[IC] Between Life & Death

[Tasuke]

The witch is apathetic toward conversation when they let the knife fly in interjection. It glides with a threatening whistle, but where it should pierce soft flesh, it passes unfettered; likewise the stalking apparition continues, accelerating their stride awhile two new knives are drawn. But would they be so rude to the one whom wraps a friendly right arm over their shoulders from abaft, like frostbite to the touch while they exhale a cool whisper into the woman's ear. "Such ferocity..."

As for the weeper, suspiciously dry despite the downpour, is hushed by the ding of the projectile when it strikes something unseen inches before its goal; she shudders quiet, looking up over her knees as the knife sticks into the ground. Even the rain runs in rivers around them, suggesting a clandestine protection curtails harm. The disturbance provokes action, however veiled from the threatening specters they may be: an elevation of the dextral arm and accusatory pointing of the finger, as if a silent condemnation via what's to come after.

Called by its master is the elusive katana, which has lain dormant atop the moist ground behind the maniacal maiden. Now it moves through the air to be held afresh, and betwixt its wielder are two appetizing spines, soon to be run through.

[Drifting Pollen]

The second woman is intangible. An apparition, cast upon Procella's eyes through some dark magic, little more than a distraction. She pays little attention to its words, or to its chill, instead fixing her narrowed eyes upon the real Hisame.

The knife is knocked away, and sent spinning in the air like a steel butterfly, by an unseen wall that stands between it and its target. The spirit sees this. Something stands between her and this victim- and not only that, but shields the woman from the rain, keeping her dry even as the tempest builds. The exact nature of this defense is beyond Procella, but she knows what it is.

Hisame is cowering, cowering in a shelter. A storm has only one answer to this.

The spirit's lip curls, her mouth twisting into something between a snarl and a sneer, savage and spiteful. "Ferocity? That was mere annoyance... dear."

The katana is moving behind her, and within it moves negative charge, attracted to the tip by the positive Procella has gathered in her hand. As it rushes towards her, she pretends not to notice, her eyes instead dropping to the dagger that had bounced off Hisame's shelter- then, without any warning, she suddenly pivots on her left foot, spinning all the way around as she moves to one side, away from the sword's path. She laughs merrily, and flings out a hand towards the ground.

Or, so it seems at a glance. But she's not aiming for the dirt and the leaves, but rather for what lies among them, the silvery blade that had just failed in its flying assault. Its conductivity makes it easy to gather a negative charge on the side facing Hisame. And this, attracted to the positive charge gathered in her head to track her, produces a sudden arc of electricity, hot and bright, that leaps from the knife towards the woman, hitting her barrier with all its deadly energy.

Whether or not it is able to pierce the barrier and harm Hisame, the bolt comes without warning, and is extremely bright. It is easily bright enough to blind for a moment, and noisy enough to mask the sound of rapid movement. As soon as her attack is unleashed, Procella darts further to the left, into the trees, letting one blade fly to embed its point deep in a nearby trunk.

[Tasuke]

The lady appears ignorant of imminent impalement as the brand glides its fang for the delicate curve of her spine; its hunger must continue when they evade thru a timely twirl tied to riposte. A jagged arc of crepitating light and heat bolts through the air before crashing into the beckoner's barrier with bright, refracting resplendence. The Fateful Death tails and vanishes into the glittery glow; it dims and dies to reveal an upright, unharmed and confident Hisame holding the katana acute to her left leg. At a glance there is no effect to her protection but discernment of the spiritual will notice the tiniest of cracks in the ethereal weave.

She stands in silent, smiling scrutiny amid the rhythmic deluge. Their toy has vanished from vision and presumably gone for a swim in the sea of trees. Taking three hip-swerving steps forward as she scans left-to-right for signs of the missing maiden, the cold of the wet earth stinging her feet, she stops when nothing is found; then a rightward cant of her neck and a backward tilt of her head allows a gazing at the flickering, thundering heavens thru a streaming pane of shielding. Hisame inhales deeply, tasting the wet air while song fills her voice.

