[IC] TTG Final: Nil

[Chevaleresse]

Hiroki had felt bad for a split second as she saw the ruinous damage she was inflicting on Watcher. Ultimately, she only wanted to win the fight; if she had to break him, she would, but it wasn't something she aimed to do. Of course, she didn't have very long to feel bad, as Watcher's reply simply removed the offending limb of the Knight - which caused yet another flash of pain from the suddenly-exposed arm. 

 

The Hellfire Knight assessed her rapidly dwindling options. She couldn't stall, his attacks seemingly completely ignored her armor. Most of the melee power of her mech was concentrated in that arm; the heavy legs would do a lot of damage if they connected properly, but a mobile, hovering opponent wasn't exactly in prime kicking territory. Her ranged assaults didn't seem like they were going to do a whole lot more than feed his attacks at best, and that was assuming he didn't just start to do what he did before. A plan started to form in her head, and she quickly shuffled it backward; that would be a last resort, as it was just as likely to make things better as worse. 

 

For now, she couldn't let herself be deterred. Her guns opened up again, but this time it wasn't aimed at Watcher directly; as Hiroki advanced, her array of weapons did their best to target Watcher's own attacks, firing into them and trying to disrupt the incoming destructive energy with her own. She tried to close on him again; if she could get another physical assault, or even get close enough to use the same tactic she'd used on Arcturus. . . 

[Shamitako]

Hiroki's attempt at defense was essentially pointless, as there was no way for her targeting computer to predict Watcher's attack pattern, but that proved irrelevant when she realized that Watcher also had little way to aim his attack. Once she started moving, she was only struck by a few glancing shots before he abandoned the strategy. 

 

Watcher didn't care whether his attack kept Hiroki at bay, because the reason he'd risen into the air wasn't to escape Hiroki's range. Clenching his fist as he had with the walls, Watcher caused the floor beneath the Hellfire Knight to erupt, opening the way to the room below. 

 

Before Hiroki's mech had a chance to realize that it no longer has a surface to float over, Watcher followed up by throwing his trident at her. The impact sent her smashing straight downwards, and through the next floor beneath. He didn't give her a chance to recover after that either, charging after her while raising a barrier of light in front of him which he used to smash her through the next level. He alternated between trident and ramming in an attempt to prevent Hiroki having time to react, sending them lower and lower with each attack.

[Chevaleresse]

The repeated impacts rocked Hiroki, threatening to disrupt her focus as she was smashed against the floor (alongside an errant mote of surprise that there were multiple floors to be smashed through in the first place.) A realization, however, kept her steady. He was attacking with a weapon, crashing into her physically. Though her armor's integrity was compromised, it would still hold up to a beating that way. After being punched through another floor by a toss of the trident, Hiroki waited for the instant Watcher began his dive, then rolled herself, the battered thrusters still proving sufficient to move the Knight about with its reduced mass - and took Watcher's trident with her. She aimed a swing of her cannon at where she anticipated he'd be when he landed, then tried to right herself while staying on top of Watcher should that be an opportunity.

 

(Reflex bonus used)

[Shamitako]

Rather than landing, Watcher continued smashing downwards through the next floor, keeping his distance from Hiroki. For all the damage he had taken, he still seemed to be at full strength. Hiroki had been a fool to fight him, she had no hope of winning. Watcher was the embodiment of destruction itself, it was insane to try to destroy him. But maybe that didn't matter. The options were to give up and die or to fight and die, Hiroki had chosen to fight. No matter how she struggled, she would never survive, but she struggled anyways. It wasn't fair, it wasn't deserved, but it was the reality she was facing right now.

 

"Your commitment is admirable, but your chance has passed." Watcher announced from below, "I gave you the opportunity to have everything you wanted, to win alongside me, even to rise above me if you wanted. But that time is gone, now all you will know is suffering."

 

As he spoke, Watcher extended his hand, the entirety of the light surrounding him coalescing into his palm. The darkness closed in around him, until only a single tiny point of light remained. A single glint, like a twinkling star, was the only warning given before the light exploded outwards in a beam much larger and more powerful than any Watcher had fired before it. If it struck the Hellfire Knight, there was no doubt Hiroki's mech would be completely destroyed. And although she wasn't a total sitting duck, the sheer size of the beam made it virtually impossible to dodge. It wasn't fair, she didn't deserve this, this wasn't a reality Cardinal could accept.

