[hider=NA Post Holder] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/HWhWXIx.png[/img][/center] [b]Unknown Place - 11/14/2022 ??:?? UTC+8[/b] [hr] A cacophonous howl droned through the air like a siren, omnipresent and all-encompassing enough that it felt like it was vibrating every molecule of her being. A torrent of surging, chaotic energies followed right along, tearing through the air with a shriek that seemed to rip reality asunder in streams of fire, ice, twisted space, lightning, water, "love" and more. There was very little finesse to the assault, just near-mindless brute force and overwhelming emotion. It was less a stream of coordinated attacks as it was a wave of [i]power vomit[/i], churning and roaring out in a barely coherent singular purpose... that being to drown a single target underneath it all. Golden eyes flashed wide, a mind vastly superior to any normal human's paired with a reaction speed to match, calculating trajectories and danger zones in a torrent of data, and the owner's body reacted with cat-like grace, springing into the latest of many twisting motions to thread the needle of chaos. A black and green shield briefly appeared, warding off what portion of the deluge she simply couldn't dodge outright, as she braced her feet on the back side of her Noble Arm and rode the wave of power upwards, leaping at the apex to soar high above a sea of madness. Crackling black ooze flowed over her skin, spilling over from underneath her own clothes and layering over the top of them, as pitch-black spears made of titanium alloy shot forth in all directions like javelins, lancing out around her like she was a giant sea urchin to rip into the screaming ocean below in search of physical purchase, of something approaching solid ground. They did not find it, as the churning sea rippled and shifted around the projectiles. There was a lurch and then an ear-piercing splintering noise, as several of the ungodly durable spears snapped like twigs or unraveled like silly string on contact with the chaos below. She was already falling, but the woman had already anticipated the possibility of failure and prepared accordingly. A parachute billowing out from the ooze coating her back, unfurling with a [i]whumph[/i] and delaying her descent, as she disconnected the spears from her ooze and instead regurgitated a long thin hardened plastic surface from the ooze on her stomach. Low weight. Maneuverable. And most importantly, it provided her power more surface area to work with. Her ooze spread down the surface of the hard plastic sheet, crackling and bubbling, as it bulged and expelled the nose of what seemed to be a large missile with handles mounted on the side. Grinning ferally, Lei Qingshe, Snake of the Zodiac, caught hold of one of those handles, wrenching the rocket free of her shadow fully, as she disconnected the parachute from her back and retracted the plastic plank back into her ooze. In the back of her mind, a wireless connection blinked to life, as she synched with the internal systems she had fixed into the rocket. Now in free-fall, the Snake slung her legs over the side of the rocket, feet sliding into a pair of metallic stirrups, the fins of her new mount flexing in readiness. A single mental command was all it took to ignite the thruster mounted on the back end of her creation in a screaming jet-engine whine, and with a roar, the greenette suddenly became a blur of motion, pealing through the air in an upwards arc that just barely missed plunging into the madness below. The screaming sea [i]howled[/i] its displeasure at her ingenuity, but leaning down to flatten herself against the side of her rocket, the Snake could only grin in response. [color=39b54a]"Alright, then..."[/color] she murmured, as ooze spread from her ears to protectively cover her eyes from the wind, the bubbling mass instead projecting a number of camera lenses for her to see through by proxy, [color=39b54a]"... it's about time I got somewhere with this."[/color] Gritting her teeth, she felt again an ugly, crawling sensation ripple across her skin, one that she'd grown all too familiar with since being trapped in this place. It was more than just normal unease she was certain; in fact, she was confident it was like her very soul and Noble Arm wanted to quail in this place... but the Snake was not one to cower. Not anymore. And that was why, despite having been in a running battle for the past day, she was still not even close to giving up on finding a solution to her current predicament. [color=39b54a][i]What exactly is this supposed to be: the Russian nesting doll of Hell?[/i][/color] ... Summons rocket. Ambushed by golden chains. "You could have been great..." taunt. How long had it been, Qingshe wondered... since she'd last been in truly dire straits? [/hider] [hider=Part 1] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/UGfbHOV.jpeg[/img][/center] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/HWhWXIx.png[/img][/center] [hr] [b][i]Roughly three weeks ago...