus: --
Comments: Delta is not amused at you two (Delta: -_-) But its a great read so far. Can't wait to see what comes next...

Total:
Echo - 46
Nov. - 45

Edit: Edited a little error I caught just after posting >.<

[Squee]

Echo was tugging at November’s heel one way and pressuring her knee to fall the other. This movement did not work unless one used more than they’re legs. Echo’s palm could have been ready to combust into flame by the way she had her hand pressed into the sand. Her deltoid was strained slightly at the awkward position and Echo willed her hips and upper body to roll onto her back, dragging the entirety of her body from the side to the back. With this twist, November was sure to fall and when she fell, Echo planned to whip forward like a vicious viper and bite her gun from her opponent’s hand.

Unfortunately November was smarter than her. Echo knew something was amiss by way of the way she felt the unfamiliar twist in November’s boot trapped in her scissor hold. Echo’s slight smirk contorted into a sort of disapproving sneer. Her mind’s eye, that invisible camera lens, took pictures once again, capturing a new photo, a new angle, a new problem each time the shutter of her eyelid blinked. November had jerked her body back, using the fall Echo was forcing her into to her advantage. And then, the resistance of a foreign body between her lower legs vanished. Echo growled, loud enough to be heard over the scuffles of sand as it shifted to accommodate and please the two female bodies, which squirmed like competing snakes. Echo had drawn back her legs, sat up and twisted, a hiss of a rattler’s tail departing between her gritted teeth.

Echo acted spontaneously, her instinct trampling uninvited into conscious thought. Her hands rocketed before her, fingers clawing at the air and ground where November had just been. The woman’s feet were too far gone, lost to Echo’s power. If she remained seated like this with antagonistic sand leaking into every crevice of her already sweat-drenched body she would be as good as a sitting target when that poison shooting weapon was brought to bear. If there was one thing she had learned with her time with Delta it was to remain out of the line of fire when the muzzle was pointed at her. Give November another five times point five, and she’d be aiming her venom in Echo’s direction. Echo’s hands were in retreat almost as quickly as she had thrust them forward. Knees were bunched to her chest, rocking her onto her shoulder blades. With a practiced thrust of her legs, the motion and the strength of the kick, with Echo pushing off slightly with her hands, the auburn haired woman was launched to her feet. Stone gray eyes moved forward, the mind shifting into camera mode…

But the camera short circuited. All thought shifted back as adrenaline and instinct abused it. The gun was pointed to her. Echo’s first thought, the first remembrance of training she had ever had was to move. Echo went left, ducking her head, not quite sure where any of the projectiles were aimed on her person. She made it about a step, leaning hard into the step into a very low side crouch. This was not before Echo felt it. She cried out in mild shock as the dart scraped along her arm. Chin jarred downward, catching sight of the dart just as it flashed passed her elbow, the surface of the dart allowing her to catch a faint glint. A long scrape ran along the side of her arm, some spots already beginning the swell with mini red droplets sparse along the scratch. There was no telling how much poison had managed into her system. Or if any had at all. Echo had not a clue on the finer workings of November’s weapons or how the dart functioned, how they were triggered to release their toxins. The spit that left Echo’s mouth as feelings of frustration crawled its tendrils about her mind could have been dangerously venomous if she had, indeed, been a snake.

She hadn’t the time to muse over measly scratches. Another fire could happen. And in the time the dart had flashed by and Echo had registered and committed the scrape to a file labeled “noticed memory”, she had flexed the muscles of her far bent leg and bounded forward, darting around for side of November. Her blood, as it trickled very lightly from the cut, boiled as an overheated reptile. And, just like any overheated animal provoked, she was angry as all hell. The fiery viper that had overwhelmed Echo grew forelimbs that bore claws and back limbs for powering the fantasy creature she had become. Red hair was a mane that surrounded her head. Arms were like the tail, swaying the keep her body in balance as toes bat against the sand. With a ferocious roar of a battle cry, Echo took flight like a great phoenix bird, spinning around, clothes flapping and clinging like feathers.

There was a foot in this spin, rising up to deliver a half-powered kick. The target was simple: Echo wanted the outside part of her foot to connect near the sternum, located in the center of the breast; primarily the V section beneath the sternum, the solar plexus. Pin-pointed accurately, she could drive the air from November and provide enough time to grab the opposing woman’s shoulder and wrist. Having both, Echo could yank the hand back to the fingers pointed to the armpit. A hand on the shoulder would drive her forward and the arm would be pulled back. As long as November’s elbow remained above her head, there was no way she could resist Echo without causing more joint pain for herself. If Echo pulled hard, she could break the wrist. If she pushed the arm too much, she could dislocate the shoulder. This would be enough to steal the dart gun from November and render her almost completely hopeless.

