[center][h3]The Final Hollow - O the Humanity[/h3]
Level 6 Juri (35/60)
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1917 +3*2 [/center]

Just when Juri had been sneaking in, she had been yoinked up into some nightmare scenario where, apparently, one of the Seekers had to choose to die. Considering she thought she was running with selfless hero types, it took way longer than she thought for someone else to cave. Eventually, Princess Midna did and it dropped Juri right back where she was before, like it was all in her head. Taking a moment to regain her composure, Juri turned her eyes upward through the glass dome at the encroaching moon, her mouth falling open. 

[b][color=ec008c]”Tch,”[/color][/b] Juri sneered and kept moving through the outside of the enclosure. [b][color=ec008c]”Course it had to be the blue chick who vacuumed up my bike to bite the bullet. Where the hell is my cycle, now?”[/color][/b] Juri complained to herself. 

Not long after Juri slipped through the Cretaceous enclosure’s electric fence with the help of her hacking ability, a familiar crimson light shone down through the glass dome of O’s Command Center. When the martial artist looked up, she saw the Consul’s giant, disembodied eyes phase through the glass and descend toward her, narrowed in frustrated incredulity around his glowing lemniscate pupils. “What!? How in the world did you…?” They squeezed closed, then shook from side to side. Without the rest of O’s head there to gesticulate, the motion looked a little odd, but Juri got the memo.

Juri couldn’t help but laugh, looking up at the eyes. Her artificial eye glowed as she prepared to use another hack, expecting O to try something.

“Bah, nevermind that. Look, let’s talk this over.” O lowered his tone insistently, his voice a conspiratorial, projected whisper. “Why are you even fighting us? I know you’re not like the others. I’ve got an eye for these things, see. You don’t play by their rules. So why are you dancing on their strings?” His eyes swerved around her, their gaze bemused. “Don’t you know they’ve sent you on a suicide mission? Even if you do ‘save the world’, your existence ends with the Endless Now!”

Juri narrowed her eyes at the accusation she was dancing on anyone’s strings. But she didn’t let this conversation stop her from searching around the perimeter of the glass dome. When O mentioned the suicide mission, she did slow, her eyes unfocusing for a moment with interiority, before she kept moving forward. 

[b][color=ec008c]”You must be worried if you’re tryin’ to turn me. Talk about a pie in the sky. How ‘bout you show me where you are and we speak in person?”[/color][/b] She said with a grin. Juri was fairly immediacy oriented these days, and the pleasure of murdering some desperately bargaining overlord was high on her priority list. 

As Juri snooped around the various consoles and rooms that ringed the Command Center’s upper levels, which seemed to be mostly full of large, blinking machines with no discernible purpose, O’s entreaty grew subtly more urgent. “Of course I’m worried,” he hissed as if through gritted teeth. “After all, this world is all that [i]any of us[/i] have. If -and that’s a big if- you all actually do destroy the World of Light, it’s not like you’ll wake up with everything back to normal. Maybe some semblance of us will continue on out there, but the ‘we’ who live now will be really, truly dead! Don’t ‘we’ deserve to live!? Better to reincarnate again and again in the World of Light–or better yet, become Moebius! Moebius is immortality. Don’t you see, that could be you!” 

His eyes widened as he spoke, and as if to underscore his point, he began to create all sorts of things around Juri. Grass, plants, trees, furniture, vehicles, animals, workers, and more all showed up for a moment, then disappeared. Only a rather expensive-looking motorcycle remained; evidently O had been listening to Juri’s mutters. “The whole world, your very own playbox. Power? Prestige? Revenge? Entertainment? Whatever you crave, it could be yours! Why sacrifice your very existence for them, when you could rule over such fools instead, bend them to your every whim!” Judging by the speed and intensity of his monologued appeal, Juri must be getting close to his hiding spot.

Juri’s stance widened, gripping her Ghoulsaw tightly as she moved forward, surveying the changing objects until her eyes landed on the motorcycle. Consul O could make objects and creatures appear out of thin air, she wasn’t trying to be caught off guard.  More than her eyes, she relied on her ears. Her heart began to race, and some deep-seated anger began to boil under the surface. This guy and all his ‘points’ were really rubbing her the wrong way. 

Still. She couldn’t pretend O didn’t have her attention. [b][color=ec008c]”You ever heard of a guy named M. Bison? Sometimes he goes by Vega. Big guy in a stupid hat, white eyes and shit-eating grin. Leader of Shadaloo. World dominating type.”[/color][/b] She asked. 

The Consul paused long enough for it to be conspicuous. “...And what if I have?”

Juri chuckled breathily, now certain that he had.  [b][color=ec008c]”Do the math, genius. You offered me revenge. I could even kill someone like him, right?”[/color][/b] She asked, though she felt like she already knew the answer and was already out of patience. 

“As many times as you could ever want,” O replied, his voice a little too eager. In the pause that followed, there happened to be a brief lull in the battle outside, and Juri heard a metallic clank a couple doors down.

That took her by surprise, and Juri’s eyes widened. As many times as she wanted. At the clank, she turned over her shoulder, and her face soured. Her knuckles whitened. [b][color=ec008c]”Because he’d never really die.”[/color][/b] She growled. She wanted him to suffer. But more than that, she wanted to kill him. Really kill him. 

