Redemption Bracket Finals: Zack Blaze Vs Roht Mirage

[Silence Sei]

The winner takes on Taste of Treason! Will our Smart Mouth youth once again prove superior, or will the Daughter of the Desert bury the Zack in her sandstorms?!

Match begins Tuesday, June 3rd at 12:01 AM Central Standard Time! Good Luck!

[Zack Blaze]

"I wonder what happens when you're thrown into an unfinished part of a citadel arena?"

Nobody really knew the answer to this question. Anytime someone entered the Citadel, they went into one of the preestablished rooms, or spoke of the exact kind of battleground they wanted. The legend went that the monks of the Ai'Brone could create one's wildest fantasies in an instant. Zack was always interested in this foreign magic, and it caused so many questions to fill the intelligent street fighter's head. Was its power drawn from the Tap? Was technology involved in its use? Could an immortal essentially die if they were locked in Citadel limbo?

It was these questions the youth sought to answer today. Through a series of distractions, Zack had managed to procure one of Citadel arena doors as somebody described it to their monk guide. The brawler made sure to slip in as the poor sap was still in description, so as he could see first hand exactly how the magic took place. Furthermore, he decided to bring Princess Agnie, sometimes friend and always Misery Business ally with him to this stage. He needed her talents in order to secure an opponent for the fight. If Citadel limbo really did curse one to an eternity of nothingness, Zack wanted to make sure the Ixian Knights lost one of their many valuable assets. Those guys were harder to kill than a cockroach with steel plates.

As soon as they entered the arena, Ags worked her magic by simply leaving through the door. Zack knew that the Princess' ability to link doors together would come in handy for his experiment. Once one of the dumb Ixians walked through one of the random doors in either their castle or caves, they would walk right into the open and ready arms of Zack Blaze. He didn't care if his foe was Jensen Ambrose, Talen Shadowalker, or even Arden Janelle, if he could cripple the self-righteous defenders of Corone by just eliminating one of their best guys, he would be satisfied. The fact that it would cause a mental blow to Kyla and Sei Orlouge did not hurt either.

He cracked his knuckles as he looked around. He stood on a balcony made of stone which lead to a short hallway. The hall in question was lined with various pictures of a noble on each wall. It stretched for about thirty feet before the white wash of the arena took over. At the very end of the hall was simply an alabaster void. As Zack stared into the white, he wondered for a minute just what laid beyond the Citadel walls. There was an enticing curiosity that overtook him. His body started to pace towards the ivory nothingness, almost mesmerized by it's simplicity. The sound of his feet upon the stone flooring jarred him back into consciousness, and he quickly turned around as a result.

"Just looking at the damn thing makes you want to go in it," Zack muttered as he managed to walk back to the stone balcony. Outside, the same white effect took over, though it gave more a feeling of insignificance than one of allure. Two large statues were half way 'built' below, and the pasty abyss seemed to claim everything on the decor from navel down. There was no kind of smell outside, other than the peach like fragrances Zack graced his form with. He turned back to look at the door that lead to the balcony, connected to a room that did not exist. It would be a close a close quarters match, just the way Zack Blaze liked it.

His body tensed as he heard the door open. It the moment of truth. The winner of this bout would leave the citadel intact while the loser found out just what horrors lie within an unfinished Citadel stage. Fists were balled and his body trembled. Zack took one last deep breath.

"For science..."

[Roht Mirage]

Astarelle blinked, moaned, and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?” she asked groggily.

“Almost time for your next match,” came the curt answer from the foot of her bed.

She lifted her head and tried to blink away the teary streaking of dusty Citadel light. No matter the room, no matter the light source, the building's air was always thick with lazy motes as if its natural state was one of isolation and neglect. How it could remain so tomb-like despite being Corone's most visited attraction was beyond her.

With another blink-yawn-rub routine, she cleared her eyes enough to see the shape of her attending monk. His robe betrayed the lines of a hunched back, and his hair an incalculable passagge of years. On the table before him were the tools of the Ai'Brone trade. She so rarely actually saw them, now that she thought about it. There were vials of disconcertingly blood-like liquids and bowls of metallic powders. In one bowl stood a short wand of aged and weathered bone. And was that a crystal? She pushed herself up on her elbows to get a closer look, but only caught an annoyed sideways glance from the monk. He shuffled to obscure his work station and silently finished capping and stowing his secrets. “You should know, Miss SetRoh, that we rarely tend to injuries incurred outside these walls,” he said as if he had just suffered a great burden.