“Oh, whe-ere; Oh, whe-ere has my lit-tle bitch gone... Oh whe-ere; oh, whe-ere can she be-e-e?”

[Drifting Pollen]

The thick trunks make for a solid obstruction to Hisame's predatory gaze, but Procella is not yet where she wishes to be. The knife, thrown at a tree's trunk, was no aggressive gesture, but rather a stepping stone to what came next.

The spirit leaped into the air, sailing towards the thick trunk within which the blade was embedded. Before she slammed against its rough, bark-covered surface, however, one outstretched foot fount the hilt of her blade, and with a sudden bending and release of her pale leg, she propelled herself upwards, using the knife as an improvised foothold to ascend into the canopy.

There, among the drenched yellow leaves that barely clung to life on the eve of winter, Procella crouched on a thick branch, listening to the lilting song of her opponent. The sound jars in her ears, clashes with the noise of the rain. It almost makes her strike right then, and fling more lightning at Hisame, but she manages to restrain herself.

Instead, she waits, and builds her charges. Waits for the sound of thunder.

When the booming roar of a distant strike arrives, she makes her move, leaping from branch to branch while the sound of her passage is concealed by the storm's roar. She keeps her eyes on Hisame- for it is towards the woman that she is moving. But she stops short as the thunder ends, not quite on top of the woman yet.

The invisible shelter is troublesome, and needs to be broken before Procella's knives can taste sweet flesh. But she is running out of blades. Only four now remain tucked in the hidden folds of her strange dress, and those must be used wisely.

She is not without other resources, however. She had built her charges before the thunder, a positive in Hisame, to keep track of her, and a negative in the knife she'd used as a foothold.

Now she builds them further, and another bright arc leaps from the small piece of metal to the shielded woman. The shelter is resilient, but Procella will test its limits, keep on pounding it until she finds a weakness.

[Tasuke]

The siren song ends prematurely, fading into the cacophony of thunder: a contemptuous roar which makes the ground shiver as it laps up the downpour. Hisame's eyes stare longingly upon those majestic clouds lit by gamely flickers and cannot help but awe at their emotion; perhaps the heavens themselves flash and boom with wrath toward the abomination of her existence. She peels her lips into a challenging grin and exhales a gleeful chuckle while seemingly forgetting about their prey and the hunt at hand. Indeed, such would prove boring with so many possible locations to make a nest. Let impatience and thirst for murder bring the bitch out of hiding...

Then a flash; a CLAP of crashing when another bolt bashes into the bulwark. Its electric hum prevails long after the blinding fades and once more the strike appears of no avail. She half-expected a follow-through; a revelation and end to the game of cowardice while she continues to peer at the vastly more entertaining sky. There's no indication she paid the assault any mind... no evidence it's regarded as anything above utterly insignificant.

[Drifting Pollen]

Thunder cracks and crashes in vain, and brute force proves ineffective once again. The next obvious tactic is a direct attack, but the direction of Hisame's regard gives Procella pause. She had hoped to divert the woman's upward gaze with her lightning, and then strike from above, but this would be too risky now: it is difficult to avoid attacks while in midair, and that sword has a very nasty feeling about it.

It presents a challenge, forcing Procella to consider her actions, to think. She'd much rather keep using mindless destruction, but that is obviously not working. So what does she have? Knives are not powerful enough at long range, and too risky to bring into close range. She has her power over charge, but lightning didn't do the job... on the other hand, that is not the only effect of charge.

It is true that with enough of a difference between objects, a lightning strike will result, but the whole reason behind this phenomenon is attraction. This is the basic property of charge, and the storm spirit knows it well. Opposite charges attract each other... but are usually not powerful enough to move the objects they were in. Increasing the force increases the attraction, but once you reach a certain point, you get electrical breakdown, and the air itself becomes a conductor for discharge, resulting in lightning. The full explanation eludes Procella, she simply sees flashing destruction, but she is not ignorant to the pull betwixt positive and negative.

But if the object is light enough, and the charge significant but not too large... the attraction can cause simple movement. Procella smiles. She knows now, what she can try.