At worst she was going to crack November’s sternum.

No, the worst would be if November got out of the maneuver. It was a fairly simple plan Echo had dreamed of. However, Echo had considered that too complicated was what November might be looking for. If she kept her actions simple perhaps she could confuse the woman for a few moments. If this simple counterattack was defeated, Echo would try a more difficult maneuver next. Then maybe another simple one. Then a difficult, simple, difficult, simple… Hopefully this would keep the woman off guard, guessing just what Echo would do. Echo never attempted to plot out her enemy’s next move, unless they were a martial artist like herself. Martial artists were unpredictable folk, and unpredictable and unpredictable made predictable for each competing artist. They could always pick out combinations or know which movements would be best in a situation and brace or counter it.

November was not a martial artist. Echo was leaving it up to whatever gods of the universe whether this would give her an advantage.

“You stand before me now we stare eye to eye
Before another second clicks away one of us will die.
You reach for your metal as I reach for mine
The sound of bullets flyin' through the air, is followed by a cry

And they're cryin'

What will we do? What will we say?
When it's the end of this game that we play?
Will we crumble into the dust my friend?
Or will we start this game over again?

It's coming back to me.”

((Dangerous Game, Three Doors Down.))

[Kella]

ooc// Fourteen days, really Ashley? That's somewhat pitiful. The good news! I is all better now. ;D The still-good news; half of this post was written while I was awake. The bad news; half of it was written while I was partially asleep. See if you can tell...

And I was having trouble figuring out exactly how Echo was going to hold November, which is probably 'cause I was over-thinking that, so I kind of tried to work around it... hrum. Ah, enough talking. Now I post.//



Just as Echo was the fire, November became the ice. Frost clung to the cliff-falls of her mind, cool deliberation sinking in. This is how she was made to be. Emotionless. Ruthless. She was perfection. November had never been more dead, and it was the only thing keeping her alive.

Echo's hair blazed outward as she spun, feral glint in her eye.

November's face was cold and still. Her eyes watched everything, caught each detail. She saw the dark line of crimson on Echo's arm, the seemingly mild scratch that was anything but. Satisfaction... hissed the wind.

The smallest drop of water can break a mountain. It seeps into the cracks, the faults in the rocks, and as it freezes, it forces them apart. And as November's mind cooled, as it began to freeze, a long, slender crack split through the bedrock...

Crack!

It had been a moment of weakness, of satisfaction. November had fallen from her perfection, fallen hard, just as she was falling now. Echo's kick had caught her square in the chest, barely diffused by a backwards leap that came far too late. November could feel her ribs resettle in her chest, feel the way they yanked at the back of her spine, pressed against her chest. Her bones were more flexible than most, and for the first time in her life, that worked against her as the cavity of her lungs was suddenly compressed. November's heart skipped a beat, her diaphragm beginning to lunge in frantic spasms, attempting to make up for the pain that radiated from her chest, spider-ing outward like cracks on a shattered window.

A normal human would have crashed to the ground, dazed and disoriented, to fall into the fire's trap.

But November was no ordinary human. And she was no stranger to pain.

There was something stronger in her mind right now. It was a small victory, the battle was not won... but it could be enough. Because she had seen that long red line, that line that had been drawn upon Echo's skin like November had taken a pen to it, perfectly straight, perfectly red, even as the sweat mingled with the oozing drops. There are some animals so perfectly adapted, so deadly, that a single drop of their poison is enough to fell a dozen grown men. What Echo now found in her veins was the venom of a particular flying insect, notorious in its provision for its young. The mother would find large game, such as a Boma or a Maalraas, which would become the nursery for her young. A single sting from the thumb-sized insect brought first spasmodic muscle cramps, then unconsciousness, then paralysis. Some poisons attacked the muscle or the tissues. These were localized, easy to slow. But not this poison; this one targeted the source; the motor center of the brain. Harmless the pathogen would spread, until its prey was found. First, its attack on the synapses would cause them to fire rapidly, uncontrollably; the muscles would spasm, cramp, burn. But then these connections would grow silent all-together, while the brain struggled to resist. Even the smallest scratch, the tiniest contamination would bring the seizing of the muscles; November had learned this the hard way, once. A slightly larger dose, and the seizures ended with temporary paralysis - with or without unconsciousness. The largest, and intended dosage, would overload the system, and cause paralysis and unconsciousness immediately, and November knew she had not been so fortunate as for this to be the case. And so it was a smaller dose, but November had no way of knowing exactly how much... she'd have to watch. She would.

