The Book Keeper VS The Cereal Killer - Round 2
Hmph. Apparently, the sailor was smarter than Motley had anticipated - not only had Runch managed to find a way out of his grasp, but he’d recognised his own aerial superiority, and taken the opportunity to try and escape. Keyword: “try”. If he had any say in it, there was no way Crue would allow him time to recover; to that end, Motley gathered up the reel of wire that he’d just been struck by, cereal pellets dissolving into nothing overhead as tendrils of Heavy Fuel impaled them. Metal wasn’t able to hold a Ripple charge, true, and his Stand’s effective range was only a few meters… but it would still be quite the useful thing if he could throw it hard enough.
Of course, Runch had to be smart enough to first fly upward and out of Motley’s range, and
then into Oldtown proper, leaving Motley unable to react properly beforehand. And at that pace, it’d be vexing to try and keep up. Still, he didn’t intend to run that fast for long. The moment the pirate captain chose a direction to fly in, Motley began to give chase, his feet cracking the ground as he ran and his hands severing the tripwires in his path with no care for the traps that triggered in his wake, inevitably too late to catch him, until he came within meters of the colosseum’s wall. And when he could run no further, he jumped upward, taking each level as though they were individual stairs, until he once more reached the highest level of the amphitheatre and leapt again.
Despite both fighters now being airborne, the pirate was still some fifteen or twenty meters out of range of Heavy Fuel… but not the wire. Applying a slight Black Ripple charge to straighten it out again, Motley hurled it like a javelin, sending the filament flying in Runch’s direction. Even after it left the Stand’s range, the speed at which it moved forced it to remain relatively straight, and whilst he’d intended it to impale Runch through the left knee, it still managed to strike the man’s right calf, the wire piercing straight through and drawing out a bellow of pain.
But that was only half the goal. Now devoid of charge or air pressurisation, the wire whipped back into a spiral, wrapping tightly round Runch’s other leg and pinning the two limbs together, cutting into both in the process. As a result, the jets of cereal that had been Bartholomew’s propulsion system found themselves forced to interfere with one another, and the legs themselves nearly uncontrollable as the pirate entered a spiral of aerial confusion and spraying cereal.
At the same time, Motley took his time falling as a moment to consider his next action. If any suitable buildings had been around, he’d have landed atop one of them, then leapt from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit of his foe. As it was, the buildings in this part of the city were old, and seemed to mostly have straw covering the living space inside. He’d make do with the ground, then; slightly readjusting his flight path, and keeping an eye on Runch as the pirate twisted toward the ground, he hit Oldtown’s tiles with a loud smash, retaining his momentum with a roll and a spring in the direction his foe had attempted to flee. Sure enough, he caught up just as Runch managed to barely avoid a crash landing, through a directed burst of cereal aimed straight downward.
’Well played, my friend,’ Runch congratulated the vampire, again beginning to head skyward with a cereal jet from his feet, more controlled than it had been in the past few seconds,
’but a gooseberry fool I am not! I see this chase will need a bit more distraction than just my jets, though! Bori Bori Firehose!’ A dense stream of pastel-colour cereal burst out of Runch’s hands, an effort to knock Motley away as well as begin propelling himself to a safe location. Whilst he certainly began to gain distance, the dark crackle of Heavy Fuel’s power dissolved the cereal before it could so much as touch Motley, though if nothing else it helped obscure Motley’s view of Runch himself.
Yet the sensation of searing pain shooting through both of his legs, the Black Ripple and the unravelling wire serving to try and destroy them entirely, was not encouraging for him. Unseen by the Cereal Killer, a gaseous hand had extended out as far as it could toward him, and managed to graze a single wisp of a fingertip against the wire, only serving to focus the power of Motley’s Stand and his Dark Ripple much more densely as it emitted from a single point. Gritting his teeth, Runch forced himself to double the jet’s force to get out of the invisible spectre’s range- surprisingly quickly, he found- then quickly slashed through the wire poking out of the front of his leg with the Spoonsaber. Yanking the rest out from the back, both parts fell to the ground, clattering as they landed; even so, he could feel his legs protesting at the harm done to them, and wondered if they’d be able to support his weight once he landed.