Her arm whips out, and she slashes with a knife at the leaves around her. The uppermost ones are soaked by the rain, made heavy by the moisture, but the ones below are still relatively dry, and very light. She cuts them away, giving each a small negative charge. Meanwhile, Hisame still has a positive charge, since the lightning did not make it through her barrier to neutralize it.

The sensation of the building charge would be similar to the lightning attack, but instead of a blazing spark would come a sudden rush of leaves, pulled from the rivers of wind to fling themselves at Hisame. Of course, her barrier protects her, but the leaves will not go away. Becoming wet and adhesive as they are touched by the rain, and still attracted by charge, they will plaster themselves against the barrier, obstructing Hisame's sight as they pile on. Procella keeps slashing, moving from branch to branch. There are plenty of leaves to spare, and the charge needed is not nearly so great as for an electrical attack: she can sustain this, if necessary, until the shield becomes buried beneath the foliage.

It won't get rid of the shelter, but it will delay the occupant, limit her options. In the meantime, the storm is approaching its peak, and Procella grows stronger and stronger as it does.

[Tasuke]

Long crepitation rolls into a rumble and drowns the rain; attention-seeking droplets fall harder and louder upon Hisame's waterproof windshield. She's utterly lost in the lightshow without care for the trivialities concerning a fool throwing electric darts at a board blindly. So long as they maintain that level of futility and refrain from actual disturbance of enjoyment, let them continue their child's play to their heart's content.

...until the view is obscured by leaves bombarding like a horde of angry bats.

She blinks in wonderment and her grin fades into a disgusted scowl; the bitterest of tastes pools in her mouth and the fire of wrath sparks to life in her belly. Fin by fin the storm is blotted out until she's covered like papier-mâché and the lightning lass's idiocy is proven to know no limits. Hisame, now completely concealed from outside sight, is free to act in secrecy. So her face sinks to look levelly forward as she layers her thoughts; then her right hand rises to pull back the hair from the slender curve of her neck and shoulders before letting the limb fall.

A pause precedes an alignment of her sword before it pierces the trapezes through. There's not so much as a wince while the blade is pulled upward in a wet, freeing slice and hissing crimson spray; like paint it rolls down her arm, torso and leg in tandem with the katana's rest at Hisame's side. The once rusty coat now swirls with a vivid, sparkling claret and drizzles blood upon the soaked earth below. In time her self-infliction closes and the wait to loose her scorching fury must be endured; as the adage goes: playtime is over.

[Drifting Pollen]

With the curtains now drawn around the mysterious shelter, it is almost time to bring the show to a close. Each of the two strange women have a moment of reprieve from the other, a moment to recover and prepare, but it is evident that each will try to strike soon. The storm is now reaching its peak, and its growing rumbling betrays impatience.

Procella is strong now, drawing power from the tempest. Having finished cutting away leaves, she stabs one of her knives high up in the bark of the tree she sat in- leaving her with three left -and leaps down to the ground, landing on both feet with almost casual ease. From there, she kneels, and stares with eyes drunk on bloodlust. Her knife hacks into nearby bark, scoring it deeply and producing showers of splinters and chips, though it is a poor substitute indeed for the sweet, soft flesh and rains of blood that it seeks. But the spirit holds herself back. The moment is not long away, for her power is building now.

She had already created a strong positive charge in Hisame, used in both her earlier strikes and to attract the myriad leaves. But there was another use for it, one she had predicted she might need. Now, she raises its concentration further, worsening the imbalance with every second, to more and more frightening levels. There is a limit to how powerful Procella's lightning attacks can be, a limit to how much imbalance she can create at once, but in this case she is only doing so for a single node, and pouring everything into it. This time, she was not striking alone.

For in storm clouds, negative charges have a tendency to gather in the lower reaches, and in turn create a net positive in the surface of the ground. When the net difference between the two is high enough, lightning is produced naturally. Normally, this would strike tall or conductive objects, but the massive positive charge being built up in and around Hisame is massively attractive, not only ensuring that lightning will strike there, but making the bolt more powerful.