All these thoughts tumbled through November's mind in a Data torrent, even as her right foot and then her left shuffled backwards to catch her as she threatened to fall. She watched as Echo stepped toward her, hands extending toward November's shoulder, feral fire still blazing in her eyes. November twisted her shoulder away at the last moment, attempting to take advantage of the proximity by arcing her elbow toward Echo, her intent to catch the woman in the gut and render her similarly breathless.

Regardless, November flicked herself away, diaphragm still fluttering irritatedly, no new oxygen in her lungs. She was like a minnow in her sudden dart, slipping just between Echo's fingers, slick like a wet fish. In a movement that had become second-nature, November's hand flashed to her waist, and another canister was in her fingers. She applied just enough pressure to completely depress the lid mechanism, causing the vapors to hiss and boil into the air immediately, licking past her fingers. In a measured movement, she held this at arm's length towards Echo, twisting so that her right side faced the woman. November watched Echo's feet, dodging what she could.

Black stars began to dot the fringes of November's perfect vision; her lungs still struggled to expand against the sudden seizure of her muscles. A scowl marring her stony face, November dropped the canister, hoping to have caught Echo in the middle. Unfortunately, it too was reliant on breathing. Or, not so unfortunately. Still unable to breathe, November let the fumes lick her cheeks. Echo, however, would find that the poison relied not on making it to the lungs, but simply in connecting to the soft tissue of the nasal passages and mouth... If it had taken effect, Echo would feel a sharp pain in her sinuses, she would grow dizzy, disoriented... perhaps that, coupled with the injected serum, would give November just enough of an edge...

Even as the canister slipped from her fingertips, November was twisting around to her left, ducking low to the sand in case Echo launched another attack. The dart-gun cradled in her right arm, November let her left fingertips touch the ground as she swing her feet around, still low, to survey the situation. For whatever reason, she spied no imminent danger, and so scooted quickly backwards, rising.

Still, she could not breathe, and the black began to close around her peripheral vision. It was as if some spectral hand had tightened its grip about her chest, nails digging into her flesh... But pain had never stopped her before, and November wasn't about to break that pattern now. She forced air into her lungs, a sudden, shuddering gasp that sent a new wave of sharp, fiery pain through her ribs; Echo's wild heat had managed to burn the icy November, and now that same fire began to flicker within her. Now, November was neither one nor the other, she was neither fire nor ice. She was hot, burning embers, both cooled and fed by a crisp, icy breeze, logic battling with emotion, probability with desperation. The pain could hold her no longer, and November's breath returned, strained but steady. Whether each breath was a puff of the bellows, or a hiss of the icy wind, whether each heartbeat fed the fire or the ice, remained to be seen. November realized little of this; her mind was completely enveloped in the physical, the present.

Her senses were on full alert. If Echo had followed her directly, then November would launch into another evasive maneuver, and try to conserve energy. In the event that Echo had become dazed and disoriented November would raise her gun to her shoulder, and watch. And the first flash of movement, the first glimpse of flesh, November would hone in on it. She would fire her last tranq shot. It would be advantageous for both of them if November made that hit. Most advantageous. November had two more clips, but those clips did not hold tranquillizers; they held compounds of a far more deadly kind.

November had one dart left. After that, she shot to kill.

[Dire Wolf]

Round 4

Echo - Squee
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 5/5
Coolness: 4/5
Bonus: --
Comments: Keep up the good work ^^ Lets see how Echo gets outta this one...

November - Kellaishleya
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 3/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 5/5
Bonus: --
Comments: About the fairness: I don't know, something about the poison that just didn't hit me right. It was necessary to describe the effects, yes, but I suppose its the effects I didn't like. Besides that, it was a good post. ^^

Total:
Squee - 64
Kell. - 61

[Squee]

The great gleam of accomplishment spread a ridiculous, prideful grin across Echo’s face. The feral beast within Echo felt happy, crazy, drunken off of her connected attack. She had weakened her opponent. She was ahead, winning. A weakened creature was easy to finish, simple to dominate. An uncomplicated system of furious dueling and the champion either kept her place in the hierarch, or the hierarchy was torn down and rebuilt. It depended on the winner. Echo was winning. She would win and she would remain the closest to Delta. Her glory and law would be marked on these sands. That law would remain…

“Elbow!” her mind shrieked at her. Her hands had snagged empty air around November’s shoulder. The woman’s elbow was jerking up, and Echo’s photo-like brain had noticed it almost too late. Without thinking, Echo’s lungs commanded for a small breath of air and her muscles contracted on whim. The toned cords flexed and banded strongly to her center to create a wall of tough muscle. November’s elbow connected against her tensed abdomen. Echo’s body responded on its own accord once again, flowing with the drills and ideas she had learned from past experience. November’s elbow attack was dulled by both the flex of her muscle and the way she rose to her toes with the attack. A low grunt came from Echo who made effort to grab the elbow. November must be getting faster or something. Echo felt her fingers graze against November, but the woman had pulled away to make Echo, once again, furious.

