[Round 1] Urban Decay - Sabbo vs. Etc

Spring Tournament 2009, Round One - Urban Decay [Sabbo vs. Etc]

As the battle progresses, just remember that each fight will go on for about 25-30 posts, the character that you choose for this first round must be the character you use for the entire duration of the tournament, and that Councilors characters (for example, in this thread, my character) will act as a referee for this thread and maintain balance. Try to keep posts at around 500 words max, and avoid controlling your opponent's character. With all that said, have at it and have fun!

IC:

Silent, grey decadence; urban decay from one limit to the other. Pieces of buildings were in the middle of the street, along with cars that had layers of dust settled upon them; so thick that even the windows were clouded with it, and it was impossible to see inside. Layers of dust and smaller debris were scattered along the narrow streets, crunching under the woman’s boots. She glanced into a few windows of the buildings and all she saw was darkness, a void that gave her the feeling that it was staring back at her.

The wind blew weakly, barely picking up any of the dust. Raisha turned away from the windows and looked up past an abandoned skyscraper at the dull, grey sky. The clouds rolled in, groaning and rumbling loudly as they overtook the sky, casting a dead grey monotonous tone of colour. The mid-afternoon sun made sporadic efforts to keep shining through, small rays were scattered over the buildings.

Raisha leapt upward, grasping onto a rusty pipe that was attached to the side of an old, but thin three-story brick building. As she climbed, she ignored the low, animalistic growling coming out of some of the windows she passed on the way up. The Vizard climbed onto the rooftop, and looked up at the sky.

Mid-afternoon, almost evening; the sun won’t be setting just yet.

In the distance, she heard the rapid beat of a helicopter approaching; the participants were coming to battle right near here, where she waited. She glanced over at the place where the chopper would be landing. It was a massive, broken down bridge that crossed a large, murky river, connecting two large islands, both filled with massive, grey, dead skyscrapers. The bridge still had those massive steel cables supporting it and the cars that had been abandoned on it.

The passengers would be let off there, and from there, the fight should begin.

Raisha looked over the edge of the rooftop, down at the street, wondering what kinds of animals had taken refuge in this urban decay.

The Sun rose above the horizon, shining into Atropos' closed eyes, waking her up. She opened up her eyes and blinked a couple of times, wondering where she was. Looking around, she realized she was in the middle of an alley between two gray brick buildings. She was lying on the ground, on the hard dark asphalt, next to an old rusted metal trash bin. A gentle movement of psychokinesis lifted her off the ground and set her down on her feet. Atropos used her gloved hands to brush herself off, and then stretched herself out for a bit. Her knit cap was sitting on the ground and she bent down to pick it up and shake it off. Standing up again, she pulled the hat over her unkempt hair.

Using telekinesis she performed a classic Mario move, jumping between the two walls of the alley, and pulled herself onto the roof of the five story building. She walked over to the ledge surrounding the edge of the roof, and balanced herself on top of it. Looking over the busy city of people, Atropos took a deep breath of the polluted urban air. Cars were driving by on the street below, a few of the drivers noticing her and continuing on with disinterest. Atropos loved the city. The people, the cars, the buildings, even the air. The business, the bustle, the chaos, especially the chaos. She took another deep breath, and then started to walk along the ledge, holing her arms straight out for balance. She didn't need to use her arms for balance like most humans, since she could balance herself with psychokinesis, but Atropos had found that many things were more interesting without telekinesis; using it was almost like cheating.

Nearing the edge of the building, Atropos quickened her pace so she could make a running leap onto the next building. Unfortunately her foot, fit inside an unwieldy boot, slipped and missed the edge of the building. Before she knew it, Atropos was falling down again. She fell great distances at least once a day, either because of some silly mistake or reckless action she made, or on purpose (occasionally). She softened the relatively short five story fall by wrapping a dense bubble of air around herself, which burst on contact with the ground and absorbed a great deal of the force from falling. The bursting telekinetic bubble had to release the force somewhere, and the blast of air that radiated from Atropos shattered a few nearby windows and knocked over a pedestrian. The pedestrian got to his feet, wondering if the person who'd just fallen off the roof was alright.

