League A (Division 1): Forbidden v. Zack Blaze

[Max Dirks]

Battle at your leisure folks. This thread must be completed by January 9th, 2014 at 12:00 AM EST. If you finish early, please submit it for judging per usual.

[Zack Blaze]

“How boring,” Zack blaze looked up at the full moon, his blonde bangs falling into his eyes, “I thought the league would be more exciting than this.” He scratched his head as he continued his star gazing, his imagination forming lines to connect the various constellations. The brightest star in the sky is the tip of the Starslayer’s sword. To the east of the stars that compose the Starslayer is a cluster that forms the Dragon’s Daughters.

He closed his eyes and scratched the back of his head, the blades of grass underneath his form starting to irritate his exposed flesh. If he had looked southward, he could see the dozens of lights belonging to Radasanth homes. Crickets played their strange melody into the night sky, the fireflies around Zack dancing to the ‘tune’. The Underwood Underdog knew that he couldn’t enjoy the scenery forever; he had come here as part of his assignment for the Althanas League after all. Soon, his opponent would reveal themselves and they would start fighting.

He sat up, his arms wrapping around his knees. He had no information on his opponent, or when they would even show up. To pass the time, he began strumming his knees with his fingertips, bobbing his head to the chorus that the crickets provided. Behind him stood the trees of Concordia, their shadows embracing the ground like long lost lovers.

This small form of entertainment lasted for about a minute or so before Zack let out a frustrated scream to the night air, temporarily silencing his insect musicians. “By the Thaynes, when is something going to HAPPEN?!”

[Forbidden]

The lustiest of the shadows laying amongst the trees stirred. Grass prickled her bare breasts as she peered over an earth-woven structure of oaken roots. A whimsical breeze brought her the virile man's scent. He was young, ripe with energy and bursting with rich blood. In her travels Nora once met an Alerian dwarf who claimed twenty years marked the perfect vintage for fine scotch. She still marveled at how closely his rule mirrored her own taste for humans. Zack Blaze. She had an age and a name, and she thirsted... oh how she thirsted.

Ellenora Sekuerba Pope led the Liberi Nocturn clan of the ancient Vampyre. Forgotten from fears, forbidden from tales of terror, they'd rested beneath the surface for centuries. Too long. She was weak, so weak that her first visit to the surface had ended cowering and weeping beneath a stream bed while the blasted sun scorched the land. Too ashamed to return to her followers, she had fasted and meditated for a night and a day, and Njal had graced her dream with a command, and a vision. Feed only on the mighty, on those I place before you, her Goddess had promised, and strength will return to you and your people. The vision had been a tall man of blond hair and green eyes, broad of shoulder and long of limb. Nora's favorite flavor.

Njal was kind as she was wise, in all her infinite glory.

The vampyre bit her rosebud lower lip gently. The boy's cry had silenced the crickets and cicadas and sent a flock of redbuckles soaring southward. Has he detected me? She'd kept as quiet as she could as she crept to the tree line, tanto and wakizashi bound in a leather scrip to silence their rattling. The metal fasteners wound throughout her voluminous hair might have clanked, giving away her position. Nora took a breath and then picked up her caltrops, three in each hand, and stood. She slunk over the mound of dirt with hands trailing on the ground, leaving a pattern of dark iron points guarding her possessions.

She stood and walked toward Zack Blaze, dark eyes never leaving his muscular frame. Moonlight lit her midriff and creamy thighs but midnight tresses fell across her breasts and encircled her waist, hiding some small parts of her. So long as the iron fasteners remained wound within the long locks, Nora would wear her hair like an Akashiman robe. She remembered the training beneath her sensei beneath the nation's crystal spire, would use the ancient principles of combat to finish her prey if necessary. Only if necessary. Would the boy stop her from walking up and biting deep into his raging carotid artery? Many his age would be defenseless in the presence of the natural pheromone that exuded from her pores with each bead of sweat.

Surely Njal would not have chosen her such easy prey.

"Something happens now, by the eldest among the Thaynes." Ellenora answered the boy's question as she approached, one eyebrow arched like a swan's neck. "My name is Nora, what may I call you?" She said as she moved across the clearing, empty hands raised in greeting. His scent strengthened as she drew nearer, and the vampyre nearly whimpered with hunger.

