Almost Like Home...

[Jasmine]

((open to 1))

Outside the Citadel, the sky was a perfect, cloudless, summer blue. Birds chirped as they flitted from tree to tree. Below the birds, a young woman walked by herself. Her long, black hair was held in a braid that fell to her thighs. She was dressed in a knee-length, dark blue dress with a sword belted around her waist. She hummed lightly to herself as she climbed the broad steps to the Citadel. Once inside she found a monk and told him what she wanted. He seemed a kind man and led her to a room right away.

Jasmine walked through the doorway and her breath caught in her throat. She had asked simply for a jungle-theme arena. She had not expected to see nearly an exact replica of the jungle she had spent three years in back on her home island. The calls of exotic birds filled the young woman's ears as much as the sight of a large waterfall filled her eyes. Around her, impossibly tall trees stretched toward a clear, summer sky.

It's almost like coming home...

Looking around, she recognized immediately where she was in the Nadai Jungle. This was a training area, used only by the most advanced students. She stood on a narrow, wooden bridge. It was made of one long, very large tree. The top half had been cut away to make the bridge flat for the fighters’ feet. The bridge itself was perhaps four feet wide and had no rails. Below the bridge was nothing but air for at least 100 feet. At the bottom of that 100 feet was a small river, fed by the large waterfall that was the backdrop for the fighting bridge. Fortunately, that waterfall was far enough away that the bridge remained dry.

Feeling far more at home than she had in long time, Jasmine walked confidently out to the middle of the bridge. She took a seat, letting her legs dangle over the side of the bridge, and gazed at the beautiful waterfall. Perhaps she would go home to the jungle again soon and visit her adopted family. Before she did that, she had to work on her skills with her sword and there was no better place for that than the Citadel. Here, death meant nothing.

Sighing, she climbed carefully back to her feet. At home, there was a net about twenty feet down to catch the loser of battles on this bridge. As she stood, Jasmine noted grimly that the monk had neglected to include that net in his rendition of the Nadai Jungle. Both combatants would have to be very careful not to slip.

Jasmine had told the monk that it did not matter to her who came to battle her. She would take the first interested fighter. Hopefully, that person would arrive soon.

[Taskmienster]

Collin smiled a wiry smirk as he pushed aside the paint chipped door and entered his apartment. The door squealed in discontent before slamming into the wall. Brittany turn with wide eyes and hands clenched around a pair of safety scissors as if she was going to fight whoever had burst through the door. He laughed as he picked up the flimsy bronze plaque that fell off the door and tossed it at the kitchen table. “Damn things keeps fallin’ off, they should try actually fixing it sometime instead of just pretending to fuckin’ do something around here. Speaking of, have they fixed the bathroom yet?”

“What is that you have?” Brit stood up and walked towards her boyfriend, her beautiful emerald eyes peering through a new pair of Dior glasses. Her arms were crossed behind her back as she made a cute scrunched face and gave him her signature ‘cute look’. “Did you bring something fun home? Something for me?”

“Not exactly, mi amor. Just brought home work, free on the company… I guess it could be for both of us if we wanted, granted I know how much you adore my free spirited play.” She grunted as he handed her the bags. She could open the new virtual reality headsets GramVR had provided, do the wiring and stuff while he made a quick bowl for his hookah. The woman messed with the headset, toying with it while he laughed and packed the tobacco and heated a coal. “Heartcliff,” the vice president of GramVR, who they both worked for, “decided to let me take this shit home. It’s more compact than those damned pods, but waaaaay more expensive. Figure I could get more done if I had one here, and at work…”

Brit adjusted her glasses and took a sip of her beer before plugging in wires. She held a small chip though, flipping it over carefully and trying to read the surface words on it. It was one of Collin’s own design; he had the lab create it and the socket it went into while he programmed the concept behind it. He took a quick pull of the hookah and let the sweet mix of strawberry and rose mingle as he exhaled slowly. The smoke lingered for half a second before he smiled and walked through the cloud. “That little baby’s going to knock your socks off. You would appreciate the dedication it took to make that, those lab techs rock.” He took another drag as she leaned in to take a closer look, she turned her soft tanned face towards the man but he cut her off mid-thought. “It’s a chip you put into the side of the helmet part, lets one person see what other people are seeing as long as they’re linked. Nifty little thing, so long as you know how to hack the link you can look through other people’s eyes…”

A confused look painted itself across her face, but she figured out where the chip went and placed it in its slot. “Revolutionizing a technology not even released fully to the public, aren’t we the little genius?” She laughed as she pulled the hookah hose from his hands and took a shallow pull. Her hopeless attempts at smoke rings made him laugh. “Don’t be a bitch… and this chip is cool, but what’s the practical use? Watching people have sex from their pov? That’s strange…”