Astarelle huffed quietly and lay back down on the thinly-padded bed. By the depths, they're all so grouchy.

“Bees, Astarelle?” came a voice from the door, “How did you manage that?”

She smiled. Except for that one.

“By being a sand-brain,” she admitted with a tone more demure than diminutive as she slide to a seated position on the bed. “It's actually an embarrassing story,” she added with a coy turn of the head and a slight swell of color in her desert-kissed cheeks. “Don't make me tell it, Hoak. Please.”

Against his Ai'Brone robe, Hoak brushed his hands then raised them in supplication. “I'm sure it is,” he said with a small chuckle that turned very wrinkle on his face into a laugh line.

The monk that had ministered to her -unnamed, like so many in the greying herd- coughed impolitely. She hadn't missed the tension that knotted his shoulders at the use of his sect-brother's name. “Are you taking her to the door?” he probed. His tone was dark; positively catty by Ai'Brone standards.

Hoak bowed shortly and answered, “Yes as I was ordered to, brother.” He managed to remain professional even if his eyes crinkled with some niggling concern.

The monk finished covering his powders and panaceas on the tray, then moved for the door without so much as a glance toward Astarelle. For Hoak, he paused only long enough to not collide with him. Then, he was through, leaving a disgruntled aura in his wake.

Astarelle stood from the bed and fidgeted her pale, high-laced blouse into unrumpled order. “That was... umm...” she started, only to lose the appropriate word when she realized that Hoak was still looking at the empty doorway. His brow told of worries more weighty than this single exchange. “Hoak?” she asked carefully.

The monk's face snapped to her, changing as starkly as if he had donned a smiling mask. “I arranged another Fallien arena for you,” he said brightly.

Astarelle heard some strain in the words. Yet, she couldn't help but return the smile just as brightly. In fact, she gave a small chirp of joy as she grabbed her staff from the wall, causing the blue ribbons upon its skyward end to flutter and flail about. “My good monk,” she chimed as she bounced over to him, “You are just wonderful!” She leaned in as if to give him a kiss on the cheek. He recoiled just slightly, a function of instinct rather than thought, it seemed. An awkward color flashed over his face, then to hers as if it was an airborne virus. Timidly, she kissed the air beside his ear, inches clear of any direct contact.

She rocked back onto her heels, hands shifting ever so slightly on the staff. Hoak's face resumed its earlier cheer, if strained. It didn't suit him. Their first meeting, by contrast, had left her with the impression that he was as sincere as they come. The change rubbed her nerves like gritty paper.

However, it seemed a mystery for another day. Fallien called to her with its golden, calming whisper.

~

Astarelle burst through the door with blouse laces loose and one shoe already half off her foot. A hand towed at one pant leg as she contemplated whether to roll them up to frolic through the sand or just rip the blasted fabric and go 'full savage'.

White glare blinded her at first – inevitable when one transitions from dusty Ai'Brone tomb to the brilliance of Fallien's dunes. She inhaled deeply, savoring the sharps smells of the desert. Only... she didn't smell anything. The absence made her huff and snort and paw at her nose as if the lack of scent created an uncomfortable pressure. She blinked bewildered eyes and looked around.

One thing was certain: There wasn't a stitch or grain of Fallien to be seen. The balcony she stood upon was the wrong style. The hall leading off of it was wrong as well, only made more glaring by the portraits of paler-than-pale nobles. Beyond the edge of both: white. Though, 'white' was too benign a word. It was a void, a disconcerting blankness. Against that backdrop, even the solid floor seemed dubious.

They always spoke of Ai'Brone illusions; the unreality beyond the doors. It was a very different thing to see the proof of that lie.

Of course, Citadel being what it was, she wasn't alone. A man with a leather jacket and hair of false red stared at her. Even his surprise couldn't overcome the smirk that seemed to be the permanent motif of his face. And here she was, half bent over with blouse partially unlaced, a pant leg hoisted in one hand, and a shoe halfway to being kicked free. With a ruby shade of wrestled composure tinting her cheeks, she clicked her staff against the expertly-masoned stone floor and stood. The pant leg draped into place. Her heel dove back into the shoe. Her blouse remained as it was, baring the plush lines created by the corset underneath.