What would my doctor recommend in this situation? Runch briefly wondered to himself as he sheathed his unique weapon. The answer came to him quite quickly, and unsurprisingly to anyone who knew Dr. Wutong “Malpractice” Ken, it wasn’t to try and heal himself immediately. A memory slowly surfaced of an island of wooden planks and largely law-breaking inhabitants, where they’d faced off against an otherwise-minor opponent who seemed to be able to predict exactly what he and his crew were going to do, and even where they were if they stayed in one place too long. Along with another crew member, Hachiro H. Hachirou, he and Ken had found a temporary respite in an alley, all of them the worse for wear after their enemy’s assault.
He recalled himself asking what they were to do about the man.
’How can we strike a foe who knows when and where we’re going to attack him better than a farmer knows when his apples are ripe for picking?’ were his exact words. According to the drunken doctor, the answer was quite obvious: ‘Well, iv he c’n predic’ wher… heh, “predic”... you’sh gonna attack, den you’sh gotta… yunno, whuzzah word?… attack unprediccably. Heheheh.’
‘And make sure each possible hit is as hard as possible,’ Hachirou had interjected with philosophical calm immediately afterwards, a significant statement for how rarely he spoke. Bartholomew had seen sense in the Zoan eater’s words as well as the medic’s: if random chance only allowed for one hit, then it had to be as damaging as possible to make sure the target went down, and if he couldn’t predict which hit that would be, then by definition it had to be all of them.
The latter part of the memory hadn’t been recalled intentionally, but he thanked his lucky stars that it had made its presence known. He’d come up with a new sort of cereal at the time, what he now referred to as Hellberry, and had needed to figure out ways of tuning its power, to make sure it didn’t accidentally kill any foes too weak to withstand its force… as well as how to deliver the payload itself, if the foe was too fast to hit with the regular pellets. His best idea, forced by the circumstances, was a sort of dumb missile: two fused pellets of cereal, one the Hellberry recipe, the other a slower-burning predecessor that, shaped to form a hollow space within, made for surprisingly good propulsion, albeit much too powerful for Runch to reasonably control the flight path it formed. He never had gotten round to figuring out a way of controlling that, thinking about it from a present perspective… his Bori Bori Jet was much more precise, he supposed.
And at that, he reminded himself that he still had a vampire hot on his tail. It seemed reasonable to assume that strategy would have as much success against Motley as against his past enemy: random, unpredictable attacks in all directions, strong enough to defeat the foe even if just one made its mark. And unlike last time, there was no need to dumb down the explosive power - he was absolutely certain the enemy wouldn’t die, even from a direct hit.
’Bori Bori Missile Storm!’ he yelled, the missiles emerging from his body and shooting out in roughly Motley’s direction, and that was before their thrusters ignited, sending them flying away randomly and at incredible speeds. Many crashed into one another, exploding in mid-air; others hit the buildings or waterlogged streets around the two fighters, blowing holes in the brickwork and sending sprays of liquid sky-high, not all of which were pure water. And others still headed roughly toward their mark, threatening Motley as they rained down around him.
To Runch’s credit, Motley did react to the barrage, though only by rolling his eyes.
’Are you sure this is your best effort, Barty?’ he asked mockingly, yanking out two large fistfuls of his own hair and charging them with Dark Ripple energy, the long strands straightening in the same way the wire had. Unlike the wire, and as living (or unliving, so to speak) material, they’d actually retain the charge, meaning they’d prove a lot more useful considering their intended purpose. The bald spots on his head already regrowing, he flung the hair out before him dramatically, each strand spinning to form a nigh-impregnable barrier in front of Motley - thin enough that he could still see through it, yet tough enough to block machine gun fire, and easily more than sufficient to vaporise each missile that might otherwise have struck him, without the obfuscating cloud that Heavy Fuel alone would have generated.