“Not exactly, more like reconnaissance of a sort, but also allows me to be the ‘voice of their conscious’ if I want to be… haha. Or you can watch what I’m doing and communicate with me if you want to, so you don’t have to just watch me mumble and toy with the headset…”


~*~

“So this is the Citadel in all its glory? Not too impressive, why do you like this place?” The voice was on the back of Ethan’s mind, a foreign intruder that the player behind the mask of Lars would have to get used to. To have so sweet a voice whispering sweet nothings though, it was a concept that the hacker knew would get him into some serious trouble. Battle was not something to taken lightheartedly on Althanas, the server was hellbent on making it a vital part of everyone’s gaming. “These illusions are pretty good though…”

Indeed they were. Lars had jumped in a new room, a challenger already in waiting for his appearance. The world behind the simple door was anything but simplistic in design. Huge trees took up most of the scene, the heavy canopies cutting off almost all light that was beaming from the sun. Streaks of light filtered delicately to the supple leaf-covered ground with an emerald hue. Overhead the boughs of the trees were shifting and moving as animals danced through them as if in a real rainforest. Lars let his blue-gray eyes catch the sources of the unique bird calls, finding black birds with colorful beaks and even more strange birds with colorful patterns of plumage. It was an interesting place to fight, and the hacker questioned who would be the one behind the images that were being brought to life.

His answer was given to him as soon as he walked towards the sound of the heavy waterfall. Over a large gap was a fallen tree, part of it sheered away to create a smooth flat surface to stand on. On the other side of the fallen trunk was a small woman with the brightest blue eyes. She was not an impressive sight to behold, and in truth made the hacker almost blush with remorse for having chosen the simple door. How would he have known he would be fighting another woman? There were no indications as to who or what was waiting within, but had he known he probably would have chosen a very different opponent… fighting girls wasn’t his forte.

“Oh look! A monkey!” Lars sighed as Brits voice burst into a peel of laughter. He looked towards what the voice was indicating and saw a small monkey hanging by its tail and eating a piece of yellow fruit easily as large as its own head. The bug eyed little creep was staring right at him, distracting him from what he had come to do… just as the voice of his girlfriend was doing. “It’s so cute, we should catch it.”

“Brit,” he said without thinking. “Keep it down, it’s just a fuckin’ monkey love… there are plenty here probably. And we can’t catch it, the Citadel isn’t around to catch illusionary monkey’s, it’s for fight-ing—“ He smiled his best, ‘I’m-not-really-insane-and-talking-to-myself’ smile he could muster and stepped on the edge of his side of the log. “Umm, sorry ‘bout that. The names Lars, I assume you’re my opponent?”

[Jasmine]

Jasmine watched the approach of her opponent, trying to gauge his strengths and weaknesses. That he was much taller and heavier than she was nearly a given. She’d met very few people that were actually close to her height and weight that were fighters. As he drew closer, she looked at him confusedly as he spoke aloud to someone that was certainly not she.

Who is Brit? Oh well, not like it matters.

“That is true,” she spoke up with a smiled, “However, the Citadel does not do the Nadai Jungle or its inhabitants full justice. The real monkeys are by far more cute in person and are very intelligent. You’d be hard pressed to actually catch one barehanded. Still, they make very good companions once you’ve gained their trust. In answer to your question, yes, I am your opponent. My name is Jasmine.”

She bowed slightly in greeting. It was a habit she’d never been able to fully break having been taught that it was proper to bow or curtsy when you were introducing yourself. It may have been a bit more than Lars was accustomed to, but Jasmine was of the opinion that it never hurt to be polite.

“Now, if you are done talking with your invisible friend...?”

She left the sentence hanging as she drew her sword and held it easily in one hand. She did not see any weapon on her opponent, but she had learned not to let such details fool her. He would not have entered the Citadel if he had not been looking for a fight.

[Taskmienster]

“Well Jasmine,” Ethan said with a smile, “It is good to meet you.” In reality the hacker could care less as to what her name was, much less why she had come to fight in the Citadel. It was a place for warriors and mages, a place for training and learning. This girl looked like she could barely throw a punch that the hacker wouldn’t be able to take without a laugh. Perhaps he was supposed to be mentor again, teach her the way’s of hand-to-hand combat. Teaching a girl, a cute one at that, was a notion that the hacker was not opposed to.

“Bitch, I’m still here whether you like it or not. You might be used to thinkin’ on your own, but guess what… I can hear what's going on in your head.” Oh, let the dam’s be loosed and the flood of jealously drown those that are helpless to stop its flow. “Don’t be so damned melodramatic,” she said with a giggle, “I’m not jealous of some woman on some game, even if you do find her attractive. What about her do you like? Is it the plain black hair, boring brown eyes? Maybe her frail frame? I was anorexic for you when we first met, I can lay off food again… how’d that make you feel?”

