There are not many activities that one can do while one's arm is swaddled in bandages that are expressly forbidden from getting wet. Sister Marta knew this intellectually, but actually being made fully aware of it was... annoying.
Alone, she sits on a towel, wearing a modest swimsuit. Unable to relinquish the aspiration of a beachside vacation, she sits listlessly, nursing her wounds, tapping at a spent glass of water with a loose straw. The rhythmic percussion soothes her ill mood but doesn't resolve it.
"The Bright side, Marta... look on the bright side..."
She adjusts her parasol to compensate for the shifting sunlight before returning to her appreciation of sounds. The coming and going of the tide... yes, that's a good beat as well.
"...If anyone can't walk, please help them move! Keep going and don't stop! I repeat-"
Marta stood at the rear of the large mass of escapees, herding them towards the ridge as best she could while hauling two prisoners of her own in one hand.
"Everyone, please listen! There's an evacuation spot over there by the ridge! Please move there in an orderly fashion-"
When the Descent had arrived, she had frozen in indecision - a rare moment of hesitation that she still cursed. She hadn't yet acquired the instinct, the habit of dealing with other Arms Masters on this level. The time to scold herself for this laxity was later - now, she was the only one in the position to lead the evacuation, and she was in her element. It matters not that the risk was even higher - she'd led enough evacuations that she sprung into action nigh immediately.
"- prioritize the sick and the elderly! Don't rush, you might hurt yourself or others! Don't look behind you, but don't leave anyone behind!"
For all her concern over whether the dam would break, someone else did it anyway. The pyrotechnic spectacle that occurred, as well as Qingshe's timely intervention, both stalled the otherwise disastrous flood... but for how long? If there's anything she's learned since coming to this corner of the world, it was to expect the unexpected, and the lapping, churning waters grew higher and higher every second.
"If anyone can't walk please help them move! Keep going and don't stop! I repeat-"
She was already carrying a third person, a man who was too weak to move. With him over her back, the weight on her shoulders only increased, and her put-upon knees creaked and ached with every hurried step, every step taken back to lead one more person who had gotten lost in panic and confusion.
"Saint Michael Archangel, please just a few minutes more..."
Marta wasn't sure how else to react. One moment, her battle seemed to intensify, her lone remaining enemy escalating to lethal force now that it had become much more complicated to contain her. That much she was prepared for, nimbly backstepping from the murderous ice spikes - suddenly, the luminosity of the sky increased even further than it already was for the pitch middle of the night.
This time, it was green, and Marta officially didn't know what to do about it. Fight? Flight? Ignore it or rush there and try to do... something? Luckily, the sudden arrival of the Downward Descent and their dissolute chaos along the riverbanks had interrupted her opponent much the same, or she might have been open to a cheap shot.
"...I'll take you up on that surrender. Just don't do anything stupid, and the both of you will be treated decently."
She picks up Liu Xie with her Left Hand, suppressing a cringe now that the fight is over and the adrenaline rush no longer suppresses the pain of her wounds. Still, with the prisoners scattered to the winds and her immediate opponents surrendered, she wondered what else there would be a need to do here...
Wasting no time to react, Marta quickly hopped to her feet and charged the enemy arms masters with her boxing guard raised. Closing the distance, she decided not to avoid too many attacks - she could sidestep some of them, but...
"I'll take the vanguard, Miss Nil! Please back me up!"
Ducking beneath a stray kite, she lunges to sweep at the ground, sending a spray of debris flying to obscure the enemy's sight before running even faster. A blast of freezing slush impacts her - she grits her teeth and feels the burning on her right hand, but it does nothing to impede her momentum as it crashes against the fearsome Left. She puts on a face of bravado.
"Gnrkh! Hah, is that... all you can do? Thanks for the air-conditioning!"
Ropes harder than steel wind around her arms, gripping them with tremendous force, but before their grip can tighten any further -
"Will the wild bull be willing to serve you, or will he spend the night at your feeding trough?"
With a single pull, the hands binding the hand of wrath snap like poor strings, weak before its apocalyptic power. With a quick motion, the ropes ensnaring the burnt and bruised left hand are torn asunder.
"Can you tie the wild bull in a furrow with ropes? Or will he plow valleys after you?"
She barely intercepts a close-range blast of ice with her gauntlet, gritting her teeth. Her knees ache and cry out with the exertion as she darts forward in another lunge, gauntleted fist pulled back and ready to strike.
"Do you have an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like His?!"
Reaching melee range by the skin of her teeth, she lets loose a boulder-shattering left straight.
Helplessness is never a pleasant feeling. The inability to act, having to be content simply with being acted upon, is something humans must come to understand in their lives, from infancy to the deathbed. Confronted with the vastness of Creation, all human beings must perforce suffer that indignity sooner or later.
