Harbour havoc (Librarian)

”Heh..”
She was strong. Very strong. At least, stronger than he had expected. But then again, what did he expect from such a strange creature? Cat ears, tail, ninja equipment. She looked like a cosplayer gone wrong. His vision blured sightly.

“Heh..”
Still, for her to be so fast, to reach him before he could put up a protective barrier… She was fast. But then, he was the one to underestimate her. He had only lowered his guard.
The cat ninja leapt forth with killing intent, ready to finish the job.

“Heh,” Aronin muttered again and held out a hand, catching her with telekinesis right as she was about to land her hit. The cat woman let out a gasp as she was suddenly relieved of her momentum, suspended in the air.

“Don’t you go karate-kid on me, cat-girl,” he remarked, and released a blast of telekinesis, sending the Kuniochi flying in a nice arc across the harbor.

“The real battle starts here!” he shouted at her as he stood up from the pile of rubble he had been kicked into.

--==§§==--

It was a chilly air that hit Aronin in the face as he hit a cold front and forced him to descend. He enjoyed flying, and didn’t mind some cold wind, but the looming skies that piled up in front did not look hospitable. Flying through heavy saturated clouds not only was cold, but humid. He did not wish to catch a cold.

Even so, he continued to fly low above the rooftops until he reached more dense populated areas. Not that he minded, but most people would freak out if they saw a person flying in the night. And with all the light pollution in the big cities, he was easily spotted despite the black clouds above. With no other options, he found himself a back alley by the shore and touched down, scaring a homeless cat away from its trash can.

The smell of salt water and fish came flooding down as he exited the alley. No doubt, he was near a fishery, or a freight harbor. Absent minded, he stared through the fence and to the piers, not caring about the lone cat that prominently walked across the wooden piers as if it was the owner.

Aronin turned abruptly, having caught a movement in the corner of his eye. Was there someone there? The grassy area showed no signs of movement, but there was a new kind of silence. There were no insects sounding, and no late birds singing. In the distance, a grasshopper sung its eerie song.

Aronin turned again, this time there was someone. A man moved quickly across the pier, clearly nervous about something. Was he the shadow? The silence was momentarily broken by the sound of leafs being pushed aside, and released. There was clearly someone here, with such sensitive intentions it needed to be hidden. A silhouette appeared on top of a roof, somewhat visible in the fog lit up by a factory light. It was a woman, Aronin deducted from the build of the body. But she was standing in a strange, almost feline, way, and was she sporting a… Tail?

The silhouette disappeared, and Aronin jumped silently across the fence, curious about what was going on.
OoC: Aronin don’t acknowledge her to be a threat, and won’t use his powers at first, as stated by the intro.

OoC: You got it. Let's begin, then.

BiC: There he was. Deeply tanned skin, reminiscent of a desert nomad. Tall to the point where he would be the largest person in almost any given room. Short black hair, completely slicked back. A black eye patch over his left eye. Most importantly, a green crest stitched into the chest of an otherwise unremarkable jacket. Not exactly the most inconspicuous man on the planet, but certainly hard enough to find in his own right. Little did he know, he was about to rejoin his missing eye.

The even less inconspicuous Neko the Cat Ninja stalked this man in the night. As she stood, she was hiding less than ten feet away from him. Slowly drawing closer, she took in the man’s features, making sure that he was the exact person she was looking for. When he turned toward her, still not noticing her, she got a good look at his face. After seeing him up close, there was no doubt that it was him. Giving Sukoshi the hand signal to retreat, she came out into the open.

“Deryll Aspland?” she said, frightening the man half to death. He yelped, turning toward her in one snap motion. When he saw her, he took a few steps backward, an increasingly shocked look upon his damaged visage. “Lieutenant of the… What do you call them? The Generic Men? I guess it doesn’t matter. The leader of the Cowboys has put a price on your head, and I‘m here to claim it. My name is Neko. I am an assassin. I am going to kill you.”

After saying all that, the man was no longer visibly surprised by her appearance. What he was, was threatened. “I’d like to see you try,” he said, raising his fists, “I know…” As soon as he had put up his arms, the Cat-Girl had already thrown herself into her attack. Using a tiny amount of Life Force, she used the Nekokotsu. With such speed, he barely even saw it coming when she threw her foot up into the side of his face. He spun once, perhaps twice, before hitting the ground.

That was when he ran. He ran off in what may have been an escape route, but was more likely just a random direction. She was happy to follow. The only question was what kind of game she wanted to play with him. She could follow him, laughing all the way, but that could attract undue attention in such a populated area. The better way to do it would be to cackle just once when he made it to an open area. Once he realized he was doomed, she would strike.