“For not being the jealous type you sure are adamant about being a bitch,” Ethan responded aloud, though slightly quieter than before, laughing as he stroked his soft hand through his spiked hair. The coding was fading, and with the lightest of touches the thick, unrealistic spikes were once again brought to full mast. As a hacker in the server of Althanas recoding was almost second nature, but to those of the game it would appear that he was a mage of some sort, some wizard that could bent and manipulate reality. “Now stop bothering me, Jas here’s got a sword, and I’ve gotta fight.”

“Yeah yeah, silence you girlfriend and go back to your new girl… see if I care. Just hope you kick her in the face, knock out some of those perfect straight teeth.” Lars couldn’t help but chuckle and wonder if she would ever stop her incessant jealousy of some virtual reality character, played by someone who undoubtedly didn’t even look like her character. Hell, the chance that the player behind Jasmine was even a girl was questionable. But there was no reasoning with a girl who was on a rampage of pheromones.

“I doubt that my ‘invisible friend’ will be quiet enough for me to concentrate all too well. But I am quite ready to begin this fight. You’ll have to forgive me though; I seem to be without a sword…” The truth of the matter was that there were five daggers up either sleeve waiting to be released from their unique sheaths, and a dagger resting to the side of either boot. Lars was busy playing psychological games though, hoping that he could get her to take pity and put away her sword so that a couple daggers could plunge into her before the battle would actually start. Any advantage, even the most underhanded, was always to be considered before the battle began.

The hacker put his first booted foot on the edge of the fallen tree. The huge log was stable enough, but the platform was not near as wide as the man would have liked. It was like walking on an old bridge, but without any hand rails. The edge was ragged and knobby, as if it was the part of the massive tree once held by the ground, leaving the edge of it without clean footing for the hacker to stand on. He was forced to step past that and onto the actual part of the bridge.

Tiny flecks of water danced through the air and delicately touched the sides of his face as he slid forward cautiously. The waterfall was not causing the log to be wet, a small boon but one that did not matter all that much to the man. He was afraid of heights, and the drop was looming to either side. It was like walking a razor’s edge, the danger of the void waiting to either side to consume him with only one false step. “Quit being such a pussy and get out there, your new love’s waiting!”

“Look,” he muttered through grit teeth. “You wanna fight this bitch, you be my guest. I don’t like this heights shit. And the drop is definitely not going to be enjoyable. Just hope there’s enough room to do what I need to without falling and dying on those damn rocks below. My body doesn’t look so good bloody and sprawled over sharp rocks…” He silently prayed that his opponent had heard as much as he had said, hoping that her hearing wasn’t as touchy as that of an elven opponent. Otherwise he had even more to worry about with Jasmine knowing his fear.

[Jasmine]

Jasmine shrugged, “That’s fine. I was wanting a little more practice with it, but it wouldn’t be a fair fight otherwise.”

Keeping her eyes on her opponent, Jasmine backed to the edge of her end of the bridge. Once there, she slammed the steel blade into the bridge point first so that it would stand on its own. She also removed her sword belt so that the sheath would not get in the way of her legs. Kneeling, she pulled her two daggers from their sheathes in her boots, then slowly began walking toward Lars.

“I need more work with these than with my sword anyway.”

She was now within about five feet of the tall man. She held her daggers loosely, one in each hand, ready to change position. It had been a number of years since she had relied solely on her daggers. She was hoping that all the training she had received before leaving Moriah years ago had been pounded into her well enough to still do her some good.

I was hoping for a swordsman, but I get what I get, I suppose. No sword probably means daggers, hand-to-hand, or mage. Though he doesn’t look much like the mage type.

She smiled sweetly at him and beckoned with one hand.

“Let’s get this started, Lars.”

Without further warning, Jasmine darted forward. She held the dagger in her right hand in a reverse grip, slashing it horizontally in front of her at his chest. The other hand held its weapon ready to block anything coming from Lars. She did not put her full energy into the slash. She was probing his reflexes. She had to see how quickly Lars could and would react to her before she could begin truly fighting.

[Taskmienster]

Fair, the word seemed a fleeting and almost forgotten term on Althanas. The hacker had seen a lot since he had forced his way into the game of Althanas, and in that time nothing of it could have been considered fair in any way. Fair is fighting a warrior that is equal in strength and intelligence to you, so far it seemed that the man was without that fair meeting. Either the opponents had been much better, or had been cocky and more ‘bark than bite’. This woman, Jasmine, was either a naïve woman who had missed the memo during her game time… or she was good. Lars shrugged and laughed when the woman removed two daggers. She was entering dangerous territory, one that would not be fair in anyway.