And, in but a moment, it comes. Through the cover of leaves, it is unlikely Hisame will even realize what is happening until those above her are turned to ash, and the blazing light of true lightning throws itself against her barrier, the raw fury of nature enhanced and directed by Procella in an attack that outshines her previous little sparks like a bonfire to a candle.

[Tasuke]

Like a child which waits for Christmas morning Hisame bears the time 'til a fool makes their move; would she take another crack with a new laughable lance of lightning or step up her game to something more vicious? Contrary to the woman's lack of wisdom the bloody beauty can only presume the latter and such a force may only descend from above. It's only when those warning signs -- a tingling sensation across the flesh and statically charged locks of lifting hair -- that it's understood for what they've become a mark.

She smirks and lets her guard descend; the leaves flit and flutter around her while the sky strikes her down in a white flash and terrific crash of thunder. Like a hammer it claps atop her head and sets fire to the hair; the jolt of myriad volts and heat courses through her body and melts flesh. The stench of charred meat and ozone fills the moist air as the blinding shine fades to reveal Hisame still standing confidently; her bald and singed crown already mending skin from the top down and sewing new strings of silken hair made wet in the rain. Lips peel into a devilish grin and she seizes her moment of counterattack amid reformation of protection.

Her left arm lifts the Fateful Death vertically and its gleam disperses with a glassy jingle. From it is exhaled a putrid inky mist which spreads like a flame feasting on open air; in moments the mass has expanded a hundred feet in all directions and its touch brings doom to the living. Grass becomes brown and the trees shrivel into fragile twigs before crumbling from their own weight; like wheat mowed down the forest falls around her and should the gaseous cloud contact the missing maiden a slew of awful effects will befall her: intense burning of the eyes to give way to blindness; a locked throat which refuses to breathe in more but is already infected with cysts; flesh rotting like meat spoiled in the summer sun.

Let them run; let them hide... the darkness comes and no tree will remain sanctuary.

[Drifting Pollen]

If Hisame had assumed that the lightning strike was all Procella could muster, she would now be proven sorely wrong. The spirit had struck the woman with a smaller bolt before, and had attacked in several other ways as well, none of which had caused any lasting injury. More and more would be required. And so, while charging her great bolt from above, Procella had also been preparing in other ways.

Hacking into the nearby trees with her knife had not been a mere symptom of madness, but also a part of her attack. With the storm now raging, her body was far stronger than any mundane woodsman, and her cuts rent deep into the aging wood, undermining the integrity of the plants almost to the point of collapse.

And when the lightning did strike, that was her cue. Swinging around and lashing out with one leg, she kicked the nearest tree with all her terrible strength, snapping what little remained of its trunk and sending it toppling towards Hisame. As soon as this was done, she flung out one arm, sending a crackling bolt into one tree while moving to kick another down, both to follow the first in their sudden fall. Even if Hisame had recovered enough to move with the speed necessary to try and avoid the first trunk, its branches would likely pin her while the second and third came down to crush her.

The mist might come regardless, for Hisame was powerful indeed, but she had badly miscalculated in her attack. They were in the midst of a storm at this moment, and no paltry gale at that! As soon as the mist appeared, it would be blown away, dispersed by the raging winds, shattered before it could spread or thicken enough to do much harm. Perhaps it was not ordinary mist, perhaps it had a spiritual component. But then, this was no ordinary storm either, a tempest of a similarly unnatural nature.

Of course, Hisame had been crushed by trees before, and it was doubtful that this would be enough to put her down for good. But Procella had thought forward one step further still. Before leaving the heights of the forest, she had stabbed her knife in the bark where she sat in the branches. When she had knocked down these trees, it had fallen with them.

And now, she had but to strike out from it at her enemy, time and time again. The power she could muster for these bolts would be nothing like that of the lightning from before, but it would still be hardly insignificant. If Hisame tried to escape, she would find herself struck from an unexpected angle, her limbs forced to spasm as sparks lanced out time and time again. While her opponent was pinned, the storm spirit could strike thus time and time again, until only dust remained of the cursed swordswoman.

