Preacher :

{Sunlit.}

A day bright, a day devoid of most life, and a path leading through a long abandoned brick and wood town told the man known as Preacher that somehow, someway, this’d be a day of battle. Immediately or eventually he did not know but his strolling pace was at least absorbing the brightness of the day. Gloved hands sat comfortably within front side pockets of a long somewhat faded black colored unbuttoned preachers coat (which was wound over a white button up dress shirt), dress pant clad legs and booted feet carried him forward and dark eyes, almost hidden behind a messy main of indistinguishable but dark unkempt head and facial hair, consistently peered forward past most things within range. Slung over his shoulder was what he called a ‘Beam Rifle’ with a bayonet attachment, through his coat, though hard to see, a little leather ‘pack’ seemingly jingled small but audible metal clacks as he moved.

Days like these, despite his drab monotone somewhat melancholy personality, were things he quietly enjoyed. The area itself somewhat revived him of more rural areas of home and the day, well, that in itself was wonderful. Near the center of the abandoned town, our Preacher fellow stopped in his tracks. Abandoned oldish looking vehicles lined various chunks of what obviously was a small but stable main street. A particular building at this point in time, a two story thing that was probably a general store, had one of its older stuck out bricks finally break and plop on the ground with a soft thud, something our Preacher fellow bore witness to. Eyes trailed to various one story abandoned buildings of various makes, sizes, and heights and stopped once again somewhere on the road were ahead of him someone had made (a long abandoned one, like everything else) a makeshift barricade. It was an odd thing considering there didn’t appear to be a sign of a struggle anywhere, or skeletal remains for that matter and the barricade itself seemed strangely placed.

“…”

It made Preacher sniff a bit and, that was that really. Licks lipped quietly, our Preacher fellow adjusted himself were he stood but did just that, in a dull fashion; stood in a seemingly aimless fashion. He was thirsty, an eagle cried out in the distance and…none of this is really relevant but, eh, little details while the impending sense of ‘threat’ would not leave our Preacher fellows mind.

@Zyamasiel

A planet teeming with life, nearly idyllic in its beauty. People lulled about their days lackidaisically, without a worry or a care in the whole of the world. Why should they? Robots did their manual labor, machines designed and created specifically just to give them a hedonistic lifestyle. They were soft, as no threat loomed in their near future. Violence was all but eradicated from their planet, save outposts far from the hustle and bustle of the major cities. Even weapons were a thing of the distant path. If need be, the robots could defend them in their own ways - but as far as they knew, they were the only life in the Universe. For those fortunante enough to grow up within the walls of the vast, sprawling cities, it was a dream come true.

Stacey was one of those. She spent her days lounging, indulging in her every whim. A steady supply of food, men, and liquor kept her pushing onward in her life. Her father, the governor of Erebourus, supplied her with plenty of money to see to her every need. At twenty-six, she'd never worked a day in her life. Today, with the sun shining brightly overhead, she found herself lounging beside the emerald waters of her pool. Bathing suit barely covering her body, and her glasses shielding her from her eyes from the harsh rays of the sun. Androids with as near human appearance as one could give them patrolled the grounds. Their sharp eyes and sensor arrays ensuring no ne'er-do-wells entered the premises.

"Stacey, honey, would you mind coming in here for a second?" The sound of her father's voice was soft, gentle. A man accustomed to having everything handed to him, much like the daughter he raised. He was not a hard man, not a man of experience. He knew only what he learned in all his years of life in the docile city.

"Coming, father," she called back, wrapping her towel around her lithe frame and standing up. Bare feet carried her through the opened glass doors at the back of their house. Her father stood in the kitchen, his face belying the turmoil beneath him.

"Sweetheart, have you been having sex with the Griffin boy?" His words weren't harsh, he didn't have it in him to stand up to his daughter - to actually even imply a slight tone of anger. For her part, she just looked him up and down, smirking.

"Him. His dad. His brother. Even their mother, why father? Are you jealous?" She said mockingly, her silken voice barely hiding the undertones of excitement. She'd wondered when this moment would come.

"J...jealous! Prepostorous. They're attempting to extort me, you know. Threatening to release videos of your escapades unless I pay them!" His voice steadily rose, as the anger inside finally began to boil over. It was an emotion he was unaccustomed to, having never felt it in such a meteroic manner. "How dare you put this family in this position you...you...slut." He finally lashed out, the back of his hand striking across her jaw. The resounding crack splitting open her lip.

She didn't utter another word, and instead turned and ran. Out of the house, off the property - leaving her towel behind. She ran into the city, where she used a pretty smile and a silver tongue to retrieve some clothes from a local vendor. She walked the streets, greeting those who greeted her. Smiling at the young men and their fathers. Waving. Here, in the streets, she forgot about the happenings at home. She forgot about anything and lost herself in the tranquility.