“Such a sweet smile my love, seems that you have her infatuated already…” Brittany’s chiding remarks did little to damper Lars’ attention. His blue gray, yellow streaked eyes watched as she backed away and slammed the tip of the sword into the fallen trunk. It wavered slightly with the effort, belying her true strength. Lars assumed that retreating to the blade and retrieving it would take a bit of effort. As long as he could keep her on her toes, unable to escape, the weapon would be left as a silent observer. The prospect of dagger against dagger made a lingering smile slip across the hackers face.

A ‘kung-fu’ style gesture to start the fight accompanied a cliché turn of phrase that Lars had come to expect from the general populace of Althanas. Just as soon as her words were spoken she lunged, slashing with one dagger held down. It was a stance that spoke volumes. She knew how to wield the weapon in close combat, had training, and whether she knew the implications of the way she held the weapon or not she knew how to swing it well.

“What implications? What are you talking about? That’s just a backwards way of holding the dagger… right?” Lars pushed aside Brit’s voice and activated the code that made his body fade. Small tendrils of coding were pulled by his mere thoughts, drawing them away from the code of his body and making his image blurred and hard to follow. He slipped backwards away from the attack, an afterimage remaining in place like the wake of a large ship. The dagger slipped through the blurred reflection but dug into nothing more than the mist filled air.

Instead of retaining the blurred image and playing the defensive part, Lars let the tendrils find their home and quickly clicked a dagger into either palm. The naked, plain steel handles were comforting and cool, waiting for Ethan to plunge them into the unsuspecting woman. He did not act directly though, opting to cup his hands and show nothing more than a balled fist. Let her think he relied on magic, let her believe that he was dependent on whimsical powers; he would show her otherwise soon enough. His hands rose like a prize fighter. He could feel the edge of the knotted tree’s roots signaling the end of the bridge if he backed up any further.

[Jasmine]

No expression crossed Jasmine's face when her dagger hit only air. She backed off a few steps and waited to see what would happen next. That he apparently used magic did not bother her. She did not want to rely on magic herself, though she certainly had her own magic tricks if it came down to it.

Nice trick. Useful too. I wonder what else he can do?

She backed off a few more feet, giving Lars enough room to get away from the end of the bridge. The roots tangled around the edge could trip you up and cause you to lose your balance. Though she wanted to win, she wanted to win on her own achievement, not by default because the man lost his balance.

Though she enjoyed the birdsong in the air around her and chatter of small mammals, she refused to let her memories of home cloud her concentration. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a monkey leaping from branch to branch as he sought the sweetest juiciest fruits to eat for his lunch. A small flock of birds flew across the front of the distant waterfall, but Jasmine barely noticed them. She was trying to keep her full concentration on the man standing across from her. She did not want to be surprised if she could help it.

Smiling softly, she stretched an arm forward, beckoning to him with her fingers.

"Come Lars, don't make me do all the work."

[Taskmienster]

“Eeeeh!!” The squeal of adolescent surprise and amusement made the hacker’s eyes widen and an uncharacteristic shiver of unease course from the nape of his neck to the bottom of his back. Brittany was not paying attention to the battle at hand, or even to the masterful warping of the code. He had brought her along in order to show off and she was not even watching. “You’ll never guess what that cute little monkey did! O-M-G. He threw that big yellow fruit at another monkey! Then guess what?!”

“He went to get more fruit?” Lars muttered under his breath in response. Monkeys were really not the most difficult of creatures to predict their actions. They were single minded, find food, pick bugs off each other, fling poo from time to time. The hacker sighed and turned his attention away from the primate, unaware that he had even turned to look at it. In the small bit of scenery he caught he saw other wildlife, which was rather uncharacteristic of the Citadel. He had heard noises before, seen what could have been animal tracks and trails, but had never been in an area where the monks had actually animated them. “Love, would you like to keep the peals of excitement to a bare minimum? They hurt my head, and if I could I’d broadcast that shit at her… god knows that it would be a damned good attack.”

“Fine, but you don’t have to be such a dick about it.”

Lars went from his awaiting posture to an upright position, his arms lax and shaking at his sides. He rolled his shoulders and moved his head like a bobble doll, as if since karate people did it before a fight it would somehow help him too. All it did was make him slip a little, but he stopped immediately and took tentative steps forward. The wide bridge was slowly becoming a little slicker. Whether that was true or just a bit of his imagination acting on his unwelcomed fears was a question he could not answer, but either way it felt very real to him.