Going from rooftop to rooftop, she followed him into an area close to water, a harbor. The perfect spot. Landing one last time, she let out one of her most catty laughs. Needless to say, he heard it. Stumbling, he stopped where he stood, frantically shooting his glance from place to place. Before he could begin running again, he was tackled to the ground by Neko. Flattening him out, she took her kiseru from her belt. Using a burst of Life Force, the bowl was engulfed in heat.

Since it was the first time using that particular Jutsu to kill, and she was a little bit excited, she could not help but blurt out her thoughts. “I wonder how deep this cuts!”

The cat lady had disappeared from sight when Aronin touched the ground on the other side. But it was apparent where she was heading, based on the reactions of the man he had seen passing just a moment ago. He softened the sounds of his footsteps by lifting himself slightly with telekinesis, reducing his weight, and ran after the man.

There was a laugh, followed by a thump, coming from between two warehouses by the piers. Aronin changed direction and ran towards the particular area. There was a loud noise coming from a male person, a frightened person, and another cackle. The cat woman had somehow caught up with the prey.

He rushed into a back alley, and was surprised by the dead body of a suited man. Judging by the profile, a little chubby and low, he was clearly the man he had seen on the piers.
So the assassin strikes, he thought to himself, and leaves her mark, he continued as he saw the four claw marks on the chin, just like a cat. A careless footstep caught his ear. The assassin was not far away.

He exited the alley, still weightless, and headed after the assassin, making no sounds himself. But, neither did the assassin. There was something extra about her, Aronin thought to himself as he rounded a corner. A shadow just passed the next corner, and Aronin speed up, not pretending to be walking anymore, only flying. He touched down just before the corner and stepped out into the open.

“What’s with the tail?” he shouted at the woman who were about to climb the wall. She froze in her movements, and Aronin walked closer. “Some kind of Cosplay assassin? You look like a Japanese anime person,” he remarked at her protruding cat ears and tail. She didn’t move.

“Not talkative, are we?” he asked and came even closer. She still didn’t move. “Hey? Are you ok?” Aronin asked a little worried something had happened. He did not see the kick coming.

OoC: Was it OK to have Neko stand still like that? I figured she could not tell whether he was a guard or had a gun or anything, so she’d wait until he was real close before attacking. Am I right?
And my continuation of this post is the first part of the first post, where Aronin throw her away with telekinesis.

OoC: That's a perfectly fine interpretation. Don't be afraid to control her actions. After all, this is going to be anything but a standard match. Well, for me, anyways. With a character like Aronin, it must be fairly standard.

BiC: There is not normally a thin line between being scared and being angry. Normally, the urge to either take flight or stand up and fight is easy to discern as either one or the other. The decision is not on a sliding scale. When presented with a threat to one‘s life, there is no middle option between fleeing or neutralizing the threat altogether.

As Neko lay on the dock, her whole body aching, her rear sticking through the hole she made upon impact, she debated with herself whether to run away from whoever this person was that had caught her, or stay and see if she was good enough to get around the skill he had so adeptly used to shrug her off. Had he not been so hasty to insult her, she may have been leaning toward running as she pulled herself to her feet.

Now, having met only one person capable of anything close to psychic power (excluding animate objects), she was more on the apprehensive side than anything else. As she got the curious man in her sights, she wondered if he would do the same thing once more if she were to simply charge him again. Of course, considering the distance put between them, a charge would be stupid, anyways.

That was when she realized just exactly where she was. Since the last man she had to deal with was not going to put up a “fight,” per say, she had not been focusing on using any of her more passive Ninja techniques. Since she was clearly going to have to take this person with some degree of seriousness, she put her mind to work.

From where he was standing, it would have looked like she vanished. Using her special kind of speed, she dashed behind what equated to a wall of crates that was stacked a man and a half high. Although it was somewhat disconcerting that she was not able to keep him constantly in her sights, she cleared the distance between them without invoking his psychic devastation.

Through a space between two crates, she saw him standing right where she left him after her only successful hit so far. Bad news: He was staring right back at her. Good news: He continued to pan his vision around where she was. This told her one important thing. Although a psychic -or perhaps some other kind of force user- he could not read her mind.

Then he did something she did not expect. Had her reflexes and perception not been at their feline height, he would have exposed her. With a force like the one he used to toss her away, he lifted all of the crates she could have been hiding behind off the ground. As the first box began to rise, she grabbed on to the top edge of the nearest crate. He took her up right along with them.

She has to hide behind them, he thought and lifted all the crates on the pier into the air to expose her. But, he noticed, she was not there at all. Had she escaped underneath the pier, or did she climb up on one of the crates? The crates shoot to the side, some crashing into the water, and some bouncing off another pier, and Aronin was sure he saw the movement of a shadow just as a crate shattered onto a pier.