Echo advanced with a smarting throb in the pit of her stomach. She kicked, foot flat, trying to catch an arm or chin. That foot missed, she planted it, and then twisted her body on her foot. The momentum spun her around and the leg that had been behind her shot back. Her toes pointed to the ground, and stone etched eyes glared over her shoulder as she thrust her leg back. Back kick. Plant. Complete spin. She was close to November again. Her toothed hand arced for the blond woman, reaching out for her. Her abdomen was burning, burning… it hurt.

November’s arm coming into Echo’s outstretched hand had been a surprise. She blinked once, twice, thrice, and yet another time. Her surprise quickly turned to horror as she saw discolored smoke leak between November’s fingers. She had been just about to reel November in like a fish, despite the growing burn in her arm’s muscle (how weird), and force her into submission. As Echo’s hand sprang off and she tried backing off, she was much too late. She had inhaled some of the smoke in her horrible realization. Echo barely distinguished the “puft” as the canister of poison hit the sand, the poison still billowing out in swirling clouds. The wind was against her, swooping inward and carrying more smoke into the auburn woman’s face even as she attempted to back away from it.

Seconds after she had breathed, a knife stabbed its way through her palate and impaled between her eyebrows. Echo coughed, blinded by her sudden pain, eyes squeezing shut and she shook her head madly. She stumbled to the side, out of the path of the smoke, away from the canister, taking the long way around it. Once out of the smoke’s path, Echo opened her eyes. Another knife struck her between the eyes and a frustrated, painful roar fell from her lips, her jaw falling as she cringed beneath the invisible assault.

“Pain is all in your head, Echo. It’s nothing but nerves. You don’t have nerves. If you have nerves, you’ll fall to every assault, cringe from every blow, and scamper away with your tail between your legs each time someone raises a hand. You are a fearless creature. You raise your head, ignore the pain, ignore your brain except when it commands you to move, not cringe, move! Do you understand me?”

“Yessir!”

“Good.” He smacked her with a flat hand. She squeaked and pulled her arm to her, an instinctive reaction to the sting. “No! You don’t pull away. You have no nerves. No sense of pain. We’ll try that again.” And again, and again, and again, and again. Many times, many lessons, many years. And she stopped cringing at her pain. She learned to ignore instinct’s reaction to pain.

Echo forced her stormy gray eyes open, snarling as the invisible knife rose and drove its way into her head. When she didn’t cringe, the knife drove further into her skull, threatening to split the bone and cut halves from her brain. Echo shook her head, refusing to let her eyes close, and made herself believe it wasn’t there, that it didn’t exist. She took her first step mere seconds after her roar, the poison smoke still curling tendrils into the air to her right. She could see a little bit of November, who seemed to be staring directly into the smoke. An achy smile dashed Echo’s lips.

The ground lurched from under her and Echo’s brain told her stomach she was going to be sick. Echo swallowed the bile and watched the world tilt to one side and then the other. Fuzzy, vague polka dots filled her eyes, but she blinked, and those dots vanished. Echo boosted her will, called upon her drive, howled for her rallying cause. Her anger swelled again, monstrosity entering face and eyes, and it propelled her body forward despite the dizziness, the sinus pain nothing more than a numb, aching spot compared to her will.

She darted in low, wanting to attack from a low angle. Her hands rested in a guard before her. Dots. Blink. Gone. Echo gunned her legs to regain their speed, driving her forward in her crouching dash. November’s weapon was glinting tauntingly at her. Predator eyes fixated themselves on the woman’s neck and shoulders, waiting to notice any change in posture so she could modify her plan of attack if need to. Then, things took a turn for the worse.

The muscle that made up her thigh seized, quickly… painfully. The leg failed to hold weight and slipped on the sand as Echo’s face twisted and tears struck her eyes. That burn in the stomach wasn’t a burn no more, but a searing cramp. Her calf squeezed and Echo howled in agony as she dropped into the sand. The hot feeling of the cramp passed into her foot, making Echo insane with pain. The arm she landed on became strict, and as the claws of her fingers tore at the sand, the seizing became worse. It was then she couldn’t ignore the splitting headache. The knife had wedged itself, and she was dizzy, sick. It was worse that she writhed at first, wanting to beat out her cramps.

“NO! Damn it all! Damn the Force! Damn the stars! planets! suns! moons! the galaxy!” Echo found it hard to breathe, sucking air in through mouth and nose pained her head more. Her twisting finally stalled, and she lay with one arm extended for November. The cramping made everything twitch and she forced herself to crane her neck, to look up at November who stood not three feet away. Hateful eyes burned into the blond woman, her mouth open as she panted, falling into a muted scream as another cramp reestablished it in her thigh. Her fingers burned as they dug into her leg. Her glare, still, was unforgiving.