“Don’t worry about doing all the work,” he said with a smooth smile. He brought his hands to his face level and started forward at a slow gait. There was no rush; a misstep would spell the end. There was no reason to sprint, and no obvious advantage in doing so. When he got within a yard of the woman, an easy distance for either of them to pass through with a lunge, he flipped the ends of his cold steel daggers in his fingers. The smooth metal on delicate fingertips was a feeling he adored.

As soon as both were clearly held upright and his hands tightened he let them fly. His accuracy with the blades was deadly at so short a distance. Both of them were loosed for the main body of the girl, not aimed to produce instant kills if they found their mark. One was aimed for a shoulder, the other at the inside of the opposite hip. Either way the daggers would dig in deep with the force of the man, whose strength was augmented by hacks to be better than the average human. A dagger grinding against the collar bone, or the pelvic bone would alone be enough normally to convince an opponent of retaliating.

[Jasmine]

(many apologies for this having taken so long)

Acting almost purely on instinct, Jasmine blocked the dagger coming for her shoulder with one of her own, simultaneously trying to turn her hips far enough to avoid the low incoming dagger. The clang of metal on metal echoed around them as Jasmine’s dagger and Lars’ dagger met in the air. This was followed with a short cry of pain and a clatter as the other dagger hit the wooden bridge.

Dammit!

Jasmine glanced down at her hip, feeling the blood oozing down her leg, what truly upset her though was that it was coming through a cut in her dress. Normally, the sturdy cloth was somewhat resistant to being cut due to the fibers used in making the cloth, but Lars’ dagger had cut through it cleanly.

“You cut my dress!”

It probably sounded silly to Lars for her to be upset about her dress and not the wound, but Jasmine did not care about what he might think though. The gash in her hip was deep, but she would work her way through it. Gritting her teeth, she continued her turn and ducked low, spinning, with her weight on her good leg, letting the other one swing out in an attempt to trip him.

At the completion of the spin, she regained her footing, standing ready and hoping that they’d be able to finish this battle quickly. She wasn’t sure how long she could fight with such a deep gash in her hip. Each move made it bleed more profusely, and her leg would start slowing down shortly as the muscles stiffened from the injury. She tried to ignore the pain and concentrate on the battle at hand, after all, that‘s what she was here for.

[Taskmienster]

The daggers were spurred on with a mix of enhanced strength and the all too accurate aim of the hacker that threw them. They were thrown straight, more like a needle than a knife, and did not waver in the slightest. The silver sheen they cast with the light reflecting off them caught the thin waterfall’s mist, illuminating it as they sliced through the moist air. Thousands of miniscule beads of water refracted the glare of the faux-sunlight, casting vibrant rainbows through the air. It was a contradiction of deadly and beautiful that almost made the man smile, the short thought catching his conscious just long enough to fade away instantly.

A clattering of metal surprised him. He turned his head ever so slightly in a mix of awe and confusion. As a hacker in the virtual reality world of Althanas he had created a few augmentations to his personal being that he would not expect many to overcome. The first was his strength, allowing him to circumvent the naturally approved power of someone his size. It gave him a slight advantage, roughly twice the average of what was to be expected for his frame. The second alteration was that of speed, like strength he was roughly twice as fast as someone commonly created his size and with similar attributes. Both of them combined to create an unexpected advantage that most, if not all, would not see coming or be able to counter. Jasmine had indeed countered. It was a fact that made the hacker grimace.

Only the first of the two projections was countered though, parried off into the long drop to the water below. His gray-blue eyes did not follow his lost weapon, but instead watched as the blood red blossom of first blood came from his second weapon. He stepped back, not drawing more daggers that were waiting. It seemed he was always in conflict with a woman, or men that acted like them with their terrible tantrums, and how they all reacted was different. This one, bitched about her dress? Lars would have started laughing had it not been for the sudden continuation of the spin.

Her leg swept for his, attempting to remove his sturdy stance. Instead of hoping he could keep his footing and taking the attack, he hopped away from her. On one hand, it was a tactic that kept him from losing his footing to the unexpected counter-attack. On the other hand, it threw him off balance and made him teeter his way back to the edge of the stiff log. Wide or not, he was not comfortable with heights, and was even less comfortable with the fact that he could not plant the bottom of his shoes. On unsteady toes he found his way back to the ragged edge of the fallen tree and jumped backwards, never turning his attention from Jasmine.

“This isn’t a Miss America Pageant, bitch.” the voice of Brittany said with the most sarcastic, slick tone Ethan had ever heard from his girlfriend. She was truly being bothered by the computer created woman. “Why the hell you would wear a dress to a fight is beyond me. Serves her right. Now please, baby, knock those pretty teeth out and get on with this. A girl shouldn’t be so much trouble for you...”