He looked down at Atropos, who was staring up at the sky, trying to figure out what shape the cloud above her had taken. When he blocked the sky from her view, she looked at the man. "You alright?" he asked.

"Me? Oh, yeah, I'm fine," she said. The man didn't seem quite convinced, and continued to stand above her. He raised an eyebrow, pulled at his short little beard with his thick fingers, and then offered a hand to help her up. Atropos glanced at the hand and stared at it for a minute.

"You sure you're fine? I mean, didn't you just fall from that there building? I can take you to the hospital if you want," the man said.

Atropos took his hand, and he helped her up. "No. I'm fine," she said, gripping his hand especially hard before releasing it.

"Ow!" the man said, shaking his hand. The veins on his arm grew darker as he did, spreading up towards his shoulder. "You need to cut your nails, girl." Atropos didn't say anything, and started walking away down the sidewalk, leaving the man behind her. Just as she turned around the corner, the man began convulsing and fell to the ground, the venom taking effect. In a few moments, all that would be left is a dead body and a pool of thick black blood. Atropos chuckled under her breath, and drew the claws back into her hand. First kill of the day (not counting the motel she'd burned down shortly after midnight last night) and certainly not the last.

~ <&c.> ~

Noon was fast approaching, and outside the Sun was quickly climbing up to its midday perch. Atropos was sure she'd forgotten something that she was supposed to do. Wiping the fresh blood off her hands and onto her pants, she started searching around in her several pockets for a piece of paper. Her clothes were flecked with specks of newly spilt red blood, which joined the amalgamation of old bloodstains already marking her slightly tattered and torn clothes, some of the blood hers, most of it not. She was standing in the public restroom of a grocery store. She'd entered the store mostly because she was hungry and wanted to steal food, but she had to use the restroom while she was there.

Not finding what she was looking for in her pockets, she removed her left glove. A small slip of paper fell out and landed in a puddle of blood on the ground, which was mixing with and being diluted by the pools of water which collected naturally under the sinks. Atropos bent over to pick it up, and unfolded the wet paper, doing her best not to tear it. All the paper said, scrawled in her terrible handwriting, was "fountain noon." She dropped the paper again, this time on purpose, and stepped over the torn and blood soaked body lying on the linoleum tiled floor. Pieces of the broken mirror were sticking out of the body's back.

Atropos made her way outside to the parking lot about the time that someone discovered the body and started screaming. She smirked when she heard the screaming, it was one of the many things she derived pleasure from, sometimes. Remembering her deadline, Atropos took a running start and flew across the parking lot with a burst of psychokinesis. She landed on top of a parked vehicle, shattering all of its windows and crushing in its roof. Pleased by needless damage as well, she jumped down from the wreck and onto the ground. The fountain that the paper had referred to was in a plaza down the street, and with a few psychokinetic leaps, she was there in no time. The people in the plaza scattered when they saw her soar into the square (landing right in the fountain no less) and was empty in a couple seconds.

Atropos crawled out of the fountain, refreshed and cleansed from the wet blood by the cold water. Then she stood there, in the middle of the city square, staring up at the sky. It was probably almost noon (Atropos would have checked her watch to make sure, but it had been broken for as long as she could remember, which was likely about three days). Sirens could be heard in the distance, but they were drowned out by another sound. A thrumming sound that beat at the air. Soon, the helicopter was right over the plaza, swirling the air around and blowing around Atropos' hair. It landed on the cobblestoned ground, and Atropos ran over to it. She opened the door, and hopped into the seat.

She resisted the urge to kill the pilot and take the helicopter for herself. She'd been promised that the pilot would fly her somewhere where she could fight a skilled opponent, and that sounded like much more fun than killing the defenseless city folk who could barely fight back. Instead, she looked out the window in wonder as the machine lifted off the ground and flew into the distant skies.