Arriving at the local park, she sat on a bench and tilted her head back to look up at the sky. It was then that the first sign of something truly wrong came. A deep, sinking feeling in her gut that forbode something terrible coming. Something that would, she somehow felt, completely ruin everything they'd worked so hard to achieve.

-----------------------------------------------------

Hunger. That was what she felt. An emotion circling through her, burning away all the rest. Heralds felt little to begin with, aside from the unsatible hunger. The indomitable need to eat, to consume. To destory. It flowed through them like blood through veins. It formed a hole that couldn't be filled. Though they tried. Planet after planet. People after people. They tried so hard. It was the hunger that brought her here, to this planet. It was teeming with life in the right places, and the General Cataclysm would find resources. For her? She would find much needed bioforce.

A high concentration of it sat below them, just beneath the belly of the massive Scourgebearer. It was there the invasion began, yet she did not join the Riflemutants. They fell from the belly to the surface with only a frenzied desire to feed, to kill. It was they that would wipe out the planet. No, The Voidmistress' task was different. Not to consume, not to feed herself - though she indirectly fed through the Hivemind. Her task was simple. Stop all opposition.

A scan of the planet showed nothing of the sort, save a man in the wildlands. He seemed alone, or at least near enough to it - and their scans revealed him as the only one with a weapon on hand. It would be Caitlyn's job to take him out. And trust that she was extremely good at her job. As the last Riflemutant fell from the Scourgebearer, it moved on. Not under any kind of control, save for its own sentient mind. The Voidmistress moved from the nerve center, slipping through the mucus-lined, membrane walls until she sat atop what could only be described as its head.

Finally, they came upon the semi-desolate wasteland town. Caitlyn looked down upon it with disgust. Disdain. That was Isaak, his mind was linked to her own - and even from a distance measured in the thousands of lightyears, she could sense his distaste of what she saw. She felt it so strongly, that it became what she felt as well. As the shadow of the Scourgebearer landed over the city, Caitlyn stepped down. The wind rushed past her ears, but she rarely noticed it.

Her legs hit the ground, and her knee bent. The concussive force of it blasted dust and sod around her - leaving behind a slight crater in her wake. For the first time, her body became fully visible to the people on the surface. A lithe, crystalline structure. Harder than any diamond with enough strength to rip the head off any creature she came across. The Voidmistress was aptly named, her body itself became a void. Looking upon it, one would see the swirling of galaxies and stars in the dark expanse that composed her feminine frame. Once, many centuries ago, The Marquise gifted her with this body. And through him, she became something more than another Val'garan Herald. She became an endless expanse.

She was wrought with power, filtered through the void from her enemies. Magic was useless against her, as if the void itself simply drained the energy which powered it - siphoning it into her self as soon as it touched her, purifying it. Changing and draining it. A sheer touch of her crystal body would drain the bioforce from the living, fueling her seemingly endless power. This man, this guy before her in the unbuttoned coat toting the rifle. He was the only registered threat. Her job was to deal with threats.

So, she supposed, it was her job to deal with him.

Preacher:

{Suns Blocking?}

Appearance at random for both sides; it was in its own way so meta that it almost weren’t worth mentioning were it not for the fact this seemed to happen with almost every sort of fight in the history of existence. This and more passed through the (pardon sudden details, forgot to mention it previously) mind of the 6’6 strangely ‘evened out’ (at least with his attire) body as Caitlyn, dubbed Void Mistress (unknown to Preacher of course) literally descended/impacted before him, crater and all. His expression did not change but internally things were whirring.

Hands reached for different directions, in a modest but well-paced fashion at that. His right for the gun slung over his shoulders, our Preacher fellow not exactly moving to grab it but still oddly enough reaching for the trigger. There was a click and maybe Caitlyn had the ability to ‘see’ beyond vision (IE behind Preacher) and maybe not but the strange simple motion he made amounting to using a sturdy if not thin hook to keep the trigger pulled back. Oddly enough it did not fire but the hard-glass container began to change colors as internal mechanisms working with a highly sufficient battery began moving and glowing a low but light shade of red. Something for later, or so Preacher hoped, but in the meantime he needed to try to keep the woman occupied didn’t he?