“Snide remarks aside,” Lars sighed as he put his hands on the uprooted base of the would-be bridge. The top of the round tree covered him from mid-chest down, giving him ample cover and opportunity to duck should she throw the dagger. Instead of pushing himself back up on the bridge he cowered and called out insults… something very unlike him. “That’s it then? I cut your dress, you cry and run home?”

[Jasmine]

Is he serious? Do I look like I’m crying or running anywhere? he’s the one hiding and calling out insults instead of facing me.

Jasmine could not believe what she was seeing. This big man was hiding behind the end of the bridge from her, a girl. They had barely begun to fight, but there he was, hiding and talking to his imaginary friend. Disappointed that it seemed to be over already, she shrugged nonchalantly and began backing toward the opposite end of the bridge where her sword waited. She knew better than to turn her back on an opponent and she certainly wasn’t going to place herself in closer rang of any other knives he might have hidden on his person.

“Guess that’s it then,” she said loudly enough for him to hear, ignoring the jibe about the cut in her dress. “Didn’t think it would be over that quickly, but I guess that’s there is when my opponent decides it’s better hide from a girl than face her.”

She smirked to herself as she finally reached the bank where she’d put her sword. She drew it out of the grass covered bank and cleaned it against the crisp green grass before sheathing it. She truly was disappointed that the fight was apparently over already, but she was not going to get any closer to Lars than she had to until she knew what he was planning. There was no way for her to get around behind him, at least not quickly. There were other ways to cross this ravine, but they were a goodly distance away.

She wasn't quite sure to expect from Lars. He had surprised her greatly with his latest antic of hiding behind the end of the bridge and simply insulting her. He did not seem like the type to resort to such things. She waited calmly at the far end of the bridge from him, one hand on the hilt of her now-sheathed sword.

"Well? Are you going to come out and finish this or shall we call it a draw?"

[Taskmienster]

“You want this finished?” Lars sighed as soon as the words were out. Brit was half-chuckling, half-seething, and fully vocalizing her deep loathing of the woman. The hacker had no issues with her, other than her rather sporadic nature of fighting. Attack, be hurt, and then walk away instead of pressing the attack further. It was almost as if there was a severe case of split-second bi-polar disorder wreaking havoc with her emotions and actions. “Well, we can arrange that. Turn around; I’m not done with you yet.”

He quickly tore the long end of a root free from the base of the tree. The makeshift weapon was easily as long as a bastard sword, and as thick as a couple staffs put together at the end. Ethan played with the weight of the new weapon, shifting his hands up and down the narrower part of the root till he found the balance that felt most comfortable. It looked like a bat, before it was sanded smooth and given the correct shape. The end was jaggedly pointing towards Jasmine, as if spiked intentionally should the hacker want to lunge with it. Around the entire length were smaller roots branching off the auxiliary piece. It was like holding a bat that had been covered in little blades and spots of studded steel.

“If you don’t get a move on you’ll be losing more and more blood. That nasty little gash in your leg is gonna quickly catch up with ya, and you’ll be quitting soon enough.” The hacker turned the weapon in hands this way and that, feeling out the weight a little more before he waited for the woman to do something. “Remember, I have the upper hand here. So, when you complain about me not attacking, it just makes you look like you’re going to quit with a reason pointed at me. It’s not me that’s gonna go anywhere soon. It’s you. If you want to point fingers, point them at yourself and your own weakness and wound.”

Like a shark the hacker flashed his toothy grin. He indeed had the advantage. Jasmine was wounded, and seemed more interested in leaving and quitting the battle than she did in finishing it. Lars had no reason to continue on other than to finish a battle on his terms, and it seemed that she was more interested in talking trash than performing well anyway. His feet were turned toward the girl, his shoulders squared with her, and his make-shift weapon brought up like a sword. If she wanted a fight, she could bring it to him. There was no reason to attack other than to deliver a killing blow, but the widening crimson blotch on Jasmines leg would do that soon enough.

[Jasmine]

Jasmine shrugged as she drew her sword, secretly pleased that he was not going to stay hidden.

“You’re the one that ran off and hid behind the end of the tree, not me,” she reminded him.

He was right that her wound would start to catch up with her soon, but she wasn’t worried about that. She had come to the Citadel to get a little battle practice. Now that it seemed there was finally going to be some real action, she was quite pleased.

Wasting no more time on words, she gritted her teeth against the pain in her leg and approached him carefully, observing his tree root “sword” and the way he held it. She wasn’t sure if he commonly used longer weapons, having only had the daggers earlier, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

When she was in range, she closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating and in a flash, a ball of red fire sat in her hand. This she threw at Lars. In mid-air the red flames separated into three smaller balls, each homing in on a different part of Lars’ anatomy. At the same time, she brought her sword in low and fast. She did not expect to actually hit him with her sword, but she did want to see how well he would react with his makeshift sword.