战斗比赛。
不可思议和超自然的人民(和能力)被鼓励，但是任何人和大家欢迎。

The little note, announcing a fighting tournament, in Tatek's hand was given to him personally, but was phrased as if anybody could read it and accept the challenge. But, considering that the note strongly implied that there would be magic users of all kinds there, the anti-mage expected a low turnout due to many people fearing for their safety. He also expected that at least one of his opponents would be a potential target.

"Excuse me sir, but the helicopter's landed; you have to get out now." The pilot yelled over the pounding noise of the vehicle's propellers.

<What did you say?> Tatek responded, even though he was aware the pilot would not understand him over the noise, even if he would recognise the language. Realising this, the pilot used basic sign language of pointing at Tatek, and pointing out the door.

Tatek understood the pilot's signal, and so stashed the note in a pocket while moving carefully out of the helicopter on to the hard ground below. He only recognised it as ground thanks to a few sporadic tufts of near-dead grass. So I'm meant to fight when I can barely even tell where the ground is?

Noticing that there was strangely little animal life to be found nearby, Tatek focused, extending his vision to its limits. Beyond the small clearing from which the helicopter was now leaving, past the dying trees where no birds nor bugs waited, and onward into a lifeless area, devoid even of simple grass, let alone any animals.

It was around five minutes of searching, in fact, before he found anything, and what he found he most certainly did not like.

On top of a large object, presumably a building, more than one thousand feet away was a great power. It had at least some magic, but due to the great distance between them, Tatek could not tell how much of its power was magic, and how much was natural energy of the creature's body. That was another thing: The anti-mage couldn't even tell if it was a human, an animal, or even alive. He just knew it had power.

Further away, Tatek sensed a weaker - yet still very strong - power, although was unable to determine anything from it, including whether or not it was at all magical, or even the exact direction it was from him. Heck, for all he knew it could be moving really quickly, as all Tatek felt was a vague presence in the distance.

I really hope that it's only the weaker one I'm meant to be fighting... He thought to himself as he started walking toward the edge of the trees.

Not wanting to leave the safety of the trees - where he could at least see what there was he might bump into - Tatek crouched, and felt around the ground for a rock. When he found a palm-sized stone after a few seconds, he threw it out to the area he couldn't see, and as it bounced around he could tell from the sounds of metal and stone that the land before him was probably a city, and judging by the lack of people and the echo of the rock hitting the ground, it had many tall buildings, but was completely empty.

Not content with a single test though, Tatek promptly found another rock around the same size, but this time threw it high into the air toward the city. He heard some glass shatter and fall to the ground below, as well as catching a glimpse of a creature in the building. Seeing in that short moment that it was neither human nor magical, he pushed the thought of it to the back of his head.

<Well, since I can't see in an essentially lifeless city, I guess I may as well stand here and just wait for my first opponent to come to me.>

OoC: Helicopters? This is so not canon for Tatek. (So what I'll do is just assume him into essentially modern-day technology. Don't worry; that will have minimal effect on the battle. In fact, if I work it in the right way for Tatek's future, I might be able to potentially make this canon. I'm not sure yet.)

Also, don't bother translating the Chinese. It, approximately, says "Fighting tournament. Magical and supernatural people (and abilities) encouraged, but anybody and everybody welcome." Any inaccuracies are to be blamed OoC on the Babelfish translator, and IC on slight differences between Mandarin and Zhonguen.

As Atropos looked out the window, she could see the battlefield below. It was an abandoned city, covered in dust and debris. As the helicopter started to descend, near an old worn out bridge which spanned over a murky river, the wind from the rotors kicked up clouds of dust, obscuring Atropos' view. The pilot didn't turn off the engine after he landed, continuing the billowing plumes of dust, and shouted back at her. "We've landed! Time to get off!" the pilot said.

Atropos nodded, and then opened up the door. She stepped out into the dust, covering her face with her hand. As soon as she was off of the vehicle, it started climbing back up into the sky. Just as it started flying over the river, getting higher into the sky as it did, the rotors suddenly detached from the rest of the helicopter, sending it out of control. With a loud splash, the flying machine hit the river and sunk to the bottom. The rotors were still spinning and flew quite a distance away through the air, finally stopping when they hit the side of a skyscraper and blew out half its windows. What an unlucky fate, Atropos thought to herself.

