Round 2: Champions of Lornius Vs Plane Curiosity

[Resolve]

After several long moments and a very peculiar detour or two, the women reappeared on the battlefield, staggered from one another. Resolve came first.

The exorcist materialized not far from Dirks in particular, hands propped on her hips as she tossed him a sly grin. Sei had clear advantage from his higher position on the rock, herself only twenty feet away from the closer of the men in a flat, rocky patch amongst the vibrant heather. At this point the second man's means of offense remained unrevealed, but this fact didn't seem to disturb Resolve any as she looked to his partner, the initial offender, with his tall figure strongly silhouetted against the clear, azure sky. "I do apologize, how rude of us," she said. "But guns do seem rather anticlimactic in this sort of setting. What else have you got, or are you just a tiny man hiding behind a big weapon?"

Meanwhile, Mordelain reappeared closer to their original position toward the incline of the valley, standing with clear vantage of both of their opponents. These men may not have intended to participate in the tournament, but it was too late to back out of the scuffle at this point; they'd been marked, and by firing the first shot, they'd successfully volunteered themselves as targets.

"Hold on now, Resolve, 'big weapon' is a little generous," Mordelain smirked, holding something in the small of her back that vibrated with the providence of the worlds.

At this point, while the ladies had proven themselves to have quite a bark, their bite was still to be tested. But, from the shit-eating grins on their faces, they seemed not to be too concerned… yet.

[Silence Sei]

At first he believed that Dirks was mad. He believed that his friend had fallen victim to the dark illusions of the Red Forest. But he also knew his friend was no fool. If he truly believed that Starlynn was alive, then perhaps she was. And Dirks was right...if it was his family, Sei would have leapt to action regardless of the consequences.

Though Dirks had not been responsible for bringing the insulting women back from wherever they had gone, they had indeed returned to the Lotho Mountains. The mute smiled as he felt the magical properties of his most unpredictable spell take form. He smiled as the younger of the two girls attempted to stall for time, while the older one kept at a distance, probably preparing some sort of sinister trap. His vision centered more on the elder of the two, a slow smile creeping across his lips as he stared intently.

Only Sei and his microscopic vision could see it, the seals that had formed all over the woman’s skin. His eyes shifted over towards her partner, scanning her body to find that her own flesh had started to form the same markings. There was a blue line that slowly swirled around itself to nothingness. He knew that unless one of these women possessed an ability similar to his, that they would not be able to see this magic, the symbol itself the size of the tiniest bacteria. Sei’s body tensed once the enchantment had finished, as if his muscles were preparing for a similar fate. He could feel the cap now put on the two ladies thanks to his Would spell.

He shifted his gaze towards his partner, Sei’s eyes growing wide when he seen that Dirks was now branded as well. Instead of the tiny whirlpools now gracing the skin of the women, the gunslinger had now been blessed with targets where his pupils were. Sei’s eyes lowered, and the smile remained on his face. The target was a universal sign for accuracy, an attribute that Max Dirks was already proficiently deadly with. Looking at his partner’s features now reminded the mute of a hawk’s eyes, locating a prey and remaining unrelenting until it was caught. Dirks had become a deadly calculator with his aiming abilities.

Any gamblers who had hoped to turn a profit by betting against the friendly duo would soon find themselves penniless. Thanks to Sei, the Champions of Lornius now held every advantage. The mute cracked his knuckles before passing Dirks a single nod, his attention turning towards the teleporting woman. While she had somehow survived a glass explosion right beside her, her luck was about to run out.

Within a fraction of a second, the light of the sun had become blotted out. Dark clouds surrounded the group, tossing around violently as though the Thaynes themselves had been angered. Sei waved his hand into the air, each one of his digits slowly sinking back into his palm until he was pointing upwards. More specifically, the telepath was pointing at the two strangely out-of-place seaweeds that had formed at the top of the mountain. There was more panic coming from the animals that were still around; the goats and rams hurriedly jumped from the stone, landing safely on their feet before dashing off to less dangerous accommodations.