“What did you do?” was the hoarse, demanding question. November had taken the head from the snake. The venom in her arm had attacked her brain. The smoke had assaulted her sinuses. The head of Echo was weakened, turned against her. When one removed the head of the snake, one killed the snake. The snake was no longer dangerous. The snake was dead.

A shudder passed Echo’s body, and she hissed, her face pressed up against her arm and her eyes shut. When one took the head from the snake, one took the venom. The snake was no longer poisonous. Not a threat. Not anything but dead. Echo left her face against her arm even as the massive cramp passed, letting gray eyes study the sand just under her nose. Her body wasn’t working. It wouldn’t move. Or she wouldn’t move it. Whichever one. Her head throbbed, tears making wet tracks in her dirtied face. She croaked a sob. Her stomach muscles twisted and she rolled in the pain, disturbing the other muscles of her body. Echo ended up on her other side, face pressed against the grains in the sand.

“November!” she rasped. She craned her head again but only far enough to see half of her champion. The venom was drained from her gray eyes. Instead there was a glassy film over her eyes and more tears formed to roll across her face. Hate was suddenly gone, replaced with fear. “Are you killing me?”

[Kella]

The Assassin had won.

Her eyes followed Echo like the lock of a targeting scope, tracing precise meters to the right, tendrils of smoke still curling about the prey. The Assassin raised her gun and leveled it, pivoting precisely as the quarry ran. Exact patterns flickered through the sand, and a timer counted ever downward. The prey siezed and fell, and braying screams assaulted the Assassin's ears. The Assassin was deaf to them. She centered the barrel of her gun over the writhing prey, the gun that was a part of her, and with a movement as natural as the blinking of an eye, she pulled the trigger.

The trajectory of the dart was perfectly straight as it arched through the air, piercing first the epidermis and then the subdermal layer of the prey, poising rushing into muscle tissue and blood vessel. The Prey was dead.

But the Assassin had not won.

The quarry was not the Assassin's prey. The Assassin's quarry, was November. And the Assassin had lost.

November's followed Echo like the lock of a targeting scope; she watched as Echo spilled from the wavering smoke, and her gun flicked toward the woman. And even as her finger hovered over the trigger, November did something deadly, something absolutely fatal. She hesitated. Why she had committed such a sin, November did not know. WHY was raging in her brain, but November could give no answer. Some strange thought cried out in the back of her mind, but the voice was distant, as if screaming from the bottom of a well.

Echo! She was moving again, quickly; November would be able to make no certain shot. This last shot had to count. For a moment, a terrifying moment, November felt fear. Echo was the lion, and she had pounced upon November once again. All November's efforts, all her precious efficiency and planning and calculations and numbers... it had been for nothing, nothing. Because Echo had overcome it all. And now November was going to die.

But that moment was gone now, and November realized she had won. That scream that burst from Echo's lips as she fell met November's ears as a cry of triumph.

Or did it? Now was November's golden opportunity. Two steps she could walk, two simple steps, angle her gun and fire. The dart would land precisely where she intended it, Echo would be unconscious, and all would have been as planned, all would have followed the pattern.

And yet, as she stood there, all November could hear in that scream was frustration, agony, despair. As Echo cursed the Galaxy, her voice fluxed with all the confusion, all the fear that November had been burying deep inside. Such things can only stay buried for so long, because they never really go away...

Eyes trained to watch every detail, notice every infinitesimal feature, focused. November could see every knot of muscle tighten under Echo's skin, she could see the way in which the cords of her neck stressed outwards, taut and trembling, not because of the venom, but because of the sheer agony of it all...

And as she watched this, November's mind was seized by the most accursed emotion of them all. Compassion. It was in its most rudimentary, selfish form. But it was there. And Echo's writhing, her screams and her cries hung in the air and struck November's heart, reverberating with it. And then they echoed to the resonant frequency. The glass of November's heart shattered.

Shoot her, the Assassin suddenly hissed. Shoot her now.
November was transfixed.
Kill it. You were made to do this. Kill it.
I was not made to do anything!
You were made for this, and you know it. Kill it.
Bu... she... look at her writhe... the--the pain must be astronomical...
You do not know pain, you do not know emotion. You know only fact, only your target. Kill it. You need do nothing but pull the trigger.
N... no, she has to live... I know... know she has to live.... why does she have to live...
She does not. You are a bringer of death; it is your purpose. Hesitation is weakness.
I am not weak!
Prove it. Kill it.
I... I am perfection... I don't... don't make mistakes... I can... what...
Then kill it.
Stop it!