There she is, he thought and hurried over, shooting the surviving crates into the air again. But as he stopped to look for her, there was no sign of movement anywhere. Had she escaped again?

A flying kick sending him pummeling into the concrete confirmed it. Somehow, she had managed to circle Aronin to attack from the back. Aronin quickly lifted himself up and turned to face her again, but with no luck. She had already hidden again, probably deducting that if Aronin could not see her, he could not attack.

How foolish…

He closed his eyes and held his hand out. A new kick, this time in his side, sent him hurling over the concrete ground towards the end of the dock. Panting as he picked himself up again, he realized it was perhaps not that foolish after all. However, now that he was at the edge, there was only one direction an attack could come from, unless she could walk on water, and this time, he would not fail. He closed his eyes again, and here and there, he noticed her jumping from place to place, before coming for an attack at his side. Aronin opened his eyes and smiled as a barrier formed.

As the feline ninja stylishly leapt through the air, her fists together, she completely expected to hit him with her strike. Although she would have had no escape method in such a limited area, she was primed to land on her feet after the eventual tossing she would receive from the force user. And as she swung her hammered fists down on him, she expected to feel his hair against her hands.

What she actually experienced was something strange that she had never come across before in that particular situation. The sensation she was met with was something like the feeling one gets as they attempt to walk up a sloping sheet of rock at the bottom of a shallow yet quickly flowing river. That is to say, it resisted her action, but was still slippery enough to feel immaterial.

As her fists slipped completely from the air in front of him, she landed back down. With her landing thrown back by at least a foot, she was tipped completely off balance. Leaning forward, and then quickly throwing her weight back, she ended up standing more prone than a man in front of a firing squad. The person in front of her retaliated eagerly.

With a wave of his hand, he pushed her straight back onto the ground. For a moment, she was splayed like most thought a fighter would after being struck with an arrow. His attack did not end there, though. Leaving her in that position, he lifted her a few feet off the ground. For another moment, she wondered what was on his mind. That was, until she was sent tumbling back violently.

Rolling in a mass of arms and legs, the pain she was receiving helped transmute her curiosity about him into an animalistic urge to drown him as soon as she could get her hands on him. Slowing, she once again expended some Life Force. Putting a palm to the ground, she pushed herself up and into the air. Moving at such speeds, the crate she landed on skidded back as her feet made contact.

Just then, she found it prudent to disappear once more. Although he had used her stealth to draw her into a limited area before, she hoped that hiding would manage to draw him to where she wanted him. Lo, he rushed to where she had sprung into recovery. Perfect. Engulfing her pipe’s bowl with flame, she prepared the small distraction she had just improvised.

When the Enkoukiseru Jutsu hit something flammable, it always went up in flames pretty quickly. The crate she had been hiding behind went up like the tender it was. Although her opponent was likely surprised to see the flames shoot up suddenly, she was too focused to gauge his exact reaction. Without using her movement Jutsu, she was able to get behind him.

Distracted by the flames -which he seemed to be in the process of putting out with his powers- he was wide open.

A sudden eruption of flames made Aronin hesitate for a moment. That girl sure were something else than she appeared to be, Aronin thought as he tried to halt the flames from spreading to the rest of the ware house. There was no need to go to such extremes, as the owner of the ware house probably never had anything to do with the dead man.

But, he reminded himself, who was he to judge. He had only fought off that crazy girl because she had attacked him first, and she had probably only attacked him because he had interrupted her in her mission, thinking he was some sort of police or body guard. Thing was, Aronin couldn’t care less. Morally speaking, he was just in for the fight.

“Heh,” he said as he raised his hand to meet the attack, simply making a barrier to stop her from attacking his back. “I have seen through your moves. You can’t continue to just sneak attack.”

He turned as she skid surprised off the barrier, eyes focused on his. She was wielding some sort of pipe in her hand for some unknown reason, and was examining the barrier with her other.

“Magic..” she meowed, and Aronin became taken aback as he saw her completely in the dim light from the fire behind him. She was not just a cosplayer as he had initially thought. She was a cat, and a human, or something in between…

“What, are you?” he started as the girl swung her pipe at the barrier. It shattered into countless invisible shards that vaporized back into the air shortly thereafter. Aronin jumped backwards to protect himself and accidentally landed into the burning pile of wood. Distracted by the fire, and worried about what exactly he had gotten into, he shot into the air, blasting open a hole in the roof and escaping. His left leg had been caught on fire.

“What the hell are you?” he said silently as he put out the flame, standing on the roof.

Now that made the feline ninja angry. Not only was this nuisance of a person blessed with the power to move objects without touching them, he was also gifted with the power of flight. And there he was, floating there, partially on fire, like he was taunting her. Whether he was showing off or actually making an escape did not matter. At that, she got angry.

She had to get onto that roof.