[Tasuke]

The hammered nail of lightning is but a precursor; mark of more meant to maim the maiden whose melted flesh sizzles in the rain to the stench of burnt hair. Trees then topple with splintering snaps and their rustling branches entwine together to weave a crushing trap should nothing intervene. However even the perpetual percussion of the storm can't veil the overwhelming cry of cracking wood during downfall. It's those sounds which warn Hisame of impending intrusion and rouse renewal of their aegis.

The falling timber collides with a thud but a slight lean suggests they've hit something above ground; following is the fervent flicker of freshly flung bolts which clap against the barrier futilely. From there Hisame's skin ripples in restoration and charred tresses become silken once more. Although without lasting damage she remains confined to position; a caged lioness of snarling teeth growling in displeasure.

Happily striking is the maddened maiden whom prays persistence will prove profitable and what may be mistaken for a moan of agony escapes the thicket of branches. Its volume is low at first but immediately increases to rival the boom of thunder rumbling in tandem. Like speakers turned to the max it makes the earth to shiver and flesh to feel the sound emanating from Hisame's throat.

Suddenly the pitch reverses into an awful screech so piercingly loud that any eardrums nearby burst and bleed; mind-numbing pain attacks the brain and prevents any focus to form. Only the solitaire shrill seems to exist for the forty seconds Hisame takes to formulate her riposte. The nearly eternal minute of misery ends with a release of telekinetic force in all directions. Like a nuclear shockwave it blasts everything to bits as wet ground peels and trees blow apart to send splinters spinning; five hundred feet of land is leveled in a blink.

In the aftermath she stands with quickened breath and a mask of weariness upon her face. She exhales foggy puffs from her open mouth until a deep inhale catches breath. From there she may behold the destruction of the rain-soaked woods whose trees are strewn in muddy chunks of trunks, branches and leaves. If that pesky woman had survived and remained conscious they'd see a level playground had been formed. Now only their laughable lightning fantasizes of felling this durable dame.

[Drifting Pollen]

It is over.

Hisame had made one critical mistake in particular: she had assumed that she was fighting some woman wielding the powers of the storm. But Procella is merely a figurehead. The storm itself is the real enemy, and it is unpredictable, vast, the combination of elemental forces into something that cannot be stopped. Of course, the storm would not have moved against this woman, had its spirit not survived this long. But Hisame had not moved aggressively to end her opponent, she had delayed and delayed and delayed as Procella grew more and more powerful. And now, as she takes almost a full minute to prepare her next attack, she will be shown that there are some powers one should never play around with.

The trees Procella had dropped on Hisame are blocked by a renewed shelter, which is surprising, given that she had so little time to muster a defense. Perhaps it is possible for her to somehow store the shield, to call the original one forth again without creating an entirely new barrier- the storm knows not, the storm cares not, all that matters is that its aim of destruction is somehow achieved. Procella notices instantly that it is not: as the first arc leaps from her carefully placed knife among the fallen trees, the charge within Hisame is not re-balanced by the striking of the bolt, and the slight leaning of the trees makes the reason obvious. Still, the plot was not entirely in vain: the woman is trapped. Now, a proper end for her can be prepared.

And so Procella begins her work.

A slight disruption quickly becomes evident, as the trapped, undying enemy begins to moan like the horrible, unnatural ghoul that she is. Even to Procella, the sound is disturbing. But sound can be evaded, for it dissipates with distance, the waves growing weaker and weaker the further away one walks. And so Procella retreats. There is no need for her to remain close, now, for the storm extends everywhere above her, and the remaining imbalance of charge in Hisame will allow her to keep track of the woman's location through the mask of trees. She moves away, letting the moan fade into the background noise, and by the time it rises to a terrifying shriek, it is but a distant irritation to Procella.

For Procella's power has been growing in two ways. First: the gathering of the storm made her stronger and stronger as it went on, and now, in a full tempest, she is twice as fast and strong as the greatest of athletes. A well-trained woman can run a mile (5280 feet) in barely over four minutes, Procella could have run it in half that time. After a few seconds of leaping and skipping through the forest, she is hundreds of feet away- and with sight masked by the fallen trees, hearing smothered by the raging storm and her own groaning and screaming, there is no way Hisame can know where the spirit had gone.