Each side of her mind pounded against the other, this way and that way within her skull, bruising her left and right. It was a sudden, volatile explosion. It had been inevitable. She had been nothing but a ticking time-bomb, and Echo the catalyst... and now the war threatened to tear November completely apart. Her eyes scrunched tightly shut and her hands began to tremble, shuddering as leaves in a furnace wind. A high whine trembled in her throat, building and mounting, until suddenly November did something she had never done before. She screamed. The twisted, wretched sound rent from between clenched teeth, and November clapped her head between her hands.

The war had ended, but who had won?

Skit hissed the gun as it fell to the ground. November let it be. Her whole body began to tremble as if some earthquake had just taken place within her, two plates pushing and pushing until the weight of the tension finally caused them to snap. Her legs failed and November fell to the ground, her knees digging forward into the sand. Her breathing came in ragged, noisy gasps, the muscles in her throat painfully contracting. Something hot and wet spilled from her eyes, dripping down her cheeks. Blood, it must be... Her breathing was wrong; what was happening to her? Could one's mind shatter into so many pieces that the body broke too? But not blood... tears. Another sob racked her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her viciously, scolding her. This brought only more tears.

"November!"

She spun to meet the rasping voice, calling her name. November felt the fear upon Echo's face, she could see the way her eyes began to haze... November had done this, she had done this to Echo. She had made Echo writhe and hurt and scream, and she now knew she had done it to so very many others... A new emotion sliced through her chest, sharper than any blade. Shame. November's eyes sunk to be lost in the harsh, scratching sand. She could not bear to look upon Echo.

"Are you killing me?"

Killing her... November was killing her... but no, no... she was still awake now, Echo would be fine... she would, November knew that.

Slowly, she shook her head, and her lips ghosted the word 'no'... and then again it was silent upon her lips, 'no'... Again and again she said it, her head shaking slowly back and forth, every breath, every sob another 'no', until her voice Crescendo-ed and she no longer knew what she was saying 'no' to. No to Echo, No to her life, No to her future, No to Green Meadows, No to herself... Anger began to build within her, clinging to the fallen scraps of her mind. Anger at Echo for not accepting her, Anger at the people who had shattered her like this... but mostly Anger towards herself. Anger for letting herself fail, Anger for not having the strength to pull the trigger, and yet Anger for enjoying the fight. The anger buzzed in her chest, finally breaking out with a scream of frustration as she ripped the clip of darts off her belt, throwing it across the sand. As the scream died, her sobs returned once more.

She could do nothing properly, NOTHING! She thought she had been so perfect, so right, not getting angry at Echo. A perfect resolution she had planned for, to be above reproach in Delta's eyes! But she had found satisfaction, cursed, cursed satisfaction in every little victory over Echo. She had failed. And even now, when it would have been better to simply kill Echo, November couldn't even muster the strength to look at her.

Down the spiral twisted, done it bore, deeper and deeper into despair, and the Dark... Her life was worth nothing... The pattern was swallowing her whole.

But the end is never really the end.

November felt the hot sand upon her knees, the grit in her fingers, the burning tears upon her cheeks. Her sobs had ceased. She was reminded of the world. All she could hear was the wind of the desert, empty, empty like she was... Echo's screams no longer filled her ears. The woman had either felt the dark claws of unconsciousness, or the sweet cool of relief. November dared not look to find out, her hands digging into the sand, head hung with shame.

All she could do was form her ragged voice into words, words with a desperate strength that cut through the desert's furnace air.

"Kill me, please, just leave me to die. My life is not worth this..."

[Dire Wolf]

Round 5

Echo - Squee
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 5/5
Bonus: 1/2
Comments: Wow... that description of her running towards November, then he muscles seizing up... good stuff. ^^ Made Delta cry. But yeah, bonus pts for the helpless position you put yourself in.

November - Kellaishleya
Effort: 5/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 4/5
Bonus: 2/2
Comments: o.o she won... then went crazy and gave up. < was his face as he read that. I like how you did it... at first I thought that she'd get angry and kill echo.... but then the opposite occurred. Two thumbs up. Bonus points for, obviously, having your character go crazy and give up. ^^

Total:
Squee - 83
Kell. - 81

Final Round!