Neko looked back and forth, searching for a scaffold or ladder that would get her on top of the warehouse. The only thing that came close was a relatively large stack of crates that rose jumping distance from the ceiling. Unfortunately, each crate was only just shorter than she was. She could not climb something such as that quickly enough to meet him as an equal. Unless, of course, she took advantage of her feline skills.

Backing away from the stack of crates, her muscles tightened in anticipation. With a running start, she poured enough Life Force into herself to use the Nekokotsu. Her speed lifted her the height of the crate, and her flexibility got her feet planted exactly right. With her momentum, her limbs flexed her up the second, and then the third, and finally let her clear the jump to the hole in the roof.

As she passed ceiling level she noticed that while she should have been slowing down from using the Life Force, her perception remained acute. Feeling that such an aberration was helpful, her instincts told her to use it. Grabbing on to the roof’s edge, she swung herself sideways, landing in a crouched position on the opposite side of the hole the nuisance was on.

It was then that she realized that a dim orange aura had developed around her extremities. That last move up the crates had been enough of a push to allow Swadhisthana to open. With her Life Force flowing freely through a higher place on her body, her entire perception changed. The motion of her opponent’s head snapping in her direction seemed unnaturally slow in her eyes.

Neko shifted into a pouncing stance. Before she could even move, his barrier was up. Sensing that he would repulse her attack once again, she went for something a little longer than just her fist. Kiseru in hand, she leapt the short distance between them. Immediately, she used the Kiritori, and swiped her weapon at him. She could not tell what it did exactly, but his barrier fell.

With a grunt, she pinned him to the roof. She was about to bring the last of her heat blade down upon his throat, but his power of pushing reached her first. He lifted her off of himself and brought her down roughly. While her first extra powered rush had yielded nothing, at least she would no longer have to rely on sneak attacks.

Aronin flinched as his second barrier shattered. And as he reflected on how his air barrier was too weak to stop her, she had continued her charge and tackled him to the floor. He braced himself as she lifted her weapon, and pushed her off. It was not his power she was neutralizing, he thought with relief as he lifted himself off.

He jumped backwards, with a little push of telekinesis, as the assassin once more came to her feet and charged straight at him. He once more put up a air barrier as he stopped, and took to the skies just as she came through it. Looking down, the cat woman had already disappeared from where she had been seconds ago, and Aronin felt out for her again while he hung in the air.

She was above him... Startled, he tried to jerk himself out of her way, but was struck down as she dropped down from a large crane. He caught himself just before he hit the ground and forced himself up, just in time to prepare for the next attack. Just as the weapon she was wielding was about to hit, a small explosion occurred in his palms, and blue plasma covered his whole arm, like fire on a log.

He smiled as he blocked her attack with his plasma filled arm. Small sparks of exited energy emerged from the point of impact. A little telekinetic push later, and they were again separated. Aronin used the brief pause to fling a bright, blue ball of exited plasma at her.

OoC: Sorry about the delay. I think I forgot that you had posted or something...

OoC: Sorry for the exorbitant lateness. Life can be wacky sometimes, you know? Anyways, let's get on with the show.

BiC: The look on Neko’s face was priceless when she saw the nuisance’s arms become alight with sky colored flames. Blue as day, it still created yellow sparks when the heat of her immaterial blade struck it. As the sparks scattered, the heat dissipated, taking her specialty jutsu along with it. She may as well have just swung at air.

Now, this was her newest technique she had just tried to use on him. Had it worked, it would have taken off his arm. To see it fail -and in her elevated state, no less- was not something that improved her already bad mood. Had she the time before the frustrating man’s next push based attack, she would have yelled something very censorable at him.

But, as she dug her claws into the roofing to steady her landing, she found herself looking at him from a new angle. The man took an agonizingly generic stance; the kind a person who did not actually know what a stance was taken for would use. He floated in stance, about an inch off the ground, arms ablaze with the fire-like energy. Although he stood like a goofball, he used his powers like a man who knew how to use them.

This was not just a person who was trying to keep her from fleeing the scene of her crime. The state of mind that had opened Swadhisthana for the first time turned him into a person she could happily enjoy using her skills on.

Just as a smile came to the feline ninja’s lips, the man made as if to throw something at her. Still off balance, she wobbled somewhat. And then he threw. As if he were stoning an outcast, he threw a mass of his blue fire in her direction. To dodge a giant ball of obvious, she did not even need to be on balance. This flame would do nothing more than fray her fur.

Never hiding her teeth, she leaned to her unarmed side, making up for her balance by leaning onto her arm. With the same growl her own flames made, the blue fire sped by her, eventually exploding upon hitting something. “What an ugly shot,” she commented, finally catching her balance. She had no time to take advantage before another sped by. “Try your hardest.” Another. “How embarrassing.”