 

Blinking into place between Hiroki and Watcher, Cardinal raised a chunk of her dimensional barrier to block his attack. Instantly absorbing more energy than it could hold, the barrier vanished. Under normal circumstances the barrier would regenerate in a moment, and her attacker would have a short window to strike at her before it stabilized again. Under circumstances where an attack could overwhelm it faster than it could ever hope to recover, she was defenseless. Under these circumstances, she couldn't afford to be defenseless.

 

"I don't have your spirit. I haven't earned the right to stand in this fight. I don't deserve to stand beside you." Cardinal told Hiroki as another barrier rose to protect them, "But you don't deserve to die. I haven't earned the right to stand by and let him destroy you. I still have my own spirit, and I'm not going to let it go unused."

 

A person's dream space was a vast emptiness that stored Favor, but Cardinal's was special. She was a being born of nothingness, her existence was there to maintain that nothingness until a blazing inferno came along to create the future. She was a steward for reality itself that kept destruction at bay. Her dream space was the void itself. Her dimensional barrier had been created based on what she had seen when her Eye had looked within, and alongside the barrier spell she had created a trump card. Cardinal's final gambit was not made with Favor, but with her very soul itself.

 

And so when Watcher's light smashed into Cardinal's barrier, it was absorbed directly into her internal dimension. Cardinal let out a guttural yell, verbally announcing the presence of her spirit as she pushed herself to hold all of the power being pushed into her. More and more and more, yet Watcher showed no sign of stopping. Cardinal's limit was infinite, yet Watcher was pushing her to it. Cardinal didn't have to use her Eye to know what was happening, she could feel herself being overwhelmed from within. She had been a fool to fight Watcher, she had no hope of winning. But the options were giving up and dying or fighting and dying, and Cardinal had chosen to fight. No matter how she struggled, she knew she would never survive, but she struggled anyways. Perhaps this was fair, perhaps it was what she deserved, for certain it was the reality she was facing. But no matter what, she could not stop now. Not for her own sake, but for the sake of those she wished to protect. For the sake of those who had truly given their all to save her, despite her refusal to listen. For them, she would do anything.

 

Cardinal's yell turned to a scream of pain as a beam of light burst out of her shoulder, and then from her leg, then her back. Her body and soul cracked more and more as she unsuccessfully tried to contain Watcher's power. But even if it meant sacrificing herself, she would not give up. She pushed herself harder, tearing through her reserves of Favor to summon more pocket barriers in a desperate attempt to lighten the load on her dream space. Time seemed to slow as barrier after barrier was destroyed, their pittance of help ensuring that her dream space was certain to follow at any moment. She couldn't sense much anymore, everything felt white. She felt a moment of embarrassment at the thought that her clothes had probably been destroyed by now, but then she realized she probably didn't have much skin left to see either. This moment made her happy, happy that even in such a dire time she could still feel such trivial things. Her screams came to a halt as she let out a single laugh, a laugh which would have turned to a stream of mirth had it not been cut abruptly short by the final failure of her barrier. As everything went white, Cardinal's final feelings were of joy.

 

Just before it failed, Cardinal's barrier had absorbed the last gasps of Watcher's attack. She collapsed on the ground, her body still covered in glowing cracks that pulsed with a sinister energy. By some miracle she had managed to contain it all, saving Hiroki from certain destruction. But the fight wasn't over just yet, Watcher was still standing, his aura of light already reforming around him. It had taken everything Cardinal had just to stall him, now it would take everything Hiroki had to defeat him.

[Chevaleresse]

So this was what Watcher's rage looked like. She'd done what he said, seemingly trusted and even looked up to him, and he didn't even hesitate to fry her once she stood in his way. He had been the real threat all along, hadn't he? The False God hadn't seemed to be much more than scared and desperate; it was hard to hold even the attempt on her life just a few moments ago against her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Hiroki dully noted that Cardinal had in fact been defeated because of her actions. 

 

That victory didn't taste particularly good, though.

Hiroki was going to die here, with nobody to witness her passing save the one responsible. But, at the very least, she would die fighting something the gods themselves didn't dare to oppose, and there was at least someone that would remember her. She stood up, and charged. The remaining thrusters on her mech lifted her just over the edge of the hole Watcher had left behind. Her armor glowed with barely contained energy as what little reserves the mech had left activated, reinforcing her armor so she could close for one last attack. I have to. After everything, I won't do it, I won't give up. Not now. Plasma wreathed the Hellfire Knight as it made one last advance, dropping through the floor and careening towards Watcher; it vented from the myriad gaps and cracks left in her armor, spewed around Hiroki's now-bare left arm. 