[Squee]

There was something the way November looked in the position she was in and reacted the way she did that caused something in Echo’s chest to stir. It was a writhing, wriggling thing that made up her heart. It squirmed and tried to stretch out, but the muscles were taut and it snapped and recoiled upon itself. It didn’t give up. It twisted and thrashed, a living thing inside Echo that scared her at her very first encounter. The more it waggled and turned much like a worm in the dirt, the more the muscles flexed and warmed up. Fluidity rippled into the muscles of the creature and stretched out again, straining and fighting the thoughts of Echo’s mind. Echo did not want it. She did not want it to break through, to uncoil and grip her with clawless paws and benevolent eyes. Yet, the warmth was winning, the creature with good intentions was taking form, spreading out to fill her chest cavity. It crept steadily up her throat and that was as far as it got. Echo’s mind became a barrier, wanting to force it down, keep it down, squish it into the tiny ball it had come from and pack it into the neat little box she had for it. She wanted to store it, use it for better people, people who did not try to hurt her.

“But she wasn’t trying…
Like hell she was not!
“Listen…”
I don’t wanna.
“Listen to this heart, Echo. Listen… What does it say?

Echo had no answer for it. For that one moment that her mental defiance was there, the lump gathered in her throat had been suppressed. Now it was back, and strong, and determined to hold residence there while more tears filled gray eyes; gray eyes that stared at the blond haired woman who just fought her. No, it could not be, says Echo’s heart. That could not be November. November would have fired that dart gun, not tossed it to the side. November did not clutch her head and shake like a mad person. November did not scream at nothingness. November did not ask for Echo to kill her. November had fought Echo, but November wasn’t there. There was a strange woman inside November’s body. One that was broken, scared, frustrated, confused. Echo knew what sat before her eyes and it was not the woman who had brought her these great pains she suffered from now.

But was she Echo? Who WAS Echo? Just as who WAS November, and therefore who WAS Delta? Was Echo who she was now? She couldn’t be. She was not the Echo she recalled several years ago, where her memories are filled with such a void. No, Echo was a machine of sorts. Echo was something else. Echo was not this… this… hurting, seizing ball of muscle whose insides cried out more to November than it did for herself. November had tried to kill her, Echo, and November had succeeded. November had killed Echo, but it seemed Echo also killed November. Just as there was a strange woman in place of November, there was a bizarre woman in Echo’s container. This bizarre woman in Echo had visited several times, and she did not make much sense. She whispered to listen. To listen to the warm beating of her heart, to feel the steady thump of her pulse and determine what to do.

Echo was consumed by this bizarre woman and the rawness of her heart and emotions.

She swung a dead limb across her body and buried aching fingers into the sand. Her triceps squeezed in reaction with her movement combined with the poisons. There was a hiss from Echo, but it was not the dead snake coming alive. She forced her body to roll onto her stomach. Then the real trials began. She gathered she didn’t have too far a distance, and that the trek would not be horrible. There was so much wrongness to that belief, but the bizarre woman whispered that Echo, the machine, could bear that pain and bear it as long as needed.

Gathering her will and strength, Echo jerked first one knee under her and then the other. Her teeth clenched down and there was a low growl as her thighs contracted. A fire spread up and across her pelvic region and screamed at her to relax and rest, to be rid of such undesirable pain. The bizarre woman refused and disbanded the burdens and threw them upon Echo. Echo slid her body forward, stretching out like a cat, shifting hot sands around her hands. She gathered her knees again and slid her body forward. And did it again. The last time she gathered her knees, Echo didn’t slide. She had nowhere to go for she had reached her destination: in front of November.

“No,” Echo croaked out, using her arms to sit herself up. Her latissimi dorsi screeched and tightened, making Echo’s body cringe and bend forward a little at first. The muscles in her arms burned with her abdomen and thighs. Her head pounded and Echo was dizzy. Sparks and dots filled her vision with multicolor play while the edges grew black. Those gray eyes focused on the shapes that were November’s body. Echo lifted her hands and placed them on the knees of November’s body. “Little woman inside November, no. Listen here. November is already dead. Whatever was November’s life is past. It does not belong to you. You are new. Just as I am. And just as the man inside Delta’s body is new. It’s different, woman, it’s going to be different, because we are in the bodies of machines. It is our shell, but we have an inside too, and it is different. The inside has different people.

“That is what Green Meadows was trying to hide, I think. They were trying to hide our insides. They made us into machines. We’re broken. We’re broken because we found our insides, but they are trapped, still, by this machine. Do you understand, November?” Echo shook her head, wished she hadn’t for a spell of dizziness gripped her and her muscles contracted once again. Fingers gripped November’s legs a bit harder. “We don’t need to break the shell, though. It’s our protection. However, our insides need to be worked at and fill every crevice of our shell. It needs to be full.

“November was Echo’s machine sister. Little woman inside, you are mine. November and Echo killed each other. They were bad sisters. We can be good sisters, though, little woman inside. Stop crying over your machine’s death.” Echo had reached trembling hands up to November’s face and lifted it to look her eye to eye. She swiped away a tear. “And stop blaming her dealings on yourself. You won’t be that, just as I won’t. Look here… and accept being broken. Start steps to be different.”

