[IC] AS I AM (Gren Vs. The Knave)

[Doc Doctor]

@Geraven

He scooped up handfuls of gold, letting the coins cascade between his fingers and tumble down the hillock of treasure he had his ass on. He chortled like a fat baby, the falling pretties glinting in his eyes. The Knave had heard there was a dragon guarding this place, but the rumor had clearly been bullshit. It wasn't even a tough climb. Superstition and cowardice had kept others from looting the place first. Even better was the centerpiece, which he had been saving for last.
He let out an excited squeak as he twisted around to get another eyeful of the fat chest in the middle of the room, embossed with silver and ancient teak. The locals whispered that the true treasure was beyond money; an artifact of powerful magic. He leapt up and skipped over to the chest, kneeling at its side and stroking the wood like a lover. Of course you needed the magical key to open the magical chest, but he had all the time in the world to sift through the surrounding piles of gold for it...

[Geraven]

There was quite the buzz going on in the tiny hamlet at the bottom of the mountain this day. Just earlier in that morning, there had been rumors of a rather ugly-looking man asking about the dragons hoard up at the top of the mountain. And again, almost mid-day now, another stranger appeared in the little town.

The pirate ninja entered the town and all the people looked at him immediately. He wore a brown cloak that covered his body from neck to foot, which were shown to be wearing black boots, and just barely did his black slacks appear from under the cloak as he stepped. He nodded to each person with a smile as he headed towards the inn and tavern, and each person's gaze went to the glowing blue eyes of the man walked. When he went to brush a lock of his black hair away from his eyes, some people saw the black blazer and white button up shirt underneath the cloak. All in all, he was still a stranger, but much better looking and well mannered than the other.

Once he entered the building, the tavern portion seemed to be fairly small and with only one person as well as the barkeep inside. The cloaked man headed straight to the bar, and smiled the entire time as he made it there. It wasn't much to get wind of the rumors around the town. One of such included a dragon's hoard at the top of the mountain, where a large spring sat. Though the barkeep did happen to mention of another who asked of the same hoard just earlier today. As well, the random man in the building made mention that the dragon may also be gone, so it could be nothing at all. Both were excellent points the pirate kept in mind as he drank his pint quickly. He tipped the 'keep in a gold piece as well as the other man, and left the building with a smile.

Gren Meliden walked casually from the hamlet to the mountain, which took about two hours with his usual brisk pace, and a great big grin spread across his face as he saw the height of the mountain. It would be simple for the man to climb the sheer wall of the mountainside with just a little bit of energy used. While it would be a tough and arduous climb for an ordinary man, Gren was no ordinary man. With wave of his hand and a small release of Ether into the mountain, a rock jutted out and curve upward to give the ninja a nice compartment to stand on for his trip. Once he stood inside, another wave of his hand turned a straight path into dirt just within the surface of the rock and the compartment shot up like a bullet. Yet there was no issue for the man who had a small bubble of air that surrounded the "elevator" to keep the inside safe from the friction.

Unfortunately, he missed the spring and had to stop the makeshift elevator in a very hard way, and he turned the sand into hard rock once again. But the velocity of the compartment made it break off from the mountain and fly upward, and launched over the peak. The villagers said the mountain was close to thirty thousand kilometers high (with some deciphering of their measurement system) and he decided to bail for the top anyway. Using Wind Ether now, the shinobi was able to quickly make his way from there down to the spring, which was about a quarter of the way down from the top. And man, was it a beautiful spring and a sight to behold. He looked around, part of the mountain on the west side with the up to the peak on the east, it settled in to a nice bowl with trees and ground making up about a third of the overall area. And the cave entrance sat right up on the eastern peak. He landed perfectly on the five meter wide cliff edge and stared into the hole.

"Hmmm...if there is a dragon in there, I'd better not take any chances..."

As he finished his thought, the ninja placed his right hand on the wall of the cave. With a little energy, he sent a seismic shock through and down the cave to cause a massive cave in. He would be able to clean it up easily with Ether to get to the gold after it was all said and done. It took about three minutes total for the noise and shaking to stop. If there was anything in there, it would either be showing itself soon...or it would be dead as shit.

[Doc Doctor]

@Geraven

A thick plume of dust gouted from the entrance, and in moments the cave had collapsed into itself with noise enough to echo across the forest.

*Beat*

"'Oy, You're quite the bastard, aren't you? Could've been someone in there. Wot's more, there might've been treasure. Regular ass, jus' coz you got 'ere first. Say, how'd you do that, anyways? 'Splosives?"

For The Knave, the cave-in might as well have been in slow motion. Had the dragon been real? Had it come back in a great fury? One way to find out. The coins were as good as gone, but he could shift through the rubble for the chest after dealing with the damned beast.