In the distance, Atropos saw another helicopter leaving. "Ah. My opponent." She looked around, taking in the scene. She was standing in the middle of an abandoned city. Thick layers of gray dust covered everything, along with a coating of various debris. Vehicles were simply left alone in the middle of the street, doors on buildings stood wide open, and there wasn't a single life form anywhere to be seen. Atropos was standing before a great suspension bridge, which connected the two sides of the city, which were separated by the large murky river. The water was thick with grime, and stood completely stagnant. A disgusting odor of decay rose from the green water, and Atropos pinched shut her nose when she caught a whiff of it.

Remembering the other helicopter she saw, she began to run towards its position. It had landed somewhere on the other side of the bridge. With a couple of flying leaps (each one throwing up huge amounts of dust both when she launched off and when she landed) she made it to the other side of the bridge rather quickly. She climbed up onto a forsaken semitruck, which was sitting in the middle of the street at the end of the bridge, and looked around. In the distance, she noticed something moving around among a bunch of dead trees. There was also a figure on top of a small three story brick building on the street nearby.

Atropos wasn't sure which one, if not both, she was supposed to fight. Flipping a coin in her mind, she headed for the trees. With another burst of psychokinesis, Atropos attempted to fly into the small forest, but her aim was off. Instead she ended up hitting one of the trees and falling down to the ground. She quickly got herself up and brushed herself off, looking around. From here she could see the other person, who was standing only a few yards away, and he could see her. Actually, Atropos noted with interest, the man had no eyes or hair. She raised her eyebrow, wondering if he was completely blind or could somehow still see her.

Deciding not to wait and find out, Atropos quickly pushed her hand out towards the man, expelling a wave of telekinesis. The wave flew through the air, and the invisible wall of air collided with the man, knocking him several feet back and down to the ground. "Let's get this over with..." she said, the claws once again appearing on her hands, ready to inject her deadly blood into the man.

OoC: ...direct telekinesis doesn't effect Tatek. Just keep that in mind.

BiC: It wasn't long before the lesser power in the distance started moving towards Tatek, and the closer it got, the more he could tell about it.

Living.

Animal... it likes jumping...

Human.

Non-magical... what a pity.

Purple.

And then she hit a tree. Hiding a smirk, Tatek turned to face his foe.

Ah, and female too.

Just as the anti-mage was entering his fighting stance though, he was pushed on to the ground by a large wind.

As he got up to his feet, the girl said something in a language he didn't understand and seemed to extend her fingernails. Well that can't be a good thing.

Tatek covered his upper body in a qi shield to protect from the girl's claws as he reentered his stance - left foot forward with both arms raised open-palmed in front of his body - and kept a close eye on her movements as he started to circle around her, keeping his distance.

<Nothing personal, but I can't let you win.>

OoC: I know it's short, Tatek is not the type to initiate an attack before he needs to.

Also, I just edited Tatek's profile with a teensy bit more information regarding his fighting style.

ooc: Atropos doesn't use magic or qi; psychokinesis is just the ability to use regular energy to move objects. No sense getting in an argument about it though, so I won't let her use the psychokinesis directly on Tatek, only on other objects first.

ic:

The cloaked and hooded man stood back up, and got into some strange martial arts style fighting stance. Then he chattered off a sentence in some foreign language that Atropos didn't recognize. "What is that, Japanese? French? Spanish?" Atropos asked. Obviously he couldn't understand what she was saying either, though, because he didn't respond. Instead he began to slowly circle around her, staying a good distance away. Atropos tilted her head slightly as she watched him circle, and then held out her hand to grab him and lift him up with psychokinesis. Perhaps she would strangle him from a distance, or break his neck, or crack his skull, or pull off his arms...