It sounded like lightning when the first boulder slammed against the mountain, the rock sent tumbling down the way straight towards warrior and woman alike. Small stones followed suit quickly, another sound of slamming stones booming from above. Within seconds, dozens of boulders had begun to cascade down from the sky, slamming into the top of the mountain only to roll down. Sei’s focus stayed on the elder woman, his breathing slow and steady, his posture perfect. His hand gesture was not only that of a spell caster signaling for a rock slide, but telling the two teleporting trollops that their foes were top tier fighters; they were number one.

They would continue to the Floating City, and they would revive Starlynn. It was this staunch resolve, and not physical prowess or technological wonders that were truly the mark of Champions of Lornius.

((By returning the Planes have activated Sei’s Would spell. By choosing the number 4 on a 1-8 scale, a random word generator generated the words cap, profit, calculator, and seal. The seal's effect prevents any technology from being used by those with the whirlpool seals. After flipping a coin and having a third party guess the result accurately, the result of this spell allowed it to fall in the 70% range of Sei’s favor, granting a magic seal on his opponents and his ally, deterring the enemy and helping the friend.))

[Mordelain]

Mordelain twisted her wrist and pulled on the mechanism of the generator in her hands. Almost instantly, hubris of power, thunderous and mighty, swirled around her. The wavering lights ensorcelled the air with a technological prowess of a survivalist creed. It gifted her with solidarity and a bulwark against the descending earth.

“Oh please,” she spat, her elocution and riposte clearly thrown out the window. She was growing tired of the endless posturing, the need to fight, and the bravado of men to strike down the weak. Today, Mordelain and Resolve were anything but. “He who casts the first stone,” she began, reciting an old proverb from the deep mangroves of Bulganin, “should always be cast without sin.”

She produced the cube for all to see, its silver bodice keeping the violet and blue prisms intact within the matrix of wires and circuitry. There was no grin on her face anymore, but instead, there was a reluctant reverence for things not entirely understood. Whilst they had walked the war-ravaged surface of another world, she had been stricken with a need to defend herself. ‘What better way?’ she had asked, than with the artifice of the world their opponent’s guns had sent them to.

The first of the boulders to threaten Mordelain crashed into the roiling heather, some hundred feet behind her. The deep, gallant, and reverberating thud of rock against the soft earth bed of the valley pounded in her chest. She heard the all too familiar of earthen rain long before it rattled down over the now fully formed sphere of light that encircled her. The flaps of her attire, loose-fitting black cloth held in place with a thick leather jerkin and deep purple sashes continued to whip and wail – the force field was, or so the artificer had tried to explain, a shield against energy, force, and motion – the wind simply slipped through it unnoticed.

“Resolve,” Mordelain roared, trying as hard as she might to be heard over the continued barrage of the arena’s own horizon down around her. “Look out!” was all she could project between them successfully.

The stubborn girl had flat out refused to receive anything from the artificer, to the point where she had walked out of the workshop, defiant of her partner’s wishes to survive the ordeal against the firearms with their bodies, and their souls intact. She had spoken in great depth about the ills of guns to the exorcist, but she would not be heard. Resolve was wise, by all means, and though she had been accepting of the fact there were planets beyond her own, it would take much more time to become accustomed to the strangeness therein.

When the boulder obliterated Resolve’s outline, Mordelain flinched. Her own spine snapped to attention, at the exact moment Resolve’s crumpled. Limb and life were rent, cracked, and torn, and as the crater spewed grass, moss, and mottled earth into the air, Mordelain spewed tears, outrage, and wrath alike.

“Resolve!” her arms fumbled with the shield, and she dropped to her knees, quite distraught, in time with the mechanism's descent to the ground. The shield wavered, flickered, and crackled with life, but did not falter. Somehow, it’s innate sense of self knew to not falter, not fail, and not fall from grace now – it’s purpose was to protect, and protect it would.