The bizarre woman inside Echo only hoped the little woman in November would listen and understand.

“Make things right.”

[Kella]

The only way to cope, to react, was death. That is all the trembling woman could wish for. Fact didn't mean anything anymore, and she couldn't survive in that world...

"No."

For a moment, the word devastated her. If Echo would not kill her, then she would have to kill herself, for surely there was nothing else, nothing else she could do... Two hands gripped her knees, and for a moment, November prayed that Echo had lied, that this was death...

"Little woman inside November, no. Listen here. November is already dead. Whatever was November’s life is past. It does not belong to you. You are new. Just as I am."

Confusion overtook her for a moment, knotting new tendrils around her, until maybe the puzzlement would kill her... A tiny little thought, a seed, began to push its way up through the dirt, until finally, a small bit of green worked up out of the mud. And she understood. November could not live without facts. November needed to die, but November was already dead. Now she was pretending to be November, because she didn't know what else to be.

New... it was a word that she had only given to inanimate things, to weapons and paintjobs. Could a person be new, when she was so old? A leaf uncurled in the very depths of her heart, finally brave enough to catch a single sun-beam of hope. She let her mind grow quiet. She listened to the new voice inside her. And oh how she listened! November had been a parasite, leeching away every word so that the Woman could not hear. A tapeworm, sucking out all the sweet color until all that was left was dusty gray ash. But November was gone now, and the words poured into her like warm rain. She kept listening.

“November was Echo’s machine sister. Little woman inside, you are mine. November and Echo killed each other. They were bad sisters. We can be good sisters, though, little woman inside. Stop crying over your machine’s death.”

They were bad sisters, they had been such bad sisters... she felt fingers on her cheek. There was a warmth there that she had never felt before. This sort of kind touch was... new. It had no purpose but to show that somebody cared. The shame and the guilt were burned away by the warmth, and they flew off into the dust, becoming part of the sand. The Woman looked up at the one with the fiery hair and saw that now, the gray eyes did not hate her anymore. The green eyes didn't look down at the gray ones anymore. The green didn't analyze, they did not pool with fear. They were the wide, bright eyes of a newborn, for the first time looking with wonder upon the world.

“Make things right.”

She listened to these words, and they sunk all the way deep into her heart. Her hand trembled no longer as she lifted it to catch the other one, the one that belonged to the gray eyes. She was silent a long moment, as she let the new thoughts trickle through the cracks in the machine and settle into the dirt at the center, feeding the little plant with that one sunlit leaf.

"You are my sister," she said, her voice quiet but even, and there was a quiet, wondrous disbelief in that truth. A truth, not a fact, this new woman understood truth. She nodded slowly, the hot air of the desert slipping around those two clasped hands.

"And we will be good sisters."

She could feel her brow scrunch a bit, and her mouth turn upward, and her eyes change shape. She didn't have to tell them to, they just did, in a way that was fluid, and natural, and right. She smiled. The new person inside her was finally beginning to grow, and she wanted to learn everything about it that she could. Mostly right now, it liked to listen. And to think. Mostly to listen, and at last, understand.

Slowly, she rocked her weight forward, pushing down on her left leg to move to a squat, and then slowly, she pushed her legs out straight. They still moved strong, like the machine, and they still ignored the burning pain, like the machine, but now the Woman was in control, and she drew up her arm to hold part of her sister's weight as her own. A sister was family, and family was something the machine had never understood. But the Woman could, even though she had never learned anything about it. Something had taken a dark pen and written it deep within her, in a way that could never be forgotten, only buried. And the Woman took gentle fingers and brushed the dirt off that little bit of her that knew what family was, and she set it up in a special place. When her sister stood, she turned to look at her in the eyes, and there was a new steadiness in her chin, as the Woman let her face show what she felt.

"You are my sister," she said, her soft voice reveling in the words. She nodded slowly. "And I do not know how, but we will make things right."

A great torch was lit on the horizon, framing a sun with a burning halo as it converged with the sand and set below the earth. Long shadows stretched across the dunes, pooling in a footprint. It was the first of many the new, strange women would leave behind.

[Dire Wolf]

Round 5

Echo - Squee
Effort: 5/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 4/5
Bonus: 0/2
Comments: Good post ^_^

November - Kellaishleya
Effort: 4/5
Fairness: 5/5
Detail: 4/5
Coolness: 5/5
Bonus: 0/2
Comments: Also good. ^_^

Total:
Squee - 101
Kell. - 99

Squee / Echo is the clear and honorable victor! Squee, feel free to make one more post to wound, punish, embarrass, sodomize, eliminate, or befriend November. ^_^