[Zack Blaze]

Zack’s opponent came out from the literal woodwork, introducing herself and answering the boy’s question. He crossed his arms as he looked over the unkempt and unclothed female with a smirk plastered upon his features. Typical woman, Zack thought, Always resorting to their feminine wiles to try and gain an advantage. While Nora’s tactic was underhanded, Zack still found his eyes wandering down her form.

Her milky pale skin almost seemed as if it were the moonlight incarnate. Her black hair, knotted and fashioned as an Akashimian geisha, had spots of blue barely visible beneath the charcoal strands. Her eyes looked more like somebody had stuffed marbles into her sockets, and staring into the dual voids sent shivers down Zack’s back. She knew how to use her lithe figure and (in Zack’s opinion) attractive body to gain the upper hand. She was a tactician, and if she won the day, it would be through a clever mind and proper strategy rather than brute force and flashy techniques.

It was the exact opposite of Zack’s style, and he loved it.

“Zack Blaze. A pleasure,” he cracked his knuckles and bounced around on his feet, “I suppose it’s time for our fight then, eh? I don’t suppose you just want to give up right here and now and make both of our lives easier and less bruised, huh?” The melody of the crickets was now returning to their starlight showdown. The Coronian humidity began to make the air thicker, and beads of moisture were now rolling off of the exposed parts of Zack’s skin.

As he spoke, electricity began to subtly course through his hands. His whole body tingled with the thunderous power running through his veins. If Nora were to approach within an arm’s length of the street fighter, Zack would grab at her, using his High Voltage technique to temporarily catch the lady vampire off guard, and follow the stun up with a fist directly into the woman’s pearl white face.

[Forbidden]

Nora hesitated for the barest moment, one smooth leg forth and the other braced beneath. What fight does he speak of? The vampyre smiled wider to hide her trepidation. Could Njal have sent warning to this man, or were his own Gods meddling in the Mother's affairs? The leader of the Liberi Nocturn tribe took a breath and rolled her shoulders. She perspired in the night's thick air like a squeezed sponge, her pheromones unleashed to full effect. Zack seemed un-allured as his leather shoes trounced the leaf strewn grass. So he was warned... but by whom? Knowledge was only as strong as the faith of the man who possessed it. Zack Blaze crackled with power and Nora stepped close, reaching out reverently to touch his shoulder.

"What would you have me give up?" She asked, eyebrows raised in mocking innocence, "if you are the man I seek-" pain arced through her arm as Zack grabbed her wrist. The smell of her own crisped flesh overpowered the luster of the boy's blood and she writhed like a wolf caught in a trap until his fast found her jaw. Nora's head snapped back, lower lip spraying blood where it split on her tooth, and she lost all sense of the earth beneath and the stars above. Soft grass and sharp stones swept and stabbed at her sides as the impact of the punch sent her rolling thrice through the dirt. Grit coated her navel and face from the fall, topsoil invading her nostrils. She coughed and gagged and rolled onto her front, looking up at Zack Blaze through a curtain of disarrayed hair.

"Why?" She gasped as she lay on the ground like a worm, grasping at her mouth as if the blow could truly hurt her. Blood on her tongue - even her own - was exalting. "Who?" She panted in her best imitation of a distressed human. A true human would have yielded or fled, but those options barely occurred to Nora. She would fight the man with every ounce of Coronian decency behind those emerald eyes, and when he at last let his guard down she would taste the flesh above his jacket's high collar.

It takes a certain type of man to strike a woman in the face. Another kind altogether to beat her upon the ground.

Nora lay huddled beneath her cloak of hair, letting the hum of the insects in the long grass and the cool earthy dew comfort her. She would test this Zack Blaze's mettle by refusing to rise until the nerve-jarring shakes caused by his shocking attack receded. Come at me, she taunted silently, her face a picture of misery, I have endured far worse than you.

[Zack Blaze]

Zack raised his fists to his face to prepare for Nora’s physical reply. When a counter attack never came, he lowered his guard and looked towards the confused woman on the ground. The way she laid there, her bare body nearly glistening under the moons radiant beams, almost made her too easy of a target for the street fighter. Zack’s mind began to race, weighing the pros and cons of getting up close to the girl again. Her scent still lingered in the air, an intoxicating aroma that would fill most men with the lust of a wolf in heat.

“This is no place for whimpering,” Zack held out his right hand, motioning it up and down as if he were holding something ball-shaped in his palm, “Just because you’re a woman, naked, and cowering does not in any way mean I will not strike again. You stand before the Viper of Lornius, the Underwood Underdog, the Awesome Adventurer, Zack Blaze!” Zack ‘grabbed’ the invisible object in his hand, his fingers tightening around the air.