Another boulder landed on the rocky outcrop where the duo had partaken of a light lunch at the end of a long stretch of rural pasture, and castigated the happy memories the planes walker had of their culinary exchange. The memory was replaced only with violent noise, dust, and razor shards of rock as the scene exploded in chaos. Tears rolled down both her cheeks, her hair, matted and furled, covered her left eye like a mourning veil concealing a widow from the world of the living.

[Max Dirks]

Dirks’ smirk turned into a crooked smile as the women reappeared. It was not Sei’s “would” spell that was responsible for bringing them back from the void. They returned of their own volition. However, by re-appearing as Dirks commanded, the spell instantly imbued the Mystic with a set of incredible, albeit random, powers. In the past, Dirks observed that the amount of power granted by the “would” spell had a more than incidental impact on Sei’s mind, often causing him to temporarily disregard his typical “do-gooder” status in favor of a more aggressive approach. Dirks hoped that Sei would use those powers right now to make quick work of these mettlesome LCC participants. He wanted their passes and was growing tired of their arrogance.

“Silence” Sei Orlouge did not disappoint. He was, after all, the most powerful creature on Althanas. Dirks ignored one woman’s catcalls and instead watched as his partner rained fury down upon the mountainside. Even though he could not see the seaweed, he knew that Sei had cast his “octopus rain” spell when rocks began to pelt their opponents. These rocks were not the typical volleyball sized rocks the Mystic used to incapacitate his enemies. They were boulders, indicating to Dirks his gamble with Sei had been a success. The cherub belonged to Dirks, at least for now.

Relishing in his achievement, Dirks laughed and looked to the sky. Above him, boulders were crashing off invisible sheets of glass, indicating to the criminal that Sei had simultaneously activated “Mystic Protection” to shield them from the boulder onslaught. “This is perfect,” he cackled, spinning his gun around on his finger.

Sei’s “would” spell had an unexpected cognitive impact on the criminal as well. Suddenly, the battlefield became an equation to him. Everywhere he looked, Dirks saw a way to annihilate the brash women. A shot here, two shots there; they wouldn’t be able to escape. No, he thought. That would be too easy. Instead of firing at them, the criminal left Sei’s protective sphere and dashed into the fray.

Small rocks pelted Dirks’ face as he ran into the rockslide, but that did not deter him. His target was the woman with the magical shield and he, not Sei, would be the one to inflict the final blow. As he ran, Dirks was able to easily calculate where the larger rocks would land and avoided them. However, this zigzag motion slowed his approach and several things happened simultaneously on the battlefield at this time.

When he finally arrived at his target, the woman was on her knees with her shield above her head. She cried out for her partner, Resolved, and tears ran down her cheeks. Dirks took a second to glance over his shoulder and saw that this Resolve had been flattened by one of the boulders. With a grin, he turned to the woman and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be joining her soon.” Now directly above her, Dirks reached out and tried to rip the shield away from her. Much to his surprise, though, some invisible force threw his hand away and he was barely able to maintain his footing. At first he thought Sei had intervened until he saw several small rocks being similarly thrown from the shield. Then he realized that the shield wasn’t magic, it was tech. But even tech had its limits. The shield was flickering and Dirks figured it would give way soon.

“You bitch,” he cried out in frustration. Dirks took a small step to his left to avoid potential shrapnel and started firing at the shield. His goal was not to hit the woman, but rather to destroy the tech and leave her vulnerable. This woman was the most annoying of the two and Dirks had already calculated how he would finish her.

[Resolve]

When Sei's eagle eyes met Resolve's figure he'd notice anomalies in the surface of her skin, as if her physical manifestation had been hampered by her disappearing act. Such a thing could easily be attributed to someone apparently capable of vanishing into thin air, the constitution of her form wavering under his excellent vision as raindrops appeared to fall through her. But, whether or not this detail would have concerned him, it didn't matter. His strange ability fell into full swing, along with tons of rocks both minuscule and massive, and it wasn't long before the first casualty.