The left hand mentioned had moved more towards that mentioned leather pouch and hopefully enough time was given for him to throw what he called a Force Orb. Softball sized and shaped silver colored with purple lining the side, bottom, and top, the Force Orb contained a literal force turbine that, upon being tossed, utilized the small but concentrated force it generated to stay afloat. Four smaller versions of it, with likewise smaller turbines exited through small ports on each ‘point’ of the Force Orb. With rapid speed, both ‘mother’ and ‘children’ Force Orbs vibrated and then, at first, didn’t directly assault. Kinetic force was generated through the turbines of all four and one would be right to assume this was semi-useless at the beginning but the key here is what the Orbs absorbed and how they processed the Kinetic force. As stated the turbines of each is what kept them afloat but it was also a Kinetic force gatherer and amplifier and this served to the basis of its offense. Close together (Say two and a half feet at all sides, the smaller Orbs were ‘surrounding’ the bigger Orb in a square kind of formation) the generated pulse like force emitted from the Orbs basically connected with each other on the spot and though this process meant a good amount was lost in the flow, plenty more, coupled with the fact the generating rate was very high, well, some of that stored Kinetic Force became honed. Soaring and being thrown to other Orbs only increased this and well, the end result was a small, (say one and a half foot tall and half foot in width as a general scope, though they varied) but potent long reaching naturally made force-blast. The potency of these blasts, small or not was apparent as close by old vehicles and buildings found a hole, the size of each blast, punched through them old if not solid brick, metal, and wood were a thing these blasts could almost easily punch through, and a whole bullets hell worth of them were consistently being formed and, despite their scattered process of ‘attack’, giving a wide berth to possibly hit Caitlyn with.

While out Preacher fellow was no mainstay of a supreme force like Caitlyn was, or a cosmic champion of the ages, he liked to think he wasn’t a fool. Despite what he liked to think was a good level of offensive potency from the Force Orb, such a thing might not even do much at all or anything for that matter. The Beam Rifles steady preparation was a technical ‘side arm’ to this possibility if all went to hell as was Preachers gathering power. Psionic energies began to form and accumulate on his person, nothing absolutely visible from the get go but it did show in the form of misty light purple wavy output from his hands and feet, a light measure and form of focus somewhat having been formed in the process but it found itself not having to be used just yet, despite the potential first part of it possibly coming into play already. Exhaling a breath of air, most likely unseen behind that messy main of beard and head hair, red veins began forming around his eyes, to what affect, well, one could only guess.

He was ready though, or hopefully getting to an adequate level of readiness to put up a fight.

The Force Orbs floated about, and they launched themselves toward her with the intention of causing physical pain. Caitlyn saw no need to allow that, and her body undulated the musculature within. Her crystalline body moved forth and her right and left hands slammed together at the center of her mass. The force of it resonated a crystal ringing sound - and the power flooded forth from her body. The void was not simply something of purification, something that immunized her to magical energies. It stored them, and now she unleashed some manner of it with the slamming of one hand against the other.

The force of it resonated, dust flew forth from her body with concussion of her claps. The wind picked up, enough energy behind it that it could easily rip flesh from bone. Tearing muscles from limbs. The grinding force of it lashed out and the force orbs blew apart with the ferocity of the blow. If Preacher remained, his body would simply cease to exist. The blast would tear him to pieces, Caitlyn followed behind the blast, keeping pace with it. If Preacher stood there, and managed to survive the power of the blast itself without moving - she would be right behind it.

Fist upraised, her body turned and tuned to deliver a crushing, devastating blow of his superpowered fist.

Preacher:

{Sun is Close}

To say Preacher was surprised would be wrong. In fact, everything that unfurled in front of him were things he expected. Normally the process itself revolved around the reaction of the opponent before Preacher as one would expect and, well, the loss of the Force Orb was a bit annoying but Preacher could roll with it. A powerful blast, the Force Orb could actually process itself to a point but couldn’t thanks to the semi-wind like property behind it and thus was destroyed as intended but Preacher had long since acted before this. Orb tossed previously, his hands were free, focus on the range of both Orb and opponent before him but primarily on Caitlyn and basically saw ahead to her actions. Gathering force that seemed based on wind, highly tuned and sent his way pushed past his Force Orb and was clearly intent on ripping him asunder and looked like it was going to do just that were it not for his right hand lifting and swaying towards his left

Psionics to the simplest degree. On the effects of the blast no less and not the source. As newly formed as his power was, equally, being the concentrated well versed Psion that he was, Preacher knew his way around wind and Force. He’d often used both himself (sometimes one for the other, much like Caitlyn did here) and for Wind it was a simple process of simply changing the flow of it before the raging wind connected with you, simply turning it back to normal by simply arranging it as such, force winds and the like being mixed (down to the molecule no less) to normal state, simple as that. Force was simply redirected off to another direction, crashing through a car and building in this case, simply applying a more passive defensive but stronger directing-line-wall that accomplished this.