She gave the stranger a critical eye and immediately distrusted him for the fact that his surprise seemed wholly for her, not the ill-formed arena. “What is this?” she asked with venom that wavered as soon as she heard her own voice. It sounded so loud against the overpowering un-noise of nothing.

[Zack Blaze]

“Astarelle Set’Roh. Awesome,” Zack’s body tensed at the sight of his opponent. He knew that Agnie was already sealing both doors so the ‘Sister of Sands’ would have no way to escape. Astarelle was something among a legend among the fighter’s community; the girl that came from nothing only to enter and subsequently win the Cell. Just that reputation alone was enough to send men of lesser spirit withdraw from a fight with the girl, who seemed to be nothing special.

I could not have asked for anything better! If I condemn her to this void, it will ensure the Ixians can not be trusted even with their strongest warriors! Zack’s fingers fidgeted and his brow lowered, his teeth a bright white that blended in with the backdrop before him. The fighter did not know much of the woman’s abilities, but knew not to underestimate her. He took in a deep breath,a breath that was much louder in the silence of their arena.

“Pleasure to meet you,” he said among the quiet, “the name’s Zack Blaze, and it is my privilege--- nay, my honor to be the one fighting you today. I hope you find the arrangements more than adequate. The mansion once belonged to a man known as ‘The Duke of White Noise’, for obvious reasons. The man loved the color white and quiet so much that’s pretty much all this building was built on.”

Zack did not let on for a second that this was an elaborate deception on his part. The more comfortable Astarelle felt in the fight, the more likely she was to let her guard down, and the better the opportunity to sentence her to silent damnation. There was a bit of irony in the sense that one that followed ‘Silence’ Orlouge would now find herself sentenced to his namesake. All that was needed was a red haired spider to ensnare the Fallien fly into his web.

He approached her, each step as obvious and deliberate as possible. He had to make sure Astarelle was lulled into a false sense of security. The bottoms of his shoes scraped against the stone floor below and he hoped such sounds would be enough to distract her from the electric pops that sparked off of his hands. Once he was within an arms reach, he attempted to hug the girl, his palms on the flat of her back, and fill her with a surge of electrical energy that would leave her temporarily paralyzed.

She already looked like she got struck by lightning based on just her unkempt appearance alone. What was one more jolt to the sand bitch?

[Roht Mirage]

Zack Blaze. Zack Blaze. She remembered the name from one of the Ixian strategy meetings she had been roped into. The significance of the name, however, eluded her. She never paid attention during those blasted things.

What she did know was that he was a liar; a good one. His words had just the right amount of honey and the perfect presence that gave weight without being overbearing. It was enough to make one eye twitch. He was lying to her of all people, and she might even have believed him for a second. His logic ticked all the boxes, but the feel was off. The beyond-white and the hollow silence were not an eccentric Duke's choice of decor. They were symptoms of something unfathomable and so wrong that she just wanted out.

As Zack approached with his arms wide in effervescent greeting, she ran a hand over the door that had allowed her entry. The knob was gone, if it had even existed on this side at all. Bury me, she cursed as she took a heavy step back toward the archway leading into the hall. Her hand trailed off the etched stone of the Citadel door and onto the masonry of the mansion. Even that felt wrong as if its texture was shallow and unfinished.

The young man made his move; one that wasn't common on a battlefield, but any lady of the world knew it well. “Don't touch me!” Astarelle shouted into the opalescent depths. The staff rattled on the floor. Her hands flew wide, dark sand welling up from her sleeves to encase them. With freshly-formed gauntlets, she grabbed his hands and braced them away from her sides. The technique was automatic in close quarters, for the sand granted her control where her strength faltered. In this case, it also granted her insulation.

At first, she didn't realize what magic he was working on her. The sand simply grew hot against her palms. Her arms tingled, then twitched. She winced, drawing the corners of her mouth high and locking them there. Her gauntlets hardened around his hands, infusing her grip with the strength of iron. “You sun-scorched little trickster,” she said with a beautiful smile and a lilt from affection to ambivalence. There was a small measure of respect, yes, but it was dwarfed by a mountain of rage. And the mountain was shifting.