The exorcist panicked at the extreme change in the atmosphere and, quite suddenly, everything went dark. This was unexpected, as Resolve had never been inside a boulder before. Though it passed directly through her, the sensation was startling enough for her to lose concentration, and her previously convincing astral projection fell into nothingness. Her spiritual presence reduced to mere wisps of shifting air, which Sei's sharp sight may have attributed to the loss of a soul as it fell away solemn and silent toward the sky.



As Mordelain wept in mourning, Resolve's real eyes blinked open a couple hundred feet away. They had argued on Zhayou, alien technology rejected by the girl in favor of her own inherent skills. While the elder, wiser woman returned to Althanas with a shield, Resolve insisted on hinging the plan on her own abilities. To commence her grand plan, she'd had the plane walker drop her off behind an outcrop that grew like a massive stone tumor out of the vast incline of the valley.

The girl gasped into consciousness where she lay hidden from their opponents' view, her body having been left in a precarious position when stones started rattling down from the hilltops. Several smaller ones had hit her while she was gone, she could tell from some sudden aches and scrapes and sediment that dusted her sari, but she was fine, and she eased herself to her feet. Her ability was quite handy –– on a whim, Resolve could separate her psyche from her physical form and manifest a rather convincing astral projection wherever required. As if made of air, such a projection was unaffected by things like bullets. It was tempting to go out again as such, but it was too dangerous in this climate to leave her physical counterpart so vulnerable; she was lucky that boulder hadn't found her there, instead.

Sorely disappointed that the original plan didn't work, the girl crept to the edge of the outcrop and peered cautiously toward the action where Dirks appeared to be going at Mordelain's shield. Resolve didn't know how much they could trust that technology, and she stood in quiet deliberation as she attempted to determine the best course to take. The harsh ring of gunshots stung her ears as her focus drifted to Sei, still standing on the rock where he orchestrated his strange symphony of opposable seaweed and stone.

Shit, Resolve lamented internally, why can't he just punch people like a normal person? It would make things a hell of a lot easier. As an opponent, he had rather a baffling routine. She'd rather have taken a bullet than deal with the ginger at this point, but they would be forced to handle him sooner or later.

Stones continued to thunder and fall from the distant mountain peak and one the size of a football bounced off the incline just so, ricocheting and striking the exorcist in the side. She bit her lip to muffle a fountain of curses and barely caught herself from stumbling out of cover, clinging to the outcrop as she struggled to hold herself up. She allowed herself a short moment to recover, pain raging in the bruised left side of her abdomen where she could only be grateful it didn't knock the wind out of her. Then Resolve glanced up behind her to assess the urgency of her situation. A boulder was headed her way, and it was large enough to kill her –– again.

[Silence Sei]

Sei stood in the same position, his hand still held in the air. The wind blew past him, allowing the long white boa draped over his left shoulder to blow in the breeze. Being a telepath, Sei had known the second that the two girls had reappeared that nothing was what it seemed. Luckily, the mute was fully aware that his Would spell had taken care of any more annoying teleportation tricks. His uncharacteristic cruelty seemed to earn Dirk’s favor once more as well. The fact that the gunslinger honestly thought the mute would allow for the death of somebody spoke volumes about the convict’s faith in his friend’s moral code.

The rocks fell around his form, almost as if the stones were intentionally avoiding the warrior. He closed his eyes, the smile still upon his lips as the clouds above began to dissipate to the winds. The rays of the sun once more basked the Mystic’s form, illuminating his unnaturally pale features again. He looked to his partner and shook his head. It seemed as though Dirks was now waiting around for the older of the two women to become physical. The mute had not needed his microscopic vision to see that Dirks’ target was crying, distraught over the ‘loss’ of the one known as Resolve.