Second: the gathering of the storm brought with it concentrations of charge, in both the ground and the air, spread over huge distances. Procella had already used this once, in her grand bolt a few moments before- but that was a hasty measure, one of her little sparks scaled upwards many times. There is only so much power she can muster at short notice. But now, she has the entire storm at her disposal, and a nearly eternal minute in which to use it.

A while later, the forest explodes, leveling five hundred square feet of land. This area is not so wide as it might seem at first, but the level of destruction is fairly impressive- only Procella is far beyond its reach, having been given plenty of time to leave the area and a good reason to do so regardless of her awareness of the coming blast. Hisame can only look around her flat battlefield and see nothing, for she is looking at the wrong playground. The true arena is now wherever the stormclouds cast their shadow, and it extendeds a very long way. If Hisame survives what comes next, she will be left with a great deal of space in which to hunt for her opponent.

But by this point, her survival is doubtful.

For the first thing the possessed woman will likely notice, once she has unleashed her massive blast, is lightning- a beautiful flower in the sky, multiple chains and forks reaching out above her. They fork down from high in the clouds, coming close but never quite touching her, and it makes for quite a pretty sight. It will be the last thing Hisame ever sees.

After glimpsing it for the tiniest of moments, she will be be gone.

Procella had grown in power, and now she has been given time. Time to prepare, time to gather charges, time to carefully set things up instead of being forced to work with what she had at any given moment. Hisame had made her move, and now the storm spirit retaliates with a similarly terrifying level of power- only her move is not blunt, brutal, seeking victory through force alone. It is focused. So instead of simply building up massive concentrations of charge and hoping for the best, she restores the charge in the ground beneath Hisame (so that lightning can indeed strike twice), and then sets about building a pathway.

Lightning, being essentially a traveling current, always follows the path of least resistance. Electrons move out from the clouds above, producing a 'stepped ladder' as they go. This is the crackling flower of lightning Hisame saw above, bright because of the sheer magnitudes Procella has moving now. When these first probing tendrils from above reach towards the ground, discharges will sometimes rise up to meet them. When these meet, they produce a channel, through which charge flows through to the earth. And then, a massive, violent discharge moves upwards through this channel, the massively powerful 'return stroke,' superheating the air so quickly and brightly it only appears as a massive, jagged bridge between cloud and ground.

The movement of charge on its own is deadly enough, producing burns, electrocution, cardiac arrest. But it is already clear that this is not enough to fell Hisame. No, what Procella has done is far nastier.

With the time she was given, she has forget a bridge- not to Hisame, so that she might be struck again, but through her. So when the discharges meet, and the charge flows, Procella forces it, with all her gathered power, straight through her opponent and into the ground. And when the return stroke comes, the massive discharge headed for the clouds it comes not from above Hisame's shield, but from the earth below.

It will flow straight through her. An utterly unnatural strike, traversing a body rather than the air, but Procella had been given plenty of time in which to ready this difficult strike.

And with this much charge moving so fast, in a channel about the width of a thumb, the danger is not simply in the current, but in the heat. The core of a return stroke can reach temperatures of over fifty thousand degrees kelvin, several times what one might find on the surface of the sun. Though this is concentrated in a small area, heat has a tendency to spread, and this ought to be more than enough to simply vaporize the small body. Needless to say, this happens too fast for one to even perceive its movement, let alone attempt avoidance.

But perhaps Hisame is more resilient than some, and can survive the initial bolt. Well, it is not over.

If an imbalance of charge remains after a strike (and Procella would make sure of that), the channel through which the lightning passed remains conductive. Through this passes a 'dart leader,' a flow of negative charge moving down to the ground again. Once it has arrived? Another return stroke. Which, in turn, paves the way for another dart leader. In some cases, this can result in over twenty strikes in a row, and Procella, with all her fury, will make certain that many occur.

Suffice to say, Hisame's body would be utterly destroyed.