 

Much as Cardinal had just done, Hiroki put her entire soul into the attack to the best of her ability, swinging her fist towards Watcher. That belied the true purpose of the attack; as soon as she hit, the mech exploded outwards, creating a final, brilliant star of defiance against Watcher and his machinations.

[Shamitako]

Hiroki's fist connected with a cracking sound that echoed throughout the tower. That was the last sound that Hiroki heard before everything went silent.

 

Her senses were so rapidly destroyed that she didn't even sense their loss. One instant she could see and hear and feel her fist connecting, the next she couldn't. The only explanation she could think of was that this was her death. It seemed she had been condemned to an eternity of nothingness. But just when Hiroki had given up hope, she felt a cool breeze that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. It whispered to her, speaking ideas directly into her mind, rather than wasting words on her functionless ears. It had a question for her:

 

"Are you prepared to accept the responsibility of being a god?"

[Chevaleresse]

Hiroki would have blinked if she had the physical capacity to do so. She'd expected... something. A flash of pain, getting thrown down by Watcher before he finished her off, maybe even a brief feeling of success after her attack actually connected. This, though? Death was one thing, but eternal nothing. . . Perhaps this was what Cardinal had been doomed to, why she was trying so hard to do whatever it was she needed to claw her way back into reality. Death, then, would have been a positive outcome. 

 

The slowly welling feeling of panic drained away as she heard the voice in her head. Becoming a god? It was odd. Her ostensible goal in joining the tournament was this, but she'd never meant it with her heart. The tournament simply meant a way to fight, to assert her existence, to force someone to acknowledge her. A way to prove to herself that there was a point to her life, something she did other than existing as a vaguely pretty face. She didn't know what she would do. Hiroki hadn't thought about it; if she was honest, she had been avoiding it. She didn't think she would do a very good job, all things considered, given that her main model for such a thing was Blink, and what everyone thought of her. But, her fight wasn't selfish any more. She'd taken on responsibility for the fate of Tempest as a whole already; it would be a crime to desert that now.

 

Yes. I have to be.

[Shamitako]

Tendrils of golden light burst into existence in front of Hiroki, winding and twisting around her as they faded in and out, illuminating her against the empty void. The breeze picked up and the source of the light began to move towards her, its warmth dancing across her bare skin.

 

"You have surpassed your humanity and become a star that blazes a path of hope for others. The right is yours, reach out and take it." the breeze instructed.

 

After reaching out to grab the light, Hiroki's instincts would fill in the rest. She would draw it close and push it into her chest, the warmth now spreading from within as her senses faded back into nothing.

 

Reality burst back into existence with Hiroki's fist against Watcher's cheek, and the energy within burst forth around her. Watcher was sent slamming to the floor, his clothing alight and his skin scorched. Following just behind him was a wave of energy which purged the blackness around them, revealing the true nature of the plane. They fought within an endless stone tower which went on infinitely both up and down, with no sign of ground anywhere in sight. The walls Watcher had torn down no longer led to empty void, but simply to the air outside.

 

Hiroki didn't have time to marvel at her new domain, because Watcher wasn't finished just yet. Coughing and spitting out the blood in his mouth, he rose to his feet. "You've taken the first step, but if that's everything you have, the most you'll ever do is defeat me." As he had done before, Watcher took hold of Hiroki's energy and tore it away from her, threatening to steal it from her forever.

[Chevaleresse]

Hiroki dropped to the ground, disoriented and starting to tire, mentally and physically. She kept forcing herself to only focus on Watcher, what she needed to deal with right now, not processing the mindblowing whirlwind of events happening around her. She was a god now, or at least that's what it seemed like, and she didn't know what exactly that meant for her other than that she was continuing her fight. She dropped to the ground and braced instinctively as it rushed up to meet her, feeling both the heat of battle and the icy claw of fear clutched about the sudden yawning emptiness that had appeared within her as Watcher threatened to take her power yet again. Once again, she applied what she had learned in the arena: always be prepared to adapt to your opponent, but don't stop using a tactic that's still working. 