She missed. The man kept moving, and her telekinesis simply didn't touch him. Atropos blinked her eyes a couple times. For a moment she wondered what and how exactly she'd missed. She wasn't sure what that meant, but that was the only way she could describe the feeling. It was like trying to grab something and realizing that while you certainly had your hand all the way around it, it just hadn't moved and wasn't in your hand. Slippery, almost. She tried again, but the psychokinesis just wouldn't grip him. "Slippery fellow, eh?" she muttered. Instead, she just sent out a full burst of energy towards him, knocking him back into a tree. A bit messier, a bit broader, but it did the job.

Looking around among the trees, she noticed there wasn't really anything here. It wasn't much of a battle ground, at least, not the kind she preferred. Most people probably preferred a nice empty clearing to fight in, but she enjoyed places with lots of objects and various areas of high and low ground. Looking out of the forest, she noticed the tall buildings and long paved streets of the city. That's where she wanted to go, into the city, where the fighting would be more exciting. Hoping he would follow to continue the fight, she rocketed out of the forest and onto the nearby city street.

Nightshade turned back to see if he was coming, but he sort of just stood there on the edge of the trees, as if unsure that he wanted to follow. "Humph," Atropos said, sighing. Wanting to continue the fight, she tried to pull him towards her, but the telekinesis slipped again. So she just grabbed all the air around him instead. It would be a bit of a rougher ride this way, but it was his own fault for being so dang slippery. A shockwave blew through the air, carrying the man with it and dropping him on the dusty asphalt in front of Atropos. The shockwave blew out all the windows on the nearby buildings, which shattered into a ringing crescendo and littered the ground with an avalanche of glass.

As the man got up again, and got back into his stance again, Atropos motioned to herself and spoke. "Atropos," she said.

Apparently understanding what she was doing, the man motioned to himself as well, and said "Tatek." With that, Atropos initiated the fight. She leapt up and flipped backwards through the air, vaulting over an abandoned car. With a wave of her hand, the vehicle suddenly began tumbling rather quickly towards Tatek. It probably wouldn't kill him, or even hit him if he was fast enough, but Atropos wanted to have fun with this skirmish while it lasted.

Tatek braced himself for impact as he heard something large and heavy tumble towards him. The thought of dodging it crossed his mind for only a moment, as without knowing exactly how big the object was, he was unable to know if he could get out of the way in time.

Of course, when it hit him, he was reminded of the fact that yes, having three thousand pounds of metal and plastic crash into your face hurts, and having a barrier - around the same strength of steel and less than an inch thick - doesn't make it hurt that much less than having no barrier at all. Or at least that's what Tatek assumed; he's never actually been hit by a car in the face before, and doesn't intend to be in the future either.

In the end, Tatek was lying on the road with one giant bruise on his entire upper body and a fair amount of blood coming out from when his head hit the ground, as his qi shield had been worn out entirely by the car moments before. The car was now on its side a few feet behind him, or so the sound of its creaking would suggest.

It took a few moments, but Tatek had thought of a plan. The first step was of course to stop the blood coming out of his head which he was able to do with a Bandage of Qi. Although this unfortunately meant that he couldn't defend that area with a Shield of Qi, he knew that fast healing was more important than protection when it was the safety his head in question.

The second step had Tatek stand and move backwards to the car he had just been hit by. While edging his way around to the back of it he gathered strength in his arms - enough to lift the vehicle with only some difficulty.

Finally, the third step. Tatek raised the car off the ground, ran towards Atropos, and swung it over his head in a half-attempt to hit her, half-attempt to shake the ground enough to put her off guard if it missed.

The tumbling vehicle made direct contact with Tatek, throwing him to the asphalt and rolling right over him. Although Atropos noticed a fairly large splatter of blood when the man hit the ground, he seemed to recover pretty quickly, getting back to his feet and running around to the back of the car. With superhuman strength the strange man lifted the heavy piece of scrap metal over his head, and rushed towards Atropos, ready to bash her over the head with it. As he brought the vehicle down towards her, she flew backwards away from it, as if an invisible rope had been tied around her and someone suddenly jerked it back.