Caitlyn fallowed suit in an attempted punch, and despite the initial seeing and defending against this the blast, this Preacher also saw and was partly the reason he utilized his psionics with his right arm AND the direction he moved it into. Dark eyes of indistinguishable color looked upon Caitlyns face (whether helmeted or not) as his right hand came back, moving in a swift, fluid, strong arc against her punch. The gesture was meant to hit and push the outer side of her forearm with his wrist and force it off its path (with a surprising amount of strength I might add) and across Caitlyn altogether, seeking to Impede her defensive and offensive capabilities (in the form of forcing her initial punching arm to cross over to her over side, arm area specifically to impede or make any fallow up blow less then effective if not impossible) and fallow up by Utilizing his left arm during the process of the defensive motion to swing it forth right towards the possibly exposed right side of her gut. Simple as it was, even with Armor of crystalline nature the punch had a low of force behind it, coupled with a sudden offensive blast of Psionic force meant to mix with the brunt of the punch and send her flying off from were she had once been.

All successful or not, one had to ask just how our Preacher fellow ‘saw’ the magical energies formed of both wind and force, and well, it had to do with the veins on his eyes. Psionic energies could be used for defensive, offense, and inner actions. Toiling within his mind, these energies laced and enhanced his senses, most being invisible to the eye outside of Preachers eyes which at this moment could see both formed and forming energies/power, natural or not as a result of this psionic buffering. It also affected his muscle, skin, and bone systems, making them all stronger, durable, and being the reason behind, whether the psionic force push affected/landed or not and despite the armor, his punch would be felt and punching a harder substance didn’t seem to hurt, not too bad at least.

Veins expanded, grew, and formed around (and partially in) his eyes still, signaling this buff was growing by the second inside and out, while his outer visible malleable psionic energies grew along his arms and up his legs in a practiced familiar fashion Preacher had done before. Simple effective, bearing in mind strategies and points of possible contention as well.

Caitlyn bore no armor. In fact, she bore no clothing at all. Many confused her crystalline structure with armor, or some form of unnatural clothing. In truth, it was simply her. The very nature of her being, infused in her by The Marquise after her assimilation into the Val'garan horde. The Voidmistress barely remembered a body before this one, a mind before this one. Her all-consuming nature was a simple one - to convert, consume, and control. She could no more falter from that path, alter that goal, then she could alter her own appearance. Sure, many found her grotesquely mesmerizing. Many, especially on backwater worlds, viewed her as the Goddess of the Void. She held many titles, many names. Yet, her only true name was simply the one she called upon for herself. The Voidmistress.

And that void was ravenous. The hunger that fed through her, that powered her frame, came from the very core of her being. The nature of her existence was everlasting hunger. As Riflemutants tore through the cities, she fed through their psi-link. The Void expanded around her as she flew behind her fist, propelled forward by the expulstion of kinetic force from the void within and surrounding her. Sinuous red lines broke the air, snaking around her like the tendrils of Medusa's hair. Their point of origin unclear, impossible to discern even for Preacher's eyes. They came from nothing, it seemed, yet they existed all the same. Perhaps it was the inborn nature of Val'garan to be immune to psionic manipulations. Any mental ability attempting to penetrate them, the area around them, only registered static strong enough to leave most minds mush.

Even as Preacher pushed her arm aside, she utilized the very nature of the void. Her hand twisted a full one eighty, made possible by an entirely lacking bone structure beneath the surface of her pseudo-flesh. It bent and latched onto the Preacher's wrist, and then jerked her body forward all the quicker. The result of which was that, even as his hand sought contact with her body - a contact still inches off from being made - her head aimed to slam directly into his face. The seemingly unbreakable sturcture of her body sought to smash his head into the same mush his brain would become, were he to touch minds with her.

Preacher:

{Sun and Moon.}

The folly in the actions taken were two fold. First, that odd twisting occurred on the arm was during the process of it being deflected. As malleable and flexible as the odd diamond like substance/make of the 'woman' was, it was also closeby, in range of the limb already touching it and well, with the heightened sense of both and literal micro-inches between them, to avoid a grab, all the wrist needed doing was moving down just a tad bit, making it miss.

This did not stop Caitlyn from pressing with a offense and neither did it for Preacher. In fact, trying to get closer with a lose ranged heightened psionically powered punch was not exactly what one would consider a good option given the fist was flung and pressing forward meant literally cutting the distance it needed to travel, one might say it was sort of like running into it. Things did not change as the Crystal-being sought to headbutt, no, only the grab would miss and pressing forward meant less amount of distance for the punch to travel, thus, strong punch and strong psionic boom to the stomach, more side at that rate.

Simplicity at its finest, all while things like senses/buffs and psionic power output continued to grow and expand as seconds passed...Not much more to it, really.