Knave became immaterial to material, slipped underground, and flashed towards the direction of the source of the initial shockwave before the first boulder had struck the floor. He shot out from the mountain twenty yards below the level of the entrance, and zipped right back up to try and catch sight of the problem from behind. If a dragon there was, he wanted to be behind it and unseen. Not out of fear, but because he was pissed enough to want to let it know how much it had fucked up with a casual nudge to the tail before he freed its brains from its skull case.

Such was Knave's surprise at seeing a lone man. Dragon or man, this one had very much ruined Knave's day. He had somehow destroyed the cave by himself. Had he an artifact as well? Knave had to find out before he took revenge, lest he lose out on another treasure.

Gren, clearly preferring wanton force over his sensory abilities to scope out enemies, might not realize there was someone five feet behind him in the split second it took Knave to leave the cavern and double back, at least until the red cloaked man spoke up. The Knave would be leaning back, right hand planted on his hip and the left shading his eyes from the sun as he admired the destruction, like a shameless tourist come to gawk at a the pyramids. His sword was slung over his back, hilt at his right shoulder. He looked like a regular boob adventurer, with his gaudy clothes and unguarded stance.

[Geraven]

Despite not having activated his Bullet Time skill that allows him to perceive things at 1/1000th of a second, or moving well faster than the eye could see, it was nothing for him to feel the energy that emanated from all the different magical items on the Knave's person. So when he appeared behind the ninja as though he had just arrived, Gren knew much better than that.

He turned and bowed slightly at the oddly dressed man in a red cloak and medieval rogue attire while the man finished his comment. "Oh, I have my ways. I had heard that there might have been a dragon inside, and wanted to make sure there wasn't an issue with a pair of sharp rows of teeth before I went in." He eyed the Knave cautiously, however. "I'm guessing, however, that the dragon was likely a rumor? You were in there, after all...was it pretty?"

In the short time period they stood and spoke, the sky began to darken and clouds covered the sun. And that was considerably odd, since it had just been a very sunny day with not a cloud in sight. At the same time, the ninja smirked as he grabbed a three-pronged kunai from his back pouch with his right hand without even making his brown cloak move. "I want what's in there...so are you prepared to fight for it?"

[Doc Doctor]

@Geraven

Knave frowned like a child, bottom lip stuck out, dropping all pretenses of friendliness when he saw he couldn't trick the man into talking.

"Such nerve... Trying to kill me for my treasure? Not even trying to make up for it by telling me secrets, even after you got to find out about my great stealth power? I found the treasure, not you. Fine, be like that..."

*Another beat, this one a little awkward*

"Yes, it was very pretty in there."

At this point, Gren might find himself abruptly thrust into the next life, and wondering what the fuck had just happened. He'd been able to sense Knave's presence popping up from behind due to the mana inherent to the fellows magical items, but that had been after Knave had stopped, Gren having then the fraction of a second he needed to register the ether. He'd not know if Knave had teleported, ghosted, or even as the man had misleadingly stated, used 'stealth power'.
Gren likely felt he could activate and rely on his bullet time, ability to detect hostile intent, and ether sense in either scenario. The hostile intent was there all right, this freak meant to end him. The Knave had once killed a wounded farmer with a hoe simply because the man had carelessly trampled a few potatoes, after all. At the moment, Knave was in a similar state of mind. Enchanted items were usually phenomenally durable, at least the ones worth having. He'd pluck them out of the mess afterward, if they were strong enough to have survived.

The instant Knave finished talking, he took a step forwards. A step that, the moment his foot began moving, propelled him forwards nearly 50% faster than the Juno space probe. The acceleration was immediate, the speed was so intense that the leaves of every tree within a tenth of a mile were shredded and the bark stripped like cheap paint. The very air filled with blue friction fire, and the ground behind him exploded as if Knave had stepped on a landmine with a payload the size of Trump's MOAB. If Gren at all tried anything before Knave, either with words or a visible power, the seven league step would be the instant rebuttle.

Gren could, at base power, react to things around 1/1,000 of a second, roughly. Knave was set to hit him in less than 1/20,000 of a second, and with no warning. Gren's brain couldn't process the assault in time to use a flash step, which would've likely been far slower than Knave anyways and required one to know where they want to end up, more time devoted to conscious thought. Even if he could have seen it coming with his lightning aura, He'd not have any time at all to activate it, let alone percieve the attack coming. His power to detect hostility let him know about harmful intent, but not the nature or potency of the attack, and probably not the exact moment the intent would be acted upon unless the enemy had at that moment decided to act on impulse over calculation resulting in a shift in the magnitude of their blood lust. Knave had been out to kill in cold blood from the moment he lost his treasure, with about the same attitude a man takes with him to gas a beehive after being stung.