“You will either pledge your allegiance to me, or I will beat you to within an inch of your life!” He ‘threw’ his mimed ball at the vampire, hoping that the girl was too busy looking at the right to notice that the left had sent a spiral of flames tearing through the ground towards her. Small clumps of dirt and grass flew up into the air, once again bringing an eerie quiet to the battlefield. The flames tore through the earth as a shark tears through the water, eagerly trying to grab at its prey.

“The next time you enter a League,” Zack snickered his taunt, “don’t be surprised when someone punches you in the face!”

[Forbidden]

The wind stirred Nora's tangled hair and chilled her sweat slicked skin. With her body planted firmly in the earth she felt safe, close to Njal's embrace. She regained her breath but her left arm still felt numb and tingly, the muscles responding sluggishly to her commands. She knew she would have no hope of overcoming the ferocious Zach Blaze in her weakened state. She could only hope to goad him into a moment of weakness and strike with all of her cunning. Her Goddess had delivered a challenge truly worthy of the Liberia Nocturna's leader that night.

A column of fire erupted from the ground on its way to lick the vampyre's delicate hide. She cried out and flung herself to the side, rolling over and over. Sticks and leaves caught in her hair and their audience of insects departed on gossamer wings, seeking some quieter clearing. The pale woman cloaked in dirty hair gathered her knees to her chest and inched further from her attacker, left arm cradled across her chest. Her moonshadow was small and pitiful, the tears of frustration and pain shining in her eyes all too real.

"What league do you speak of?" Nora rasped, "I do not stand before you, wicked man. I weep." She gathered her hair like the edges of a robe and drew the downy mess across her shivering form. "I would speak any words to stop your onslaught, but my allegiance is pledged to another, for life and death." Njal did not share her servants. "So you will have to kill me, or inflict what tortures your twisted heart desires." The scorn and malice dripping from the words was born of her own weak body and foolish confidence, but she let them seep out and poison Zack Blaze. In truth she respected the man's bloodthirsty tenacity. And the way he demanded allegiance...

A shiver that had naught to do with wind nor sweat wracked Ellenora from tailbone to to pointed teeth. Is he another of Njal's servants? My replacement? The vampyre set her fangs. No sun-kissing human will take my clan away. The saltiness of her own spilled vitae had gone bitter. She needed to cleanse her palate with Blaze's blood.

[Zack Blaze]

The youth pursed his lips to the side when he had seen his feint not work. The naked girl was quicker than most opponents Zack fought. She continued to play the damsel in distress, her mouth bearing ever-so-slightly elongated fangs through her words. Zack raised a solitary eyebrow at the girl while resisting the urge to laugh. She was committed to her lies but Zack was committed to winning this battle.

“Well since you won’t pledge your allegiance to me, I guess there’s nothing more to say,” He sighed, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets and turning away. He kicked haphazardly at the grass and let the blades run through his red sports shoes. “You’re gonna keep acting like you don’t know what I’m talking about, and I’m just gonna keep beating on you ‘til you fall. That’s no fun. I’d much rather go after someone who’s worthy of my fists that keep pounding on a worthless bag of pretty meat.”

Zack smirked from behind his distraught façade. He removed a hand to scratch the back of his head as he began to walk off towards the forest before them. “I just wish you could have given me some sort of a challenge…” he mumbled once more while he kicked at the ground once more. He seemed much more like a child who had been denied a toy than a street fighter worthy of the Althanas League’s attention.

“Guess I’ll just have Makai finish the job,” He said, pointing his free hand behind the vampire. From the earth rose an eight foot monstrosity, his skin black as the night itself, with the stench of a beast that had never even heard of the word ‘washroom’. His white teeth flashed a grin of ivory white fangs, though they looked closer to white-painted bear traps in the creature’s mouth. His brown loincloth flapped in the wind, revealing the only shred of modesty the strange ogre showed. Two giant hands flew downwards with the force of dual steel hammers towards his target, the ‘innocent’ vampire girl.

Zack laughed as he placed two fingers on the top of his head, and saluted off his opponent without ever looking at her. “Au revoir, cherie.”