The car collided with the ground, missing Atropos, and sending a large explosion of gray dust into the air. Atropos landed a few feet away, her boots crushing pieces of glass which had fallen from the windows only minutes ago. She looked down at the window shards, an idea coming to her. With a broad wave of her arm, the shards of glass flew into the air, sending a hail of glass towards Tatek. Most of the vitreous darts missed their mark, embedding themselves harmlessly into the beat up car, or scattering across the dusty ground. A few of them managed to hit her opponent, but she didn't take the time to assess how effective her attack had been.

With a snap of her fingers, the sharp pair of shears hidden in her left boot flew up into her right hand. She started to run towards Tatek, ready to disembowel him with the long blades, but something else caught her attention. In the corner of her eye she saw a dark figure explode through the wall of the building next to them. It flew through the air with a vicious and bloodthirsty snarl, tackling Atropos and sending her rolling across the street. With telekinetically enhanced feet, Atropos kicked the beast off of her, and sent it flying into a wall. It rebounded off the wall, landing on its four feet, and rushed towards Atropos again.

She got a good look at it while it came for her. It stood on four legs, and was covered in thick, dark, matted fur. The black fur was covered in the same gray dust that plagued every other surface in the decaying city. White foam surrounded the rabid creature's mouth, which was filled with razor sharp fangs as long as Atropos' fingers. The beast had its eyes wide open, with large pupils and a frenzied look. The creature was nearly as tall as Atropos, and it was on all fours.

Jumping up at Atropos again, the wolf reached for her neck, trying to rip it open with its deadly teeth. Atropos made a calculated strike with the scissors in her right hand, embedding the two blades in the canine's own neck. The weight of the creature knocked her to the ground, but she kept the shears deep in its flesh as it flailed about, throwing white spittle and crimson blood into the air. She jerked her arm up, slicing open the creature's throat, and finally ceasing its movement. Atropos got up off the ground, letting the body bleed out on the ground. The wolf's lifeblood mixed with the thick layer of dust, creating a dark sticky mud.

With one last glance at the creature, Atropos assessed the damage. Although it hadn't managed to hit her neck with its teeth, the canine's claws had slashed open her left arm, leaving the sleeve of her sweatshirt in tangled blood-soaked shreds. Dark indigo blood covered her arm, running down her hand and dripping down to the ground. Although the wound looked serious, and stung like heck, she knew it would be gone in a few minutes. She looked up at the gaping hole it had left in the building it flew out of, wondering if there were more of them.

Remembering why she was here, she turned back to Tatek, who was still standing next to the car she'd thrown at him. Nightshade held out her scissors and pointed them in his direction, blood still dripping off of the blades. She separated the two blades by the handle and leapt through the air towards the cloaked man, ready to skewer him.

OoC: ...

BiC: It was as he was picking the glass shards out of his qi-shielded body when Tatek heard a large crash nearby. Having been keeping watch on Atropos he knew that it was not her, so he was only a bit surprised when he looked up and saw a dog-shaped creature the size of a horse being kicked into a wall. Although it was the shape of a dog, the creature did not have any qi patterns Tatek recognised.

The girl, wielding what Tatek guessed was a large knife, stabbed the creature in the neck as it approached her again, and although it had knocked her to the ground, with a single movement she was able to end its life as quickly as it had arrived at the scene, its qi all but gone by the time she had gotten back on her feet.

Despite being injured, Atropos seemed to care little for the slain creature; only looking back once before she opened her hand and jumped at Tatek to attack.

Scissors? Tatek re-evaluated his guess on what the girl's weapon was when he saw her hand open.

Just before she reached him, Tatek stepped swiftly to the side, grabbed Atropos' forearms, and threw her over his shoulder onto the ground a few feet to his side. He decided to ignore for now the half-inch deep cut she had been able to make on the back of his left hand.

"Yi." Tatek began counting.