“It might be a trap, Dirks,” Sei cautioned his friend, “Resolve is still alive, and not far from here. Don’t let that witch lull you into a false sense of security.”

“I can handle myself, Cherub.” Dirks spoke loud enough to come off as crazy, but his posture and willingness to open fire proved otherwise.

“I do not doubt your abilities,” Sei spoke, what loose parts of the broken apart mountain behind him tumbled slowly to the ground. The animals that had been so frightened mere seconds ago were no returning to their former sanctuary, one of the rams even showing bravery by inching closer and closer to the Mystic. Sei responded by reaching his hand out once more, stroking the soft fur of the animal as he cooed it with his mental abilities.

The shifted his form to face the direction that Resolve’s mental signature was coming from. With his eyes still closed, Sei located the exact location of the girl pretty easily, but also detected that the exorcist was in danger. Before he could react however, the Mystic began to fade away, his form shifting into several blue lines until finally fading from existence altogether.

Meanwhile, the boulder that had spelled imminent doom for the young lady was hit with a red beam, and shattered into several smaller, less dangerous rocks...

[Mordelain]

Mordelain flinched, every muscle in her body twitching in time with the recoil of Max’s guns. As each shot collided with the centrifugal veil of the shield she felt the energy disperse outwards, and inwards, and ignite every desire she had to flee from the valley. It would have been so easy, to just walk away, and speak nothing more of this whole ordeal.

“Not again…” she said. Her voice, though weakened by false tears and dramatic flourish, was grainy, strong, and determined. The exorcist Resolve, perhaps a little ironically, had given Mordelain the one thing she needed to face up to her past and smite it. She raised, slowly, knees shaking, hair eschew.

The barrage of fire petered out, finally, and the planes walker let out an audible sigh of relief. The shield continued to ripple with shockwaves where the slugs collided with the kinetic energy. She made a mental note to thank the artificer in person; she made a mental note to thank the entire civilisation for having survived the Cataclysm. A grander scaled copy of the device she clung to for dear life had shielded the mega city from the convocation as it ripped through the Nexus.

“This is pointless ,” she roared, eyes flaring, chest pounding. She dropped the shield to her groin, letting it dangle heavily in her palms. It continued to shine with inner malefic, its cold technological heart empowering the woman to speak her mind. “You can kill us a thousand times, but you will never triumph.” This was strictly speaking not true. They could kill a thousand projections of Resolve as much as they liked.

The rock fall began to teeter out, just as the gunfire had done, though the smaller stones bounced off the shield, their momentum not torrential enough to cause them to explode into dust and shrapnel. It sounded like rain. She half wished it would.

“We all want to gain something from this encounter.” She remained entirely suspicious of the pair’s cover story – it was clear that creatures who possessed the power to warp the very fabric of a planet would never stoop so low as to be lost for directions. “Allow me to fulfil your desires.” She pressed a small panel on the shield generator, and it hummed louder in response. “Let me make you,” she wiped the tears from her left eye with her right sleeve, and then her right eye with her left sleeve. “An offer you simply cannot refuse.”

In tandem with the winged man’s vanishing act, the shield imploded. It fizzled out with a rush of cold air, entirely devoid of showmanship or spectacle. As quickly as it had come to life the shield died and the lights of the mechanism twinkled briefly before going out completely. It became nothing more than a heavy, useless, remnant of another world’s legacy.

Mordelain smirked. As much as the Champions of Lornius had under estimated them, she had under estimated the Champions of Lornius. In her long experience of war, deception, and opportunity, however, the gunslinger’s sudden solidarity offered its own reward. She cocked her head seductively, though more with intrigue than sexuality.

“Let me take you to,” she paused as the falling boulder erupted. Her stoic nature, and it’s placement off centre from her location, told her to simply ignore it. It didn’t matter, it wouldn’t matter, and it was of no concern. She shrugged. “Wherever it is you are going.” Her determined features, light brown hair, umbra blue eyes, and earnest smile burnt with passion and honesty. “I will take you to the exact place you want to go, shortening a year, a week, or a lifetime’s journey in the simple blink of an eye.” She extended a palm to Max. “All I ask in return is that you concede this round.”