With a sharp scream, she shot one iron-plated toe upward between his legs. Her whole body flexed with the strike, ready to snap her foot down to kick again and again as long as she could keep him in the sandy grapple.

[Zack Blaze]

As she stepped back, Zack thought on his feet and transferred his electricity into the headphone conduit around his neck. The item did it's job and released the stored power like literal lightning in a bottle and made Zack a large body of high voltage currents. Astarelle would not know what hit her, but she proved quickly that Zack was not the only one capable of improvisation. A shield of glass tried to take her form as Zack embraced her with his his unique technique. She grappled at his hands and locked him in place, albeit temporarily, but then something quite strange happened, even for an arena filled with a blank, possible death-like purgatory.

The particles slammed into his body and popped like gnats into a flame. Quick sparks jolted from the boy's arms as small glass fragments flew at the girl. Several of the small crystals jutted out towards Zack as well, though the mastermind was quick to bob and weave his form out of danger. The corners of his mouth widened at the thought of revealing his true nature to the girl now. Flashes of his encounters with Kyla, Sei, and Ciato Orlouge passed through his mind, and it seemed their stupid get out of anything quick spell never wanted to leave the warrior's visage. "I heard you wanted to be a Mystic, Set'Rohlouge, but are you seriously imitating their stupid glass shield trick now? And here I was, thinking this was gonna be awesome."

He wanted to give in another good verbal jab but the leg of his opponent tried to bring the taunts to an early stop. Zack's eyes shifted down towards the attack as the street fighter blinked out of existence. Astarelle's blow met nothingness within the nothingness while Zack reappeared above the girl by a good ten feet. He extended his leg outwards as his form hurdled towards the girl thanks to the effects of gravity. He was ready to paint the white of the arena red with the wannabe Mystic's blood. A good foot to her face would be able to accomplish such goals with ease.

"Dynamic Entrance!" Zack exclaimed and hoped the girl did not have time to move. Even her meaningless mock Mystic maneuver could not save her from the one hundred and seventy pounds that cascaded don upon her lithe figure.

[Roht Mirage]

Bunny approved.

Glass struck her face and Zack disappeared. Shock left her speechless as a bitter and too-fresh memory stirred. Reflexively, she willed her staff to return to her hand – her nearly bare hand. She had no time to even comprehend what that meant when he announced his presence descending swiftly from above.

Astarelle forgot the staff as it bumped upright against her fingers. Her back swveled, her body instinctively trying to find the shortest route away from the impact. It was hopeless. His foot, in an apparently 'dynamic' manner, smashed into her upper chest. The corset didn't rise high enough to protect her, and her natural cushioning there -unlike certain ladies and fauns she had met in Corone- wasn't up to the task. She was slammed to the floor, spine then head striking in rapid succession. By some god or Thayne's blessing, the 'entrance' part of the maneuver failed. In fact, Zack didn't follow her to the floor at all except for some spittle and a breathless, “Oof!”

As she squinted against the unnatural sway of her vision, Astarelle found him above her. The staff was upright and partially hidden by his hands as he braced himself on it. He was still airborne, for it caught him in the abdomen as stalwartly as any living defender she had ever hidden behind. “Ha!” she barked once, immediately regretting it, and skittered back as quickly as her swimming senses would allow. Zack responded with a moan as he toppled to the side, barely landing on his feet.

A few paces away, Astarelle let her body assume a limp seated position and brushed a hand across her face. The pain was so familiar. Just hours earlier, she had suffered the wrath of a glass pane in order to steal a revolver. She had intended to keep it as her trump card should her Knightly pressures grow unbearable, even going so far as to implicate a teenage girl in something awful just to keep the theft a secret. Yet, in this moment, her only regret was that she left the gun behind. She had shown the girl that she wasn't a monster true enough, but she had also proven herself a fool.

Her hand came away adorned and bleeding with dark chunks of thick glass. Years ago, she had seen the same kind where lightning struck the desert. It explained where her sand had gone, as well as his insult. “You think I want to be a blasted Orlouge?” Astarelle spat at him as she struggled to her feet. With one hand, she held an imaginary gun and pointed it to the side of her head. A fake pull and kickback made her point. She stood with back curled, making her look manic and haggard. Blood etched faint lines down her face and bruised cleavage. “You ruined all my sand! All my bloody sand,” she said with venom as she raised two fingers, gathering what little remained into a short stiletto blade that bound them together. “For that, I will grant your wish. This will be... awesome.”