The girl appeared to have telekinetically softened her impact with the ground slightly, which explained how she was able to get back up and attempt to attack the Zhonguen man again, albeit from a lower angle this time. Tatek responded by taking another step to the side, picking up Atropos by the clothes on her back, and in the same movement, threw her into the air, landing, safer than most people would, on the far side of the car Tatek had recently smashed onto the ground.

"Er."

Tatek, expecting the girl's next move to be to attempt to attack with the car, decided to jump over it before she could, and landed behind her in a crouch. Continuing his momentum, Tatek spun around and tripped her up.

"San."

Continuing his circular momentum, Tatek spun around once more while raising from the ground and kicked the girl along the road back toward the dead creature.

"SÌ!"

Although Tatek was aware that his choice of attack combo is best performed using a short weapon such as a sword - which would've made his last word "sì" far more appropriate - he was not feeling disappointment when he looked toward the girl as she stood up, but instead only felt determination to win.

Well, that and the gash on his hand he had only just now remembered to stop the bleeding of.

OoC: One. Two. Three. Four. And just like as many know how it works in Japanese, Chinese too, has the words of "four" and "death" being homophones.

Atropos brushed the gray dust off of her clothing as she got back up from the asphalt. Tatek was pretty quick with his fighting methods, and had managed to toss her about a bit. All the while he was speaking in whatever weird language it was that was native to him. It sounded almost like he was counting, but she really couldn't be sure. Standing away from the martial artist, she twirled the scissors on her finger again, deep in thought. She had only barely been able to scratch him with the blades in her initial attack, nicking him on the back of the hand. It was about time she got a bit more aggressive if she wanted to win this battle.

Not wanting to give her too much time to think or recuperate, Tatek approached again. He seemed quite determined to win the battle himself, and wasn't about to give Atropos a chance to take that victory from him. When it came down to hand-to-hand combat, Atropos realized she couldn't argue much about it. Tatek was simply more skilled and stronger. However, that shouldn't be too much of a problem in this case, it only meant that she would have to resort to other forms of combat. She knew of and was skilled in plenty of efficient methods of killing that didn't involve being anywhere close to her opponent. Preparing one of these attacks as Tatek got near, Atropos suddenly pushed out the palm of her hand towards him. Energy she had gathered into her hand spread out instantly into the air around her, psychokinetically charging it. The sudden shock of energy caused the air to quickly expand outwards in the direction of Atropos' hand, towards Tatek. The suddenly expanding air created a solid wall of force, a sheer shockwave of pressure which collided hard into the telekinetically slippery man, throwing him back into the red brick wall of the decaying building behind. The attack, while virtually invisible save for the waves of dust it kicked up, gave off a resounding crack which shook the air and rattled the foundations of the city much like thunder, and then quickly dissipated as the energy spread out evenly through the air.

From this point on, Atropos wasn't going to give him a chance to get close to her. She could finish him off from a distance just as well, and as far as she knew he couldn't do much if he couldn't touch her.

Replacing the blood-stained shears in her black boot, she waved her hand over the hairy corpse on the street nearby. With a sweep of her outstretched arm, the bloody body flew in Tatek's direction. He quickly dodged out of the way, letting the cadaver crash solidly into the brick wall of the building behind him. Atropos quickly glanced all around her, searching for more stuff to throw. There was a dust covered tire nearby, which she immediately sent flying through the air, followed by a few cracked bricks, a rusted fire hydrant, and a splintering door. Tatek did his best to dodge the flying objects, hiding behind the dented up vehicle they had thrown about at each other earlier, but it almost seemed as if he couldn't see the objects very well.

Maybe that was true. He didn't appear to have any eyes after all. Atropos started to wonder why he could apparently see her but not other things, but quickly shrugged it off as unimportant. The battle at hand was the most important thing, and it was time to finish him off. Droplets of a thin black liquid began to form at her exposed fingertips, and some of the liquid began to drip onto the ground. It began to flow more fluidly from her hands until several long tentacles of the strange black material had been formed, wrapped securely around her hands and writhing through the air towards Tatek. For little to no reason at all, Atropos began laughing.