Pure, simple, plain curiosity could end wars, just as easily as desire and intrigue could start them.

[Max Dirks]

Dirks merely shrugged off the Mystic’s warning. Still enhanced by the “would” spell, he’d already considered at least a dozen different ways that the women could be attempting to fool them, and had determined that none of their tricks would have any immediate impact on him or his assault at that time. Thus he continued firing away at the shield until his entire clip was exhausted.

“What the fuck,” Dirks cried out as he released the empty clip from its chamber. Somehow the otherworldly shield had managed to absorb several thousand joules of energy and was still able to function. Dirks growled, frustrated by its dexterity. Surely it wouldn’t be able to handle another twelve shots. However, the criminal never got the chance to test that theory. While Dirks was reaching into his pocket for another clip, the woman lowered her shield and began to plead with him. Typical woman, the misogynist criminal thought. Instead of reloading, Dirks reached into his robes and holstered his gun.

Dirks flinched slightly when the woman’s shield imploded, but once he realized she had voluntarily turned it off, a cold smirk appeared on his face. As she spoke, Dirks turned and glanced at the battlefield. The rockslide had apparently ended, but Sei was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d run off after Resolve or something. Unconcerned, Dirks listened to the woman's offer with deaf ears. There was no way he was going to let this arrogant bitch transport him anywhere, or even allow her to survive for that matter. Besides, the Floating City, the crown jewel, and even Starlynn had become afterthoughts behind his hatred for this annoying woman and her partner.

“I’m sorry.” Dirks replied, pulling the twin prevalida katanas from his back. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline.” Like all of his other recent actions in this battle, Dirks had already thought at length about how he was going to kill the woman. To add insult to injury for everyone involved, the criminal intended to use an execution maneuver that Sei Orlouge himself had taught to him years ago. In the next few seconds Dirks would drop to the ground, twist his body, somersault towards his enemy and decapitate her with two sequential cross-slashes as he sprung back to his feet. Dirks just wished that the Mystic was around to witness the irony.

Wait, he thought. Sei’s gone. Then Dirks realized something was amiss. Unlike his opponents, Sei did not have the ability to teleport and there really wasn’t anywhere close to hide. This could only mean one thing. The Mystic he'd been fighting alongside, the Mystic he watched smother another human being was actually...

“STOP!” the real Sei Orlouge roared, penetrating the minds of everyone within a forty mile radius. There was a blinding flash of light and the silhouette of an angel—butterfly wings fully extended—appeared above them. Wasting no time, the Mystic descended quickly from the heavens, bringing the power of the sun along with him. Superheated by an invisible beam of energy, the handles of Dirks’ katanas suddenly became too hot to hold. “Fuck!” he cried, throwing them to the ground. It seemed, much to Dirks' dismay, that Resolve wasn’t the only one utilizing misdirection that day. Apparently while Sei was up there flying around, Dirks had been manipulating a fake.

Sei landed in a cloud of dirt before them. Only then was Dirks able to make out his friend's orange hair and light features. YOU WlLL NOT ATTACK THIS WOMAN! the Mystic commanded, retracting his wings. Before Dirks could reply, he was hit by a sudden wave of nausea. “Wh…what?” Dirks muttered, taken aback. He lifted his hand to his head, no longer feeling any desire to attack. “Did…did you just...force persuade me?” he asked.

[Resolve]

The exorcist made to dodge the boulder, giving up her cover in the process, when it suddenly shattered a harmless distance away. She knew Mordelain wasn't capable of that; only that blasted ginger and his bizarre medley of abilities explained it. Her already quick temper torched by utter frustration, Resolve cursed and looked around for Sei.