[/i][/b] [b]Diamond Island Convention and Exhibition Center, The City of Phnom Penh - 11/11/2022 06:29 UTC+8[/b] [hr] Callie's warning that there were infiltrators in the same building as the diplomatic summit may have been the first of its kind for what would soon be a day of madness... but by no means was she the only one following up on a lead of that nature. Sliding through the halls with an amicable smile on her lips, Qingshe nodded to a patrolling guard, as she schooled her expression into cordiality long enough to turn a corner, before frowning. Heels clacked sharply through tiled halls, as the Snake strode with purpose, eyes narrowed sharply in search. According to the tense formality of the situation, the greenette was actually wearing a far more socially acceptable outfit to the negotiations, a pale-blue button-up dress shirt paired with a black tie, long white coat, black skirt and black leggings. For once, she didn't stand out like a spotlight in the dark, and she had decided the best place for her in these negotiations was... Well, to be honest, it was just not making a nuisance of herself by existing in the same room as the man she'd inadvertently collaborated in changing the weather with... to say nothing of the inherent unnecessary tension keeping the turncoat Snake and loyalist Dragon in the same zip code would bring. Her actions in the operation to dismantle the Rooster's prison camp had been about the furthest thing from subtle, and Qingshe rather doubted her presence would do anything to set anyone involved at ease. So, she'd chosen the better part of valor and excused herself preemptively from the proceedings to focus on quietly patrolling the premises. Sure, there was something to be said for the risk of Huo Ren and one of Superbia's Avatars being left alone with her more vulnerable comrades and the national representatives... but Huo Ren would be a fool to start a fight in close quarters with Mr. Makri. And Mr. Henri's presence should hopefully ensure Superbia's Avatar was close to a non-factor if worst came to worst. This was all to say that Qingshe had set herself what she felt was a fairly reasonable self-imposed position in all this... and she had spotted something... concerning. [i][b]A flare of a navy-blue coat passing just out of sight. A flicker of movement, a scruffy man gone almost as soon as he could be noticed. Someone else might have mistaken those sightings for a hallucination... But the Snake's sight and memory were too fine to be fooled... Cao Bao was in the building.[/b][/i] Of course, Cao Bao's involvement wasn't unexpected. For all that he'd failed to show his face to the frontlines thus far, he was still Huo Ren's second, his bodyguard, backup and safety line. As long as Cao Bao was in the picture, it should be near impossible to eliminate the Dragon. No matter how grievously or lethally the Dragon was wounded, as long as Cao Bao activated his power even a moment before true death, Huo Ren would survive, transported back to Cao Bao's side in some safe haven or bolt-hole... But therein laid the matter of concern... Because Cao Bao was [b]here[/b]. [b]On the frontline.[/b] [b]Somewhere he'd never venture unless given orders from on high...[/b] And knowing what she did about how terrifying the "support" could truly be if he set his mind to it... Her jaw setting tensely, Qingshe kept her eyes peeled, even as a niggling feeling of unease grew more intense the longer her search went without results. Idly, she considered alerting the rest of the ASEAN team about the looming threat, but to be honest, they already seemed to have enough problems landing on their plate. And if Cao Bao were to engage them without her... To call it a slaughter would be an understatement. In other words, there was no point in worrying them over a possible threat until she could get actual confirmation that there was, in fact, a threat to be concerned over. Cao Bao was, at least nominally, a noncombatant. He was simply too obscenely valuable to risk on frontline operations, even considering China's rather excessive availability of Arms Masters and willingness to spend their lives like water. Amongst them, Cao Bao's value was easily A-Rank, and the only reason he wasn't ranked higher than B was a combination of politics and his own barely hidden commitment to doing the bare minimum to accomplish his duties and no more. However, it was that selfsame attitude that clued Qingshe into how truly dangerous he was, because Cao Bao was a man of brutal efficiency, devoid of arrogance or the need to monologue to his opponents like so many of his comrades. If you were his enemy, he would just kill you, and he would do it without warning or prevarication. He would play as dirty as he needed to, and he underestimated no-one as a threat, resorting to overwhelmingly efficient murder, assassination and immediate retreats at the slightest sign of a true disadvantage as his tools of choice. Cao Bao was a man with a -in his own words- "highly developed sense of self-preservation". And in this sort of situation, Qingshe knew that made him the single most dangerous entity in this entire zip co- A rustle of displaced air and the flare of body heat alerted her a moment before the sound of metal clashing rang out behind her. Whirling around, Qingshe's narrowed eyes flashed from blue to gold, pupils narrowing to reptilian slits at the sight of... ...nothing. Nothing except her floating shield, Ouroboros, fading back into invisibility from an unseen impact. She didn't wait a moment longer even pretending the situation wasn't hot as lava, as her oozing shadow boiled out from beneath her feet in a rippling layer across the floo- On instinct, the Snake's body twisted into a crouch, the whistle of displaced air signifying the passage of a