[Taskmienster]

“Are you serious?” the voice of the disgruntled girlfriend was far more of a downer than anything that the woman standing before the hacker could ever muster. She sounded bored, aggravated, and saddened all at the same time. The larger part of her voice was almost as if she wanted to be free of the nearly telepathic connection and have her own body, one that would most likely do little more in Althanas than attempt to beat the hell out of Jasmine. Ethan could not help but wince. “She has the maturity of a small child. A response to everything you say, and nothing even remotely intelligent. Is the Citadel, much less Althanas, little more than a playground for kids? I thought you wasted your time on something more… fulfilling.”

After years of gaming, in both the pre-virtual reality world and post-virtual reality, Colin had seen a lot of change. Wonders of technology born from the fruits of genius minds. At the heart of the games was a change to freedom for those that chose to take part, something that rivaled free-will mingled with an open world. Creativity was at a maximum, but mostly in the design of the game itself. No matter what changes were created for the users to employ it always came down to whether they themselves would use it. It seemed, however, that the vast majority of people that migrated from one gaming platform to the next could never relinquish the need to cling to the old ways. Old ways meant cliché words written by developers without any real contact with the outside world, as well as a strict desire and need to keep to the platform norm of following a set path someone else devised. “Let’s just get this over with,” he muttered as he raised his tree-root turned weapon.

Jasmine shuffled forward, looking like a corpse that had been recently reanimated. The wound at her side was not visible, but the spread of blood across her dress was. No quick movements, no acrobatic feats, Ethan knew that if he was going to do anything it was going to have to be instant and powerful. Parrying blows was not out of the question, but dodging them was already difficult enough with the shallow width of the bridge the monks had given them. A wound would slow everything down that much more.

Suddenly, as if sensing a hesitation in the stance and mindset of the hacker, the woman moved. Her eyes opened and her hand was filled with an obvious formulated magical attack. It was a ball of red, usually denoting some sort of fireball. Ethan responded by squatting low, even as the arcane energy was released. Three spheres of power spontaneously split from the one as soon as it was no longer held back. The eyes of the hacker wanted to follow them, wanted to figure out what sort of power was being employed. Instead he was forced back to the present as she lunged forward off her good leg.

The only thing left was to use another hack, another manipulation of reality. He gave her no time to close enough with the weapon, or the fireballs time to realign and select their targets. The world around Lars suddenly stopped. Flecks of water beaded in the air like diamonds hanging from ethereal strings. The chattering of monkeys was silenced, the waterfall to his side nothing more than a beautiful three dimensional artistic rendering of reality. Two seconds was all he could afford in his frozen world, two meager seconds was more than enough though.

He lunged forward and put the end of his jagged weapon directly in front of the incoming sword. When the world was once again allowed to flow he hoped that the sword would strike the thick wood and be rendered useless in its momentum and cutting power. At the same time he continued forward, even as the beads of mist began to shift once again. Two seconds, that was never enough, and it always seemed to pass so much quicker. Concerns with what would come of his makeshift defense were ignored. He thrust his forehead forward as the balls of fire began to shift direction and the sword once again started to move. If he was as lucky as he had been – he would rather chalk it up to personal genius and amazing skill even if it was mostly luck – his forehead would collide with the face of the woman. Brittany would be pleased, probably issue a squeal of pleasure when the blow landed with the pretty face and smashed the nose to pieces. Bloodied and broken, forcing tears from her eyes; that was all Ethan wanted. It would, hopefully, be enough to end the silly charade of a battle he had somehow wandered into.

[Jasmine]

Just as her sword bit deeply into the thick treeroot, Jasmine felt a familiar presence spring up around her. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her leg, now magnified as she lost her precarious one –legged balance and dropped to her knees within the pink bubble that had sprung up just barely in time to block Lars’ facial attack. She tried to yank her sword free, but the blade had bitten too deeply in the wood of the root to be easily removed.

Dammit, Mother, this is my battle! she mentally fumed at the presence. Her face showed her anger, but it was directed entirely at her mother’s spirit. Lars would not have been able to feel it himself, but the pink-hued bubble around her would be plainly visible to him. She had not called forth this help. It was not a spell she could control. If she could, she certainly would have used it earlier. As it was, she could hear her mother’s voice in her mind, chiding her for her language and ungrateful attitude.

You watch your language young lady, Maria scolded, Besides, he would have broken your nose, darling. I couldn’t have that!

Mother! It’s just the Citadel, the monks here would have fixed me up no problem. They still will for this gash in my hip, too. Please, will you just let me fight this on my own? How am I to ever improve, if I don’t practice with someone?