In situations like these, fleeing from certain death - or perhaps worse - at the hands of psychotic enemies and their misuse of power, Marta often found herself simmering in her thoughts on the nature of helplessness. Of all the impressive abilities granted to her allies and enemies, she did not know if any of them required the agonizing wait. Thirty-three seconds of helplessness in a life-and-death situation, where every passing second felt like an hour. Thirty-three seconds of being nothing but a Human on a battlefield of Giants. Thirty-three seconds spanning the gap between divine Might and divine Mercy.
A lot of people can lose their lives in thirty-three seconds.
A lot of regrets can come back to life in thirty-three seconds.
She's seen burning flesh before. She's carried her own burn scars and healed others in turn. Never before had they been borne by another in defense of her. The idea almost stole the strength from her knees before a surge of certainty flooded the back of her mind, and, in a flash of light, she manifested the brilliant white-gold gauntlet in her left arm. Clenching it tightly, she looks again at Qingshe.
"...yes. I'll leave the chastisement of the lust-addled rooster to you."
Turning around, she drives her fingers deep into the soil.
"Don't go dying on us, Serpent."
She pulls hard, sending a torrent of dirt, clods, and rock rushing behind her as she sends herself careening back to the fray...
---
... and arriving like a screaming bolide between Nil and the enemy's Arms Masters. It's hard to tell it's her at first, as there's only the booming impact of a fist as if from heaven, shattering the ground and leaving behind a sizable crater, but seconds later, Marta falls with a dull thump as she recovers from the second wave of force she used to cushion her fall.
Laying there on the shattered mud, she raises a metal-clad fist:
"It's two on two now, you warmongering scumsuckers!"
Traveling through ballistics is no one's idea of a fun ride. It sounds amusing to catapult oneself directly into the heavens at vertiginous speeds, but it's much less fun when you realize that you will impact the ground about as fast, and your thoughts become occupied with the negligible difference between bone and crumbly croissant dough in these circumstances.
The local self-proclaimed nun was of much the same opinion - though the blessings of the Left Hand would protect her from this impact with little more than bruises, the supernatural resilience of Arms Masters might not be enough for the other passengers to walk away from the wreck. Maybe in the future, she would worry about controlling the Hand of Might's recoil more carefully because her current vision felt like one out of Hell itself.
Her first instinct was to switch to her right hand as swiftly as possible, to heal anyone who'd been injured in the crash as well as those refugees who suffered wounds in the frenzied melee. If any Chinese soldiers were restored in the crossfire... well, call it a happy coincidence. She wasn't here to passively preside over slaughter and hoped no one gave her trouble over it. It's always awkward to walk into a war on one side and then explain that you prefer it when the enemy doesn't die.
She was about to rush over to help the desperate evacuees when the enemy Arms Masters appeared, and the battlefield turned into a bullet hell. Left with no alternative but to wait for the full thirty-three seconds for the Left Hand to return, she was instead left screaming and jumping desperately across open field and cover to cover to avoid the enemy attacks - A somewhat distracting display that only made her more open to fire, hoping her experience in avoiding enemy fire would spare her for the necessary half-minute.
In the precious few moments before everything kicked off, when everything was still tense standoffs and the rising threat of stellar annihilation, when information could still be hurriedly whispered and indicated, Marta had shuffled off to the back of the boat as unintrusively as she could, perhaps masquerading her movement in the guise of being intimidated - which in truth, she somewhat was.
When people suddenly began to move, she manifested the Left Hand of Wrath; the gauntlets' shine like a shimmering beacon in the darkness. A sign that the time for stealth and subterfuge had already fallen by the wayside.
"No time to explain! Hold on tight for dear life!"
With one last sideways glance to confirm the direction, she gathered as much energy as she dared into her left hand and pushed back downwards with a left straight.
The kinetic energy struck the water and compressed the air like the fist of an angry god. With a resounding shockwave and a massive splash, a plume of water tens of meters high sprayed from the surface of the water, the wake spreading down the river as Newton's Laws of Mechanics took hold, and the boat - and everyone on it - was suddenly being subject to very sudden and rude acceleration.
Thanks to the angle of force being applied by the ballistic impact of the punch, the boat soon cleared the water entirely and crashed through a series of fences and barricades. The boat would reach the hostage holding area by hook or crook, but it probably wouldn't be boat-shaped by then.
"Dear lord," thought a screaming nun as she contemplated the approaching ground, "Please let there be no one right below us at the moment."
Sitting at the corner in a small boat, pulling at the collar of a counterfeit PLA Uniform and trying her best not to further disrobe, Marta Rocha realizes she is not having a good time. She knew this was a humid subtropical region, but good grief, this...
"...This is worse than a hot Lisbon summer. And it's October."