scimitar through the place where her spine connected her neck to her torso. The rustle of a blue cloak met her ears just long enough to register its presence a moment before her assailant disappeared in another instantaneous flicker. [color=39b54a][b]"[i]Enough[/i],"[/b][/color] she hissed, as her shadow [i]erupted[/i]. From the ooze spreading out around her, a halo of needle-thin titanium blades speared up like a forest of death, punching into the nearby walls and shattering the closest windows with a crash. Plaster rained down from above, as the blades tore through everything around her in a sweeping motion, rent lighting fixtures crying out in a crackle with their dying breathe. For a moment, the hallway was plunged into dead silence, save for the waning rain of glass and plaster, as the Snake glanced around her... and found no-one. Clicking her tongue, the greenette straightened up, not letting her guard down for a moment, as her ooze spread up the walls around her, coating the entire hallway in her immediate vicinity with bubbling, crackling black. "[i]Boy[/i]..." The drawling man's voice drew her narrowed, golden eyes to drift over her shoulder, sighting a figure now leaning against the wall next to one of the broken windows... [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/6vG3G9q.png[/img][/center] "...I already knew you were one [i]scary[/i] motherfucker," he continued with a grimace, one hand rubbing at his stubbled jawline, as a cigarette twisted between his lips, "but [i]good grief[/i], even that brief exchange just about launched my balls into my throat." [color=39b54a]"Cao Bao..."[/color] Qingshe was proud of the way she managed not to openly seethe at the implications of this, her expression shifting into one of deceptive cordiality. [color=39b54a]"...might I inquire as to the meaning of this unprovoked assault on such an... auspicious occasion."[/color] Cao Bao sighed, his eyes half-lidded, as he met her gaze with a calm he probably didn't feel. His hands fell to slip into the pockets of his coat, as he rolled his jaw. "[i]Oi[/i], believe me, I'm not any happier about poking the goddamn Snake of the Zodiac with a stick... but I think we both knew this was coming sooner or later." There seemed to be a layered meaning in that statement that the Snake didn't fail to detect. Qingshe's eyes narrowed, her expression of cordiality falling, as she hissed, [color=39b54a]"China would [i]dare[/i]? If they sabotage these overtures of peace, the only thing waiting for them will be [i]destruction[/i]."[/color] Cao Bao shrugged, his own expression darkening with displeasure, as he sighed again. "Well, you know how it goes. Nothing personal, but... [i]orders are orders[/i]..." [color=39b54a]"Cao Bao, you-"[/color] The man disappeared in a flicker, as Qingshe's eyes widened a moment before something cracked across her head hard enough to rock it forward. A warm trickling sensation and the acrid smell of gunpower niggled at her consciousness in the understanding that her reinforced skull had just warded off being burst like a watermelon by a bullet a split moment before her shadow responded in kind, eviscerating the area in search of her attacker. Steel filled the air, as the forest of blades around her thickened, and a cacophony of raw noise announced the hailstorm of bullets that manifested to assault it in a tide of hot lead, the pinging cracks of ricochets sounding out. The Snake barely managed to catch a glimpse of Cao Bao's flickering form, as he teleported around the area her shadow occupied, bullets manifesting mid-flight in his wake to hurl themselves at her defenses in a ceaseless storm. A thunderclap announced a shell the size of Qingshe's torso -[i]a fucking battleship main gun round[/i]- splintering against her blades, before detonating in a firestorm that her Noble Arm flickered in front of her to guard against, as the explosion washed through her forest of blades, blew out even more windows from the shockwave and set the area ablaze Qingshe clicked her tongue, her lips curling, as her shadow began to belch up a cover of blinding smoke, obscuring what she did next. Diving into her shadow, she cast her gaze outside it, dozens of reptilian eyes blooming open across the surface of her ooze in a wave, all of them hunting for the slightest hint of movement. All the while, her ooze flashed outwards, growing across every surface around the area she had initially deployed it and creeping out the windows to crawl on the outside of the building. She finally found Cao Bao "hovering" just outside the building, propped up in the air and flickering in place under his power's constant "refreshes" of his position. A grimace was planted on his jaw, as his eyes narrowed at the cloud of smoke and ooze spreading out around it a moment before he disappeared again. Distantly, from somewhere above and out of sight, Qingshe's shadow caught the sound waves of Cao Bao speaking into the static of a radio of some sort. "You're up, Puppy." Inside her shadow, Qingshe's eyes could only widen a moment before a crackling flash of purple streaked from the top of a nearby roof. Through dozens of eyes, she saw the approach of an all-too familiar figure, a girl wreathed in a buzzing corona of electricity, as she reached for a katana sheathed at her waist- [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/5N6xAWp.jpeg[/img][/center] Qingshe's shadow belched fire and steel, a storm of blades and bullets spilling forth on an interception course- -only for the crackling figure to appear entirely out of the line of fire, now with feet planted firmly on the ground below. [color=39b54a][i]Cao Bao again![/i][/color] The crackling figure glowed brighter, her blade baring itself to the air in a snapping hiss, as she [i]blurred[/i] in a movement too fast for the Snake's network of eyes to physically track. Yet, Qingshe's shadow felt the building it lay upon shake, the eyes dotting her ooze watching as a purple streak left behind great cleaving gashes through the area just outside the shadow's radius, stalling and curtailing its further spread. [color=39b54a][i]That could be problematic.