Her mother said nothing more, but Jasmine could feel the hurt in her mother’s spirit. She immediately felt guilty, but she did still kind of resent that her mother had interfered in a battle that would not have had permanent results.

Through this fast exchange of thought, the fireballs had zeroed in on their targets and still approached her opponent very quickly. He would be very hard pressed to avoid both the protective bubble that had appeared unbidden and all three fireballs. Jasmine maintained her grip on her sword and tried once more to yank it free from either the root, or to pull the whole thing out of Lars’ hands. She wasn’t sure if he’d smacked into the bubble or not as she’d been too busy arguing with her mother to notice.

Right now, she just wanted to leave. There was nothing more she could do and she knew that. Her sword was now all but useless, firmly wedged in the wood. And she was pretty sure she couldn’t put proper weight on her injured leg anymore. She let go of her sword, knowing she’d get it back when the monks cleaned up the room and slid away from Lars back toward the bank she had entered from. The bubble would protect her from any blunt or glancing blows he might direct at her, but she did not want to test how far he wanted to take this. This battle had not gone anywhere near like she hoped and she made a mental note to make Zerith practice with her more often.

She breathed heavily as she leaned against the bank, still trying to ignore her leg, “You win Lars, I can’t go on any further…”



((I really don't care about any spoils, GP, or EXP from this... I finished to have it finished properly for Task's sake.

Task: again, many apologies for having taken so long... ))

[Taskmienster]

The sword struck as quickly and ferociously as Ethan had expected, though its sharpened edge did not find his body but the waiting shield of narrow wood. Like a knife through a watermelon the jagged end split open and let the sword pass, but the thickness of the length of the make-shift weapon slowed and eventually stopped the swing. It was almost as useful as the hacker had initially thought it would be, and it was almost a delight when the gap closed nearly instantly. Ethan felt the tug of the woman’s arm, weak though it was. He continued forward with his momentum behind him, head outstretched, silently wishing with everything within him that the battle was drawing to some sort of finality. He closed his eyes at the last second, the same split second that the pink defense appeared. Instead of a bone shattering, sickening thud he was met with a solid object that felt more like rubber than anything else.

“Oh. Someone’s. God.” As the hacker rebounded from the blow, feeling little in the way of satisfied even though his eyes remained tightly shut, he let the narrative of the voice in his head tell him what was going on. Somehow, some unbelievable way, she had not only found the time to create the shield but also erect it and stop his attack. He fell to his back-side in an unsteady flop. Legs quickly wrapped around the log and he shot his eyes open at the same time. The damp surface was absorbed by the thick weave of his denim, but the discomfort and future embarrassment of the spot was second to what he saw.

He felt another tug at the old branch still held in his white-knuckled grip. It pulled against his limp arm, shrugging him forward and backwards like the tide. Mentally, the riptide had already claimed his sense of right and wrong, fairness and injustice. Jasmine simply turned, walked away from him with the pink shimmer still surrounding her body. As soon as her hand went limp and the sword dropped from her hand, Ethan also let go of the branch in a slump.

“Can’t go… any further?” Disbelief masked the anger that he felt, his open mouth a picture of pure perplexity. He dropped his head and slumped his shoulders. It was a motion that barely allowed his head to remain on his shoulders. The lowest of the three fireballs crashed into the top of his head while the remaining two met with the pink sphere of magical protection. In a matter of moments he had gone from ending the battle with a spectacular display, to a man with a migraine and blurry vision… not to mention a clump of hair on fire and quickly catching more of it. His hands darted to his head and smacked the fire quickly to put it out, further drumming his head into the fallen log-bridge.

“Finally,” he sighed, his tone pure exasperation. Physically he was fit as a fiddle- minus the obvious scorch marks in his previously perfect hair, but mentally he had been bored since the first blood was spilt. Women, men who acted like women and small children frequented the Citadel far too often. It was a problem he had quickly found an annoying trend – second only to lackluster come-backs and second rate banter. “I think it’ll be a while before I come back to this fuckin’ place. Brit, let’s get out of here…”


((Submitting!))

[MetalDrago]

I was asked for no commentary, so here it is.
Task will be in red, Jasmine in blue

STORY ~

Continuity (6/4) ~

Setting (5/5) ~

Pacing (7/5) ~

CHARACTER ~

Dialogue (6/5) ~

Action (7/5) ~

Persona (5/6) ~

WRITING STYLE ~

Mechanics (5/4) ~

Technique (5/5) ~

Clarity (6/7) ~

Wild Card (8/5) ~

Task Scores a 60 and gains 1600 EXP and 150 GP

Jasmine Scores a 51 and gains 500 EXP and 125 EXP

[Taskmienster]

Exp and GP added.

I hit level 5.