Admittedly, the Kaptain had expected the attack to be a bit more effective than it was. On the other hand, the constant fall of explosives did seem to stop him from doing much else for the time being… and they were about to move across a patch of water, at that! That might slow him down. Though as Motley continued to run across the liquid’s surface undeterred, the pirate was a bit confused for a moment. Apparently, he’d missed the part in his journal where the Ripple interacted with water in odd ways. Or perhaps the vampire was just that quick-footed. If nothing else, he supposed whatever energy Motley had would deplenish as he continued defending himself, whereas he could launch as much cereal from his body as he liked and not lose a bowl’s worth of his own strength.
...aha. That sparked an idea in his mind, one he considered for a moment longer than necessary. It seemed there wasn’t any reasonable way to so much as harm the inhuman beast pursuing him, yet the overkill it would represent… well, he had to try something to succeed, he supposed. Slightly altering how his barrage of lighter missiles emerged, initially launching them from his sides instead of his back before they ignited and flew at the Book Keeper, he began to generate a much larger attack: the same style of missile, but engorged to the size of a human torso. The jet alone ought to be capable of vaporising a human; who knew what sort of blast radius the payload would have. And unlike his former foe, the Book Keeper didn’t have the power to foresee it. The only question was what to name such an attack, and in short order, he knew the answer - filched from a top-secret Marine order that he’d only heard rumours about, with his own fruity spin on it.
’Bori Bori Berry Buster!’ he cried, firing the missile from his body, along with a final burst of smaller missiles. Before it ignited, he generated a thick wall of cereal, a heat-resistant barrier that would deflect the flames, and coincidentally tasted of strong chili pepper. A nice contrast to the milk it was intended to be eaten in. Even so, he felt the heat from the missile’s activation from behind the wall, albeit for only a brief moment as the Buster missile rocketed towards where Motley had been half a second before.
Evidently, an attack like that wasn’t one to take lightly. Even for Crue, a direct hit from it would spell curtains, but what Runch hadn’t considered was the time it took to generate that much cereal for a single attack - to a normal human, a second or so would be allowed to recognise their own death; to an already-superhuman being with even greater physical enhancements beyond their kin, that might as well be an hour, with or without precognition. The dodge was made more complicated by Motley’s placement atop the water, but at the same time, that placement allowed him to push his Stand into its depths, generating two conflicting Dark Ripple charges that essentially generated a powerful, semi-solid geyser. Combined with a leap of his own, that was more than enough to throw him into the air again, just as the missile shattered the hair barrier like it wasn’t there, crashed into the column of water, and erupted into a street-wide blast.
On the one hand, he avoided the worst of the damage from the shockwave itself. On the other hand, what remained of Heavy Fuel in that water column was scattered and burned away in a moment, searing Motley’s legs halfway to black eschar and badly cracking the bones within. The pain was severe, but not for long; 4th-degree burns were relatively painless once they destroyed the nerves in the skin, and Motley himself was well-versed in withstanding pain and recovering from otherwise-terminal harm. More importantly, the jet stream from the Buster shot had provided Runch with yet more momentum, leaving him close to outright escape.
Motley couldn’t allow that. He had one attack left to try and force his opponent to land, or he could end up searching for hours just to find the pirate again, and who knew what he’d do in that time? Speaking of “one attack”, only one immediately came to mind as far as stopping something at range went, a failure of his abilities he intended to fix once this fight was over. Aiming his right hand at his airborne opponent, the tips of his fingers first turned bright red, then swelled up and finally burst with great force; at the same time, his pointed fingernails detached from their bases, still connected to him by a trail of blood vessels and nerve endings, and were then propelled toward K. Runch by the gory detonation of his fingers, aiming to penetrate his body and shock him into submission.
At the same moment, Kaptain K. Runch had felt the need to look back toward Motley once his Berry Buster had detonated. It was only smart to ensure that your foe had been defeated after a burst of explosive flavour like that, after all. He was therefore quite surprised to see a spray of what looked like tiny harpoons flying toward him from Motley’s direction; once he had, though, he changed direction almost reflexively, suddenly flying rightward and out of the path of the nails as they passed through his former location, flying into the near distance and slowly losing speed and height.