She had even tried to get permission to wear her usual habit, but even from afar, the presence of a nun on a PLA boat would raise some eyebrows. A modest military uniform wasn't bad, but honestly, if she had worn the entire habit, she'd be cooking alive, so it was almost a relief to be mandated to wear it. Not that she was unused to hot climates - she'd been wandering the world for some time now, and Portugal itself isn't precisely Iceland - but she still really hated it.
Shifting in her seat, she barely acknowledges the tension and looming threat around her. She's not one for nerves - problems will either happen or they won't, and there's no point fretting until they fall on her lap. Her enemy at the moment wasn't the PLA; it was the shimmering heat and the many mosquitoes, who, among all of the Lord's creatures, most tested her patience and ability to sit still. As they reach the next barricade, she rises quietly to observe.
"I'm not really sure what the plan is... I'm not exactly a fine military mind. Just say the word and I'll jump to it."
The Gauntlet of Wrath. When active, the Arm's power is devastating. Strikes from the Left Hand have ruined most known mundane structures, cracking dams, rending buildings, and shattering concrete pavement beneath one's feet. Marta has yet to employ the full power of this ability for violence, but battle tanks smashed into pieces and sent flying are a convincing data point. The effects of the Left Hand also strengthen Marta's body considerably, though much less than what is outputted - she can take most Small Arms and Light Weapons to the face and live, but a solid punch from her will still send herself flying from the recoil.
The Right Hand of Mercy:
The Gauntlet of Kindness. When active, Marta can emit an aura that heals all nearby living beings within 33 meters. This effect is indiscriminate - friend and foe are fully healed and restored to vigor. This effect will work on wounds received in the last three minutes and heal any injury short of death.
For the Left Hand is Might, but the Right Hand is Mercy:
Only one Hand can be active at any one time. Switching from one to the other requires roughly 33 seconds of concentration. Each hand has only five charges of its full power - they can be used fifty times each at significantly reduced output. Output cannot be recovered except by resting or, once a day, taking a full hour to pray the Rosary three times.
Misc Abilities:
Oath to Order: As a (Self-Titled) Sister in service to the Lord, Marta has collected not only a fairly solid understanding of theology but a set of abilities suited to humanitarian aid. She's not exactly a UN paramedic, but she can provide first aid, forage for food, aid in disaster relief, and other emergency functions.
I *am* a Holy Woman, I *Will* Beat You Senseless: Marta is trying hard to get the hang of the whole "Turning the other cheek" affair, but at the end of the day, a mean left hook is a mean left hook. Years of Boxing classes don't vanish into thin air, and well, sometimes, the people with guns won't take "no" for an answer.
Praise Him with loud cymbals; Praise Him with resounding cymbals: Marta got into drums as part of her music classes in school and has since acquired a taste for percussion. She never quite hit the professional scene before taking her vows, but in these violent days, it serves as a more peaceful hobby than punching sandbags to ruin.
Personality:
Likes: Charity, Playing Music, Action Figures, Storms, Clocks
Dislikes: Deliberate Cruelty, Hot Temperatures (Humid or Otherwise), Religious Dogmatism, Amusement Parks
Fears: Losing control of her power, becoming close-minded as she ages, tight spaces
Bio:
Born and raised in Lisbon, the daughter of the Rocha Family had a solidly middle-class upbringing in a family of clerks and accountants. She spent much of her time running to and fro school, much less interested in formal education than her personal interests. A Latchkey kid with a heterodox approach to life, she spent much more time with a gaggle of fellows, pursuing many interests but with few sticking.
Her first passion was percussion, which she took up after a few music classes at school. The intensity of the rhythm and vibration pleased her on a profound level - it reminded her of the ticking of clockwork and the crashing booms of thunder. As her love of music developed, so did her attunement to the spiritual and abstract facets of nature. Repulsed by the dry nature of the family's work and burning desire to contribute something to the world, she moved to a religious institute but bounced off hard from the rigid hierarchies expected of her.
She's very quiet and private about this period of her life, but what is known is that she emerged sometime later as a self-avowed nun of no denomination, wielding the Hands of Might and Mercy. She's been on a veritable crusade against humanitarian crises, famines, natural disasters, civil wars, and refugee crises. Her Arms have healed victims of terrorism from certain death, blown paths through debris in the aftermath of earthquakes, and pulled truckloads of resources for isolated communities.
Current Goal:
The current conflict in SEA with China is extremely dangerous and has already extracted more than its toll in human life and misery. Even if she didn't have Noble Arms, she couldn't allow herself to stand by and do nothing... so she's decided to stick her nose into the ongoing affairs. She'd rather not hurt people if she can avoid it, but she's more than determined to do all she can to bring the war to an end.
Military or Civilian Rank: Sister (Self-Proclaimed)
Izurich
Damycles
Noctis