As for the possibility of Gren surviving if he got hit, it was, well, nil. He could lift eight tons easily, but presumably couldn't endure more than fifty times that at base power. Knave, meanwhile, was a 150 pound projectile traveling at over mach 300, generating at least 70,000 psi from air pressure alone. Suffice to say, if Gren got hit, which he likely was going to be...

He'd be gibbed into hamburger so hard that the cave ruins behind him would've been sheeted in his pureed viscera, if they hadn't been blown to dust by the shock wave first. Knave could move through that air pressure as if it were a gentle breeze, such was his magically amped strength and toughness. In short, The Knave tried to walk through Gren as though he were made of rice paper.

[Geraven]

He knew it. The shrewd and ugly person he had heard about in the village was this guy, and he had made it here first. All that Gren needed for verification was the man's face shifting from nonchalant to angry. Which meant the pirate had really pissed him off, and that made him smile.

The moment the man started talking, Gren's Lightning and Earth Ether Cloaks activated simultaneously. An instantaneous activation, the ninja was surrounded in a yellow and brown aura that mixed into a golden color at times. Two things happened in that moment. Gren surrounded his body in a lightning current that combined with the cloaks, and his Titan Armor activated as well.

The Titan Armor hardened into a tungsten plate armor underneath his brown cloak, and the dust that gathered onto the pirate from the cave in became a layer of diamond filament that covered the ninja from head to toe. And with his Earth Cloak active, the ninja would be able to maneuver perfectly despite the extra weight.

Right as the man finished his sentence, Gren's right arm shot up at lightning speeds and released the kunai, which was also covered in lightning, in the direction of The Knave. Even if the man somehow avoided the kunai, it was only part of his plan. The reality of the attack was two fold. But if he did still manage to reach his target and hit him, despite the shinobi's Bullet Time ability that would allow him to see his opponent no matter how fast he was, The Knave would find penetration of Gren's body far more difficult than he believed and his body would be filled with over twenty gigawatts of electricity upon contact.

But that would depend upon the actions of his opponent, and Gren was already beginning to think ahead...

[Doc Doctor]

@Geraven

The Knave had been ready to initiate his seven league step the moment Gren tried anything, and he did when his opponent activated his auras. Gren apparently didn't intend to move out of the way, estimating that he could stop Knave cold with his armor if the freak survived the kunai. However, Knave's reaction wasn't limited to just the seven league step. Seeing his opponent decked out in such a flashy way, he determined that this one might have powers to rival his own.

He couldn't dodge the kunai, not at all, but Knave had other options for such an attack. He could use the enchantment of his necklace at will. He ghosted and rephased in an instant, allowing the weapon to pass into his immaterial body before reasserting his physical state to atomise the kunai. If an opponent lets go of a weapon, you make sure to boot it away just in case it was their only tool. In leau of a boot, Knave played it safe and just destroyed the thing in case his opponent slipped away to get it back. At the same instant he destroyed the kunai (which Gren wouldn't know about, as for all he knew it just went right through), Knave would also activate his Hong Xian, the unseen and unfelt thread of fate shooting from his ankle at lightning speed to covertly catch Gren and prevent him from escaping.

He'd wind up tackling Gren full force, again phasing to pass through the titan armor to directly impact his target. Even if Gren's armor was infused with ether, what could be interpreted as life energy, Knave would still pass through any matter on a physical scale. Even imbued with life, it still contained nonliving, nonbiological elements. The only exception was what Knave wore, as per his necklace's enchantment. Energy purely crafted from the ether of an organism, such as Gren's electricity (unless it was drawn from nature), would be able to make contact.

The blow, if it didn't outright obliterate Gren, would still send him flying backwards at high speed without any footing.

But, when the dust cleared, if all that came to pass, it would seem that Gren wasn't the one in need of an escape, if he'd somehow lived. The Crimson cloaked figure was lit like a Christmas tree. His hair was standing up, eyes rolled back into his head, and a small rivulet of blood ran down the front of his gaping mouth, making choked noises like a dying goat. If it were a continuous discharge, he'd wind up with his arms plastered around Gren's (intact?) torso and under his armpits in a jittering, frozen bearhug, like paper stuck to a balloon all static style, probably lying atop the pirate amidst a trench carved from their landing big enough to fit a semi trailer in. The poor fuck hadn't even gotten to draw his sword yet.

Gren had seen firsthand The Knave's speed and ability to ignore matter. Nice, but Gren knew what high voltage did. Killed motor functions, shorted out neural impulses. A bird casually swooped a dozen meters over head and let drop a turd, which would plop against the back of Knave's head and begin sizzling like an egg.