A combination of relief and surprise led to Runch beginning to laugh out loud. To Motley, all that registered was amusement, and for the first time in the fight, he began to get visibly cross. How dare that pirate laugh at him, when he was running away from a fight he’d called the original starting point of to begin with? After searing his legs to near-uselessness, at that! Deciding the pirate really did need to be taught some manners, he whipped his hand rightward, sending a corresponding wave through the string of blood vessels connecting to his nails, getting more massive as it passed down their length. By the time it reached the far end, the sideways movement was far more pronounced, more than enough to suddenly crack into Runch’s body from the side. The makeshift wires wrapped around him, shocking him into an anguished scream mid-laugh, seizing up his entire body and preventing him from focusing enough to continue generating his cereal jets, or any sort of cereal that might otherwise free him.
But that wasn’t all, not in the least. Now that he had a firm grip on the pirate and a vicious smirk of self-righteous fury on his lips, Motley flung his hand downward, the motion again transmitting along the veins and nerves to where Runch was tangled up, and sending the man flying into the ground and the wall of a nearby building quite forcibly, at which point his makeshift weapons finally untangled from Runch and wound back into Crue’s body. Once again, though, Motley found himself in the unenviable position of falling to ground level, and this time his legs wouldn’t take the weight of an impact so well.
Perhaps another combat roll, then? he mused. That’d preserve his momentum as before, and perhaps let him execute a somersault to expend it afterward, but might also prevent him from shattering his body against- well, at this speed, it didn’t quite matter whether he hit water or cobblestone, so long as Heavy Fuel formed a suitable landing surface.
The roll was well-executed initially, as one might expect of a person with near-perfect control over their physique. Twisting in the air to fall headfirst toward the street below, he managed to mitigate the impact against the cobbles successfully, his arms and neck bending over to redirect the force through his back. His legs, however, didn’t take the hit so well, and it was all he could do to make sure they didn’t just collapse on impact, sending himself flipping head over heels, and barely catching himself on his hands again. Ultimately, he wound up flat on his back, skidding to a halt up against the wall of another old house and forcing himself to breath in the right patterns, keeping his internal sunlight barrier active.
I suppose that could have been worse, he shrugged internally, rolling over and pushing himself to his feet. Though still healing from their burns, his legs would withstand a bit of light walking by now. Or at least handle it better than running at full-tilt. The real problem now was that he hadn’t exactly been able to establish where he’d landed compared to Runch, all things considered… would being tossed into the ground like that kill the pirate, he wondered? A quick glance at his phylactery suggested otherwise, as no changes were evident, and the fact that the Nega-Ripple hadn’t killed him outright in the first place meant the pirate captain was far sturdier than he seemed. At this point, he half-wondered if it’d be worth getting the fight over and done with… but, a future ally was a future ally, after all. And from his demeanour, Motley figured the same courtesy would be extended to him whether or not Runch had the ability to slay him at all.
That said, the solution at hand was fairly simple. Cocking his head, and supercharging his hearing with his Ripple power, Motley listened to the vibrations of the air, trying to filter out any nearby sounds that could be…
Well, the shifting of loose brickwork over itself didn’t exactly need superhuman ears to hear. The hyper-sensitised aural functionality did give Motley an idea of where Runch was, though - more so than his memory alone, at least. With that in mind, he began to lightly jog in the appropriate direction, fairly sure that he’d be able to track the man who’d been chosen to fight against him. After being slammed into the ground, surely Runch was badly injured, or at least unable to escape pursuit simply by flying away. Perhaps some of his bones would have been broken by Motley’s last strike, if he was lucky.
A couple of minutes passed before the vampire finally crossed the sailor’s former location, with the man himself nowhere to be seen. He had, however, left behind him a trail of greyish brick dust and… tiny red cereal pellets? That smelled and even tasted faintly of blood, no less. How queer. Even so, they would make following Runch’s trail a bit easier. Unless he’d set a trap of some sort… but listening out again, it certainly sounded a lot like the pirate’s footsteps were headed in that direction, and so it was that direction Crue headed off. Either way, he wasn’t done with Runch just yet.