Her hands shook. [b][color=ec008c]”He’d come back like he always does. I could torture him for eternity and he’d forget it every ten years. I’d have to start over forever until I ended up like you, trying to bargain my way out of a fight as some new batch of fucking dickheads tries to kill me!”[/color][/b] Juri sped forward with a Drive Rush, looking to search as much ground as possible now that her temper had suddenly boiled over. She couldn’t believe she let this arrogant prick slow her down for even a second! Play her for a fool?! God damn it! 

[b][color=ec008c]”So come on out, asshole! I think you’re the only one between the two of us here that can [i]really[/i] die!”[/color][/b] Juri called out.

After a moment of stunned surprise, O gave a raspy snarl. “Argh! Vitriolic brat. Would you spite the air for having to breathe it? Your mother for having birthed you?” He paused for a moment, then snickered. “Ah, that must be it! What use is eternity for one for whom existence itself is ennui? What you really crave, then, must be death!”

When Juri burst through the door with a Drive Rush-boosted strike, she finally spotted him. A Consul, armored and masked like all the rest, but wizened and wheelchair-bound. On either side of him stood six zookeepers with randomized appearances but uniformly dead eyes, tranquilizer rifles at the ready. Between them and the door lay an obstacle course of waist-high metal food troughs full of meat, water, and vegetables. O’s Moebius eyes reappeared in front of his helmet, flaring up with red light. “Fire!”

[b][color=ec008c]”Shitty geezer!”[/color][/b] Juri spat. If she was one thing, it was vitriolic. She lit up with blue Drive Parry energy, and swatted the six darts out of the air with a broad-sided swipe of her Ghoulsaw, letting it swing out wide. She launched herself forward with another Drive Rush. Her feet left the ground as she span nearly sideways through the air over the first few obstacles, saw blade extended.  Then her Ghoulsaw slammed into the ground and she planted her feet on top of it. She would let it carry her with a horrifying metallic yowl as it carved through floor and trough alike, only made more manic by the speed increase and streak of energy from her rush and the spray of debris and detritus as she barrelled towards Consul O. At this rate she was looking to carve him and his wheelchair up the middle. 

As she closed in, however, an electric fence shot up to protect O from the front. A [url=https://i.imgur.com/nQuVo0u.png]prehistoric -themed concession stand[/url] then popped up around him to shield him from all other angles, its walls of solid stone. With all O’s efforts focused on defense, however, only his zookeepers remained to actually attack Juri. They kept shooting at her, even if their aim left something to be desired; from a physical standpoint, they seemed to be completely normal humans.

	Juri reared back, stopping suddenly and hooking her foot on a lever of the Ghoulsaw. She leaned all the way back and tapped her prosthetic eye as her shoulder blades hit the floor, darts sailing through the space she had just occupied. A moment passed and the electric fence turned off. She span on the floor in a break-dance like maneuver and then lunged through the gap in the fence towards O, taking her Ghoulsaw with her to dive inside and slice into his thighs before she even hit the ground. 

O howled, his body wrenching in agony as his wordless cry resounded within the echo chamber he’d boxed himself into. While his legs didn’t do him much good, as indicated by his wheelchair, he was still unfortunate enough to have feeling in them. When his concentration was broken and his body moved, his ocular apparition melted away, and the Consul was nothing but a defenseless old man. He had only one card left to play: an attempted to teleport away in a flare of purple Moebius energy, but that would take precious seconds he didn’t have.

Juri let the Ghoulsaw fall where it lay after she landed on the ground, and skittered forward like a spider after its prey. [b][color=ec008c][i]”C’mere!”[/i][/color][/b] She growled, twisting her body to slam her heel into his face to interrupt whatever spell he was casting, knocking him onto his side. 

[b][color=ec008c]”Wuh oh!”[/color][/b] She crowed. Then her plan was simple: stomp his neck and twist. With only the feeblest manner of opposition at his disposal, O could do nothing to stop her. He could only gasp in terrified desperation. “Wait-!” Then came a terrible crack, and the Consul’s body went limp.

Juri stood in silence for a moment, exhaling. She gave the body an extra kick to make sure he started turning to ash. Instead, she quickened his disintegration into glowing purple particles that left not the slightest trace behind, not even a spirit. Juri frowned. The Consuls were different than everyone else in this fake-ass candyland world, she thought. She guessed they didn’t ash. 

[b][color=ec008c]”’...Wait-!’”[/color][/b] She repeated mockingly. [b][color=ec008c]”Heard that one before. Not so eternal now, huh?”[/color][/b] Juri asked, picking up her Ghoulsaw. She gave it a wipe, brushing some of the fruit chunks off of it with a frown. 

[b][color=ec008c]”...Tch”[/color][/b] Juri grit her teeth. [b][color=ec008c]”Ennui. What a loser.”[/color][/b] She mumbled. She slipped out of the gate and dealt with the remaining guards in a manner-of-fact way. 

Juri tipped her head skyward through the dome and to the encroaching monster moon, and listened to the battle outside. [b][color=ec008c]”Uuugh. Alright. Where’s that turtle brat and his toy boat sister?”[/color][/b] She asked, before moving to leave the room to find them. She'd find the dome completely empty.