From the gap of her blouse, a stream of blue gem chips glimmered skyward in a line as if to mark the white void with stars. Then, on shaky legs, she ran at him. The tiny blade was held out from her side like the toy of a baby ninja; adorably nonthreatening. Yet, she smirked as if dragging a claymore behind her. She knew she was better than him. Her desert senses confirmed the proof within the porous staff.

Astarelle Set'Roh was a better liar.

[Zack Blaze]

The impact of the staff into his sternum allowed a loud gasp to escape the street fighter’s mouth. The strands of dark hair of Astarelle were spread out as if they were a cushion of the girl’s head. She was lucky her head did not bounce off the granite floor like a child’s ball, but Ixian Knights always did seem to have a ridiculous lucky streak. He pushed himself off f the weapon and gained some distance, his form several feet into the hallway now.

Astarelle got up and rushed, a rather unconventional move given the girl’s frail appearance and demeanor. Zack’s mind instantly snapped into action and thought of the many ways that the Fallien hussy could perform a feint attack. Sure enough, when Astarelle got close enough t deal a blow, a cloud of sand erupted around her. He could feel the small grainy particles in his eyes as he growled, electricity already in the palms of his hands.

“Lemme get this straight. Sand doesn’t work the first time, and you attack with sand -again-?! You’re dumber than a dark elf in Lornius, Set’Roh.” Zack coursed his lightning through his headphones once again and opened his eyes. The glass fragments flew out around him and cleared some space so the youth could see that Astarelle Set’Roh had disappeared.

The eerie silence of the arena came to be the girl’s fault, as her labored breaths gave away her position behind him. The boy knew he didn’t even have time to turn; if he were in her shoes, there would already be a sword through his foe. Zack grit his teeth and hoped the speed of his speech was faster than anything the Cell champion could manage.

“Makai!” Zack ordered as if the person in question were some sort of dog. He jumped forward as the ground below shook and and nearly knocked him to his hindquarters. The gray rock floor between the two warriors and a large black form broke out from underneath the arena. A picture fell to the ground and broke out of its frame. A painting of a man dressed in a regal blue general’s outfit atop a black steed slipped harmlessly to the ground. Chunks of gravel fell to the ground among the pieces of new glass. A black humanlike figure flew out from the newly created hole. His white sharpened teeth flashed through even the dust cloud created by Zack’s opponent.

In Zack’s place now stood the seven foot ogre known as Makai, his only garb a burlap loincloth over his groin. His nails were cracked and elongated, with all sorts of darkened grime underneath. Though the beast could not see much of anything through his own red eyes, his ogre mentality told him to just attack straight ahead. He reared back a fist as wide as a grown man’s chest and swung with the hope of a squishy chest at the end of the blow. The monster cared not if said squishy parts belonged to his master or whomever Zack was fighting.

[Roht Mirage]

Astarelle let her short blade waft into stray grains as the freak's thick fist surged, struck, and sent her sprawling toward the severed end of the hall. Breath tried to return to her, her form shuddering as it did so. Bury me, she thought, for she could not speak, That was going so well.

The purposely haggard charge had confused him. As she passed her staff laying on the floor, its sand had flown to embrace her. Even the teleport using her pendant's gem chips had taken him by surprise. It would have been his undoing, but this man had the strangest tricks.

With a small cry, she tried to sit up. Her forearms screamed in pain, specifically, in searing internal lines where she had crossed them to defend against the unexpected fist. Bones were broken. They didn't protrude like jagged white plateaus -thank Roh- but they were destroyed all the same. Her cry was louder as she slumped back to the floor, her nerves screeching now that shock had worn off.