[Forbidden]

Vitality returned to Nora's numbed limb as she clenched and re-clenched tufts of dewy grass. Her right hand hid in the voluminous tresses of midnight hair, conjuring an orb of antimagic. Njal bless this weapon, she prayed, that it may disrupt some meager part of this man's power. Dark billowing energy gathered around the hidden hand. Her hair was decorated by leaves and horribly mussed from rolling in the dirt but the iron fasteners still held its robe-like shape. One small breast was bared to the moonlight as the vampyre removed a fixing from her carefully arranged hair. The iron kunai pressed flat against a pale wrist, hidden and ready. Ellenora's time in Akashima had taught her to hide a blade anywhere, and to throw with both hands.

He turns! She wanted to cackle. Alabaster fangs bit at her split lip, drawing blood anew. She waited until she felt certain Blaze could not see her and then sprang to her feet and cast the antimagic orb at the spine between his broad shoulders. Her left hand whipped back, kunai cocked, preparing to let follow mana with metal.

The crust trembled beneath petite bare feet. A smell like the sewers beneath Gisela cut through the pleasant forest aromas, obscuring even the scent of Zach Blaze's blood. The vampyre gasped and wheeled about, knees wobbling. The monstrous ogre bared down on her with both fists like a manic miner less his hammer. Ellenora dove out of the way, dropping her throwing knife in panic. As fetid air whizzed by from the force of the blow the vampyre scrambled away on all fours.

She crawled. Was this what Njal desired of her? Utter embarrassment at the hands of a mightier opponent, a man immune to her charms? She would wear every bruise her Goddess granted like a notch on her sword's hilt. Nora found her feet and ran the last distance to the treeline. Her desperate dives and rolls had not been mere evasion of Blaze's onslaught. Each rough tumble had carried her closer to her hillock. The mound of earth-grown roots protected by caltrops. In the midst of fallen leaves and thick loam she could not see the iron spikes, so she threw herself headlong over the concealed caltrops and landed in a heap next to her burlap sack.

Draw your sword! She ordered her body, but pride bubbling up like magma from a volcano brought her to her feet. She seized a second iron kunai from its hiding place in her hair, baring both breasts to the shadows of the woods. The dark metal projectile flew fourth, aimed for the reeking ogre.

"You will never take what is mine!" She shrieked past the thick oak's trunk at the cocky blond man, "No matter the monsters you command or the powers you wield, the Liberi Nocturna tribe is my birthright!" She fumbled to draw her ancient wakizashi from the burlap bag, shaking from hunger and fleeting adrenaline. "No cowardly human could hope to accomplish the glorious deeds Njal demands!"

[Zack Blaze]

Makai howled when the kunai bit deep into his muscular arm. Small rivers of black blood pooled forth from the blades wound to stain the emerald grass below. The ogre’s face turned into a sneer as he raised his fists from the craters they had created. The ground had become nothing more than torn blades of green and mounds of dirt in his wake. All along the ground, ants and worms scurried off to the next convenient hiding space, away from the terror that had almost ended them.

Zack turned at his friend’s roar just in time to see the beat remove the weapon with two of his fingers. The monster’s eyes met with his masters, the face of the creature degrading into an angry scowl. The pearl white fangs were an intimidating sight for most, but Zack waved off the ogre as one would shoo a puppy away. Makai let out another roar, one of pure frustration, as he blinked out of existence. The sudden disappearance of his bodyguard caused the kunai to fall harmlessly to the ground.

"No cowardly human could hope to accomplish the glorious deeds N’Jal demands!" The woman seemed to shriek at her opponent. It seemed that she had finally had enough of the beating Zack delivered upon her. The wind carried her voice through the trees, almost echoing in the forest. Zack covered his mouth to hide the smile that formed across his features. He found humor in her declaration of loyalty to the ‘evil’ Thayne known as N’Jal.

His body could not take the comedy of it all, and despite his best efforts, Zack Blaze laughed at his opponent. His hot breath flowed through his fingers as he giggled like a schoolboy hearing his first funny joke. Realizing his attempt to stifle the giggles were for naught, Zack moved his hand to his forehead and let the laughing pierce through the serenity the night had provided.

And then, he was gone.

He appeared instantly behind his opponent, the sword hidden within his pants drawn instantly. His blade sung a chorus of death through the air as it attempted to skewer the woman from behind, straight through her bare chest. His laughter had all but disappeared. His eyes were now honed in on the tussles of black hair before him. His posture had become far more like that of a professional swordsman, though he rarely actually used his magical weapon.

“Keep your old Gods,” he spat a venomous taunt at the woman, “I have no need for them in my world.”