The man seemingly vanished, so she made the quick decision to return to her partner, dashing out from behind the outcrop to witness Dirks drawing his katanas. He stood over Mordelain menacingly as the woman attempted to offer compromise, villainous and finally wielding weapons the girl could respect. "Like fucking hell," Resolve growled. Tearing after him at full speed she drew her own sword, a massive scimitar with a dastardly hooked blade. The weapon forged in her hand from her own inherent energy as she ran and appeared to consist of nothing but ethereal mist. It lacked the ominous glint of steel, but would slash equally lethal all the same.

Resolve charged in a blur of crimson anger, clattering over rocks and dashing through aromatic heather with deadly intent. Not much would have stopped her at that point, but as she raised her blade and prepared for her final descent upon the gunslinger, Sei interrupted in the flashiest way possible.

Skidding to a stop through sediment and stones, Resolve spectated as the man fluttered to the ground on butterfly wings.

This was simply too much.

"Wait, wait, wait," the exorcist shouted, commanding attention from their haphazard gathering. "You've got to be shitting me. What the hell is this shit? I don't know what kind of ridiculous tournaments you've done before, but this is not a real fight. And if you're not our opponents as I now suspect, then fucking say so and quit shooting shit and put away your gods-damned fairy wings."

The girl spit fire, scimitar crackling with raw energy as she white-knuckled its grip.

[Silence Sei]

Sei turned to the girl, his butterfly wings sliding into his back as he did so. Resolve’s rudeness and lack of gratitude caused the Mystic’s eye to twitch a bit, his hands shaking. He maintained his composure for the most part while trying to warn Dirks to do the same. He walked towards Resolve, his shoes silent as he almost glided across the rocky flooring nature had provided.

“Your mouth is the fucking reason I’m going to kill you, bitch!” Dirks shouted. Sei’s arm shot out, his open palm aimed behind him towards his friend. The gunslingers will was strong if it could recover from the Force Persuade technique with such ease. Such an attitude did nothing but show the Mystic that he would have to keep his friend under a constant psychic connection.

“Do not raise your gun” Sei’s ‘words’ only entered Dirks mind, and the fact that the mute did not hear the weapon cocking was enough to tell him that Dirks was once again under his influence. Sei had now understood that these powerful women were vulgar, but apparently not beyond reason. Sei used his free hand (the one not focused on Dirks) to dust his gi off, small clouds of gray rising up from his clothes.

“You are right. I apologize for the deception,” Sei bowed his head, his eyes still focused on Resolve’s form in case treachery was afoot, “My name is Sei Orlouge of the Ixian Knights. I have come at the behest of my friend here to obtain a certain item. The thing is, we came into this country rather illegally, and as such, do not have the passes required to enter the Floating City of Lornius”. `
“My ally here thought it was of our best interests to lie to you and your friend, and engage you in combat if necessary. I was against such a thing not because of your genders, but because we w have no interest in the fight.” Sei left out the part where he thought that his team was on a whole other level than that of Resolves. Such words would just serve to infuriate the girl and start the hostile tensions anew. Sei straightened himself back up, a smile crossing his features as he ‘spoke’ again.

“All we really want is your passes. As you can see, I posses abilities that would allow me to return the passes back to you should you need them immediately. We are not thieves, and we do not wish to fight you. My partner is a little stressed out. He lost somebody very close to him recently and he’s been chomping at the bit for somebody to say something. If we offended either of you, I do sincerely apologize from the bottom of my heart, but is there any way possible that you could perhaps loan us your passes. I beseech you, that we will leave you be should you acquiesce to this boon.”

The wind grew more violent as Sei talked. Birds began to ride the gusts off into the distance. Sei had made sure that nothing he had said was a lie. There had been facts that he had left out; they were indeed competitors in the tournament and he kept Max’s name off of his psychic ‘voice’ for a very specific reason. However, there was a conviction in the ‘tone’ to which he spoke, one that would hopefully show Resolve that Sei Orlouge was laying most of his cards on the table at this point.