[/i][/color] It happened in a flash almost too quick for an observer to catch, the entire exchange occurring within a bare few seconds. Qingshe's shadow surged around the gaps in the building cut around it, flowing downwards around the crevices and bristling with blades, eyes and pillars, yet- A streak of purple bounded off the walls around the oozing shadow like a living thunderbolt, gleaming glowing blade striking out like quicksilver, frying eyes and cleaving material extensions before they could act as bridges for the shadow to reach other surfaces. Qingshe had been on the second floor at the time of the attack. Thus, as her shadow flowed downwards in a blur, it was soon coating the ceiling of what should have been the hallway below her. And it was there that the eyes blooming from it caught sight of a flash of blue- Cao Bao dodged the hailstorm of firepower that all but annihilated the first-floor hall's tiles in another flicker outside, returning just in time for a forest of blades to shear downwards like a wave of death, inches from turning him into a pincushion- A streak of crackling purple ripped through the wave of metal with an arcing slash, turning the storm of death into a hail of junk in a thunderclap, the shockwave of their passage sending the everything they cut flying in every direction but their actual target. The other attacker had arrived in defense of her collaborator. Cao Bao flickered again, his scimitar reaching for the small portion of the ceiling Qingshe's ooze had yet to fully spread to- A spray of crimson accompanied a thunderous crack of gunfire, as Cao Bao's body was filled with holes, torso rupturing and limbs disappearing in sprays of bloody mist in the face of a sudden outpouring of supersonic projectiles ripping his body to pieces in a hail of gunfire. [b][i]Yet-[/i][/b] The crackle of ozone and a blaze of purple intercepted the fire and steel aimed for Cao Bao's now disembodied head, deflecting the most critical part of the assault, as Cao Bao's collaborator physically transposed herself in front of the assault, wreathed in lightning. And despite being midair and having no apparent leverage, she suddenly jerked forward, diving straight upwards into the hail of steel, her own blade lancing forward through the tide. There was a crackling, warbling [i]whumph[/i], as every bit of metal that touched her body was violently repelled... briefly creating a critical opening. And then she was gone, and Cao Bao was in her place, completely intact and grinning broadly, as the tip of his blade made contact with the ceiling. "[i]Gotchya[/i]." There was a [i]lurch[/i], and suddenly, Qingshe found herself blind to the world outside, as her shadow collapsed entirely. Immediately, she realized what was wrong. [color=39b54a][i]He teleported the entire chunk of the building my shadow was layered over. They cut it off from the building and moved it, thus ripping the foundation right out from under my power.[/i][/color] In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Qingshe found herself reluctantly impressed. Her opponents had apparently identified one of her power's notable weaknesses. Under normal circumstances, it was near impossible to exploit, but they had actually managed it... which now left her in something of a pickle. After all, she couldn't just open her shadow anywhere. Under normal circumstance, she could only open and spread it using her body as an anchor point, but since she had been [i]inside[/i] her shadow when it was entirely dispelled... ...that meant the only place she could reopen it was the last place it had been opened. That being the chunk of building Cao Bao now had full control over the positioning of. Seeing no other options, Qingshe did so, only for the connection to immediately shatter again. Frowning, she tried again. Same result. [color=39b54a][i]Cao Bao must either be in transit or constantly repositioning the chunk to stop me from forming a shadow long enough to get anything through...[/i][/color] Gritting her teeth, Qingshe tried again. Same result. Swallowing her frustration, she realized she had no choice but to keep trying. With any luck, Cao Bao couldn’t keep doing this forever, or he had a particular destination in mind. Either way, she just needed a mere moment to break out of this... just a small opening. ... After cornering her and smacking down her attempts to break free of the deadlock, Cao Bao threatens to take Dog and slaughter the rest of the ASEAN team if Qingshe doesn't willingly leave her shadow. Qingshe changes into her "battle attire" before complying. Superbia has arrived at some point and traps her in the scroll NA once given to Tian Fei. [/hider]