Through tear-streaking eyes, she craned her head enough to look down the hall and toward the balcony. Her sand had fallen in a wide carpet around her staff. It stirred, then surged into a desperate frenzy, leaving the staff as an empty sarcophagus. Past Zack Blaze and his monster, the sand flew, whispering across the floor and unseating murals from their settings. Nearly a dozen pale, pompous faces fell and broke in succession, glass spraying in the annihilation of each. Like wreckage on a mammoth wave, the glass rode the sand. The two combined to form a blend of gold and clear, razor edges too numerous for the eye to track. Unmindful of those edges, ignoring how they cut into her skin, Astarelle wrapped her arms and hands. Sand seized into a glittering, toothy cast over each forearm, and the fingers were left free to move, for now. By the depths did it hurt to move them, though.

With renewed stability, Astarelle skittered to her feet. Her breath seethed through clenched teeth. “Bury me,” she voiced weakly as she realized that she was only two paces from the division between stone hall and absolute nothing. Her eyes snapped back to Zack. “Congratulations! You've beaten one of those stuck-up Ixian jihtas. You're such a strong man. We'll see, though, how strong you are when all of us come after you; hunt you like you hunted me. When I'm brought back...”

Behind her, the white space whispered with all the comforts of oblivion. It was a far sweeter sound than she wanted to admit. She had to stop her feet from shifting backward. If I'm even brought back, she realized. The death looming behind was unlike anything in the Citadel. That must have been Zack's plan: Consign the Ixian Knights to oblivion, one at a time.

With one shaking, golden hand, she reached into the neckline of her blouse and pulled out the pendant that had been laying askew, then dropped it. It bounced sharply over the laces and the bruising below. The gem chips that had flown free before her charge were back in their setting. Perhaps he would see that and solve the riddle. She didn't care. Once more, at her whim, the outer ring of gem chips fell upward and skimmed the ceiling in a glittering line.

“Come get me,” she demanded sharply as she crooked her hands at either side. Her fingers were curled wretchedly with pain, but she would ignore it if she had the chance to get her sand and glass-studded gloves on him.

[Zack Blaze]

“The light in your head just turned on now, Set’Roh?” Zack turned around and shrugged his shoulders. The girl’s revelation would not change what wa to happen. He would still knock her into the nether and see if the desert’s daughter would be able to recover from such a blow. He could not see the girl over the large form of Makai, who now casted a dark shadow over the street fighter.

He walked over to the hole created by his subordinate and looked down at the picture that had fallen moments earlier. The duke in the picture seemed oddly familiar to the boy, and the horse held some sort of resemblance as well. He shifted his attention back over towards where he thought his foe was, and leapt over the gap in like a child in a game of hopscotch.

Now that he stood beside his giant slave, he could feel the body heat that emanated from the beast. The small bits of brown sand that stuck to the ogre were more pronounced, just as any color in this arena seemed to be brighter by comparison to all the white. Astarelle had once again formed some sort of weapon out of whatever sand that was not glass at this point, and begged for the boy to come after her.

He leered backwards, his gaze moved towards the entrance that Makai made. Zack opened his mouth for a moment as if he were about to ask the monster about his sudden arrival, but thought better of it for now. Makai was not a patient beast, and since he obviously had no regard for Zack’s life given his sudden attack, silence was more of a valued commodity to the street fighter.

“The Ai’Brone are a mysterious bunch. They like to keep secrets and I dislike not being in the know.” Zack reached into his pocket and took out a hand full of nothing. His hand molded around the air as if he were in possession of a ball of some sort. He ‘bounced’ the imaginary toy up and down as his head moved up and down to follow the invisible movements. “Secrets are power, Set’Roh, and I prefer to be the one in control. In fact, I know the reason why you’re sticking with the knights as opposed to being a lone wolf.”

His eyes moved to meet hers, a grin across his features. “What do you think would happen if someone were to eliminate those ties you have to the Ixian Knights? What would you do if someone just up and killed all those kids whose freedom you struggle for? What if someone who could say, teleport wherever the hell he wanted, decided to pay the little Fallien fleabags a visit?”

He would not give her time to answer, for he threw down the non existent ball as hard as he could towards her. With luck, she would play into his hands and expect some sort of unseen projectile to hit her at any moment. It was the distraction he needed to once again disappear and reform at her side, his body crouched and ready to deliver his final blow. His right fist engulfed itself in flame as he rose up hand first. Zack Blazes uppercut was always something people remembered when they watched his fights and today would be no exception.

The scene stealing uppercut would also steal the show.