 

Watcher was a fully grown adult and Hiroki was a slight teenager who looked even younger than she was, but that didn't stop her rushing towards Watcher again as she hit the ground, stumbling slightly but coming back up into a swing aimed at the man's gut. All the while, she reached out and searched within, looking for newfound power and trying to seize back the old. Watcher may have been able to manipulate her energy, but it was her energy. She forced herself to try to grasp her power through the void Watcher had created within, simultaneously as she fumbled about looking for any newfound wells of strength; it would have been totally beyond Hiroki's ability to focus at all if her mech wasn't already such an intrinsic part of her, with trying to call it being an act that was nearly instinctual. 

 

 

[Shamitako]

Watcher drew Hiroki's power to him, compressing it as it began to orbit around him, forming into a disk that spiraled inwards to be absorbed. At this point Hiroki's charge was more of a shamble, giving him plenty of time to do as he pleased. And try as she might, she couldn't summon up power that no longer existed. So as her fist connected weakly with Watcher's stomach, it was almost certain that she would fail. Almost.

 

Just before her fist connected with Watcher, it passed through the remnants of her power circling around him and they rushed back to her, filling her spirit once more. It wasn't much, but it was just enough to form the arm of her mech. And that arm was just enough to cause Watcher to stagger back a few steps. It might not have sent him flying, or crushed him completely, but it was all Hiroki was going to get, and it would have to be enough. Her strength depleted, Hiroki crumpled to the ground. She might have expected Watcher to finish her off now that she no longer had the capacity to fight back, but he didn't. Watcher had no strength left either, Hiroki's assaults had forced him to purge more and more of his body's functions as he fled from the pain. It didn't matter that he could overwhelm her easily in Favor, because she had trumped him in determination from the start. Neither of them could fight any longer, it was just as Arcturus had said: a stalemate.

 

"Cameron Argyle!" Cardinal's voice rang out from above. Unable to stand, she had dragged herself just far enough to get one of her arms over the edge. Now just a couple meters above, she extended that arm towards Watcher. "Magus title: Watcher. On my authority as the Fourth Prince, I find you guilty of misconduct in the first degree!" Inky black energy began to form behind Cardinal, its appearance not unlike the blackness that had covered the Plane a short while before. It shaped itself into a circle that tapered into itself like it had been drawn with a brush. "You have become a threat not only to yourself, not only to others, but to the very world itself!" Some of the black energy began to gather in Cardinal's palm and her eyes transformed to plain white orbs with the same symbol as behind her painted on their surface. "The world has judged you! Your sentence is death!" The energy in her palm exploded outwards, its appearance not unlike the attack Watcher had used to strike down Cardinal. Accompanied by a sound like rushing water, the beam engulfed Watcher, completely hiding him from view behind its deadly curtain.

 

When the energy faded, Watcher was still there. Half of his torso and a decent chunk of his face had been blown off, leaving a wispy white glow where flesh should have been, but he was not dead. A strange sound began to creep into Hiroki and Cardinal's perceptions. A soft, sad chuckle slowly echoed through the empty tower.

 

"Not bad." Watcher said with a soft smile, "I don't think I've ever been defeated so handily, this universe really is something. I leave you with this warning: Your fight is not over. There is another, one much more powerful. Be ready, or you will lose." More of Watcher began to fade away, turning into light energy and floating off into nothingness. His remaining eye filled with tears as he added a final request to his warning, "Please protect this world, I don't think I could bear to see it end. And... And tell Sarah I love her." With those final words, Watcher's conversion hastened and he rapidly faded from existence, leaving Hiroki and Cardinal alone.

[Chevaleresse]

Hiroki gazed up at Watcher, or what remained of him, as he faded. She was sure she would have had questions for him, and would ponder what they might have been later, but for now, she simply flopped onto her back, gazing up at the roof. The roof of. . . her plane. Was this her plane, now? Her eyes slowly slid to Cardinal. The False God of Nil, who had seemingly sacrificed herself to give Hiroki a fighting chance after the girl had been sent to crush her by both the gods and the man she'd just struck down in her defense, still alive to do the striking. Ultimately, the one Hiroki owed all this to, in a strange and indirect fashion.

 

Hiroki's body ached and she still had so much to do. Cardinal, the rest of the gods, Watcher's cryptic warning, and the place she currently laid, all of it needed to be dealt with. But for now. . . She'd accomplished what nobody else could. Finally, she had silenced that voice within. She almost chuckled; this was beyond even her impressive ability to doubt herself. No matter what else came after, she'd done it. Others had helped, pointed her in the right direction, but she'd reached this point through her own devices, her own tactics, instincts, and sheer will to continue fighting. 

 

For the first time in a very long time, Hiroki took a calm breath.