There was no doubt in Adena's body, not a single particle of remorse, kindness, understanding that would make her stay her hands. She was consumed by rage once again. Rage and hatred, a red tide that resembled the fiery power flowing about her body as she stared at the captain's retreating back. In an instant her hands flew up, her bow manifested in a roar of rushing reishi and an arrow drew itself as she took aim.
"Goodbye, Tsubakai," she said without emotion and let fly her arrow.
It few straight and true, streaking for the woman's heart. It hungered for blood and retribution...or so she thought it had. For, when the fiery instrument of death and destruction took came so close as to kiss the cloth of her rival's back it stopped and hung there in midair, guttering like a candle about to blaze and die. A Quincy's arrows were shot from their heart, a manifestation of their desire to remove evil from the face of the Earth. Yet, here and now, for the first time in her life, Adena's arrows failed and winked out.
Something, deep within her heart would not permit her to kill this one woman, a woman who should die, yet a woman who was too close to Adena to allow her to do it in cold blood.
Shocked, though pretending nothing had happened, she vanished into hirenkayku and appeared next to Tsubaki, looking utterly perturbed.
"Robots it is then," she said lightly, her eyes daring the woman to challenge her on what had just happened.
I'm sorry this took forever Beaks some shit went down IRL D:
Mmm, for a second there I wondered if she was really going to try. The Captain said nothing to the sudden flaring of pressure behind her, nor was a reaction paid to the scorching heat that for a mere second lingered at her back before fading into memory.
"I want you to remember this moment, Adena." The words drifted from her lips with a tinge of distance, as if they were meant to be spoken to empty air rather than a woman who by all rights had just tried to kill her. "We are monsters, you and I. Not demons of warped flesh or maligned purpose...just...simpler monsters." Tsubaki abruptly stopped, though no move was made to draw either of her weapons. "Monsters like you and I do not exist to worm our way into the nightmares of children, or prey upon the weak."
"No, monsters like you and I are meant to hunt. In the hunt we scour every possible place we can for the one thing that makes us truly, truly happy. Do you know what that is, 'Dee?" She paused, twin leonine irises staring into the glistening spheres of defiance and rage that bore back at her.
Adena's cold, green eyes softened as she stared back into Tsubaki's face and remembered. She remembered what it was that kept her going, what it was that had shaped her into the bitter, torn and hateful woman she was now. The red haired woman had spent every moment of her waking life chasing down the fight. The end of the hunt and the one moment where she was utterly free and could act without restraint. Oh yes, she knew of what Tsubaki spoke. It was her life and it was what she was living now.
"The fight," she said to the woman. "Yes, I know what you're talking about, Tsubaki. I do. In that we are alike. It has shaped us, changed us and made us what we are. I never expected to find someone who knew what I knew, have done as I have done...yet here you are. Unfortunately a shinigami, but such things can't be helped."
She held out her hand, wondering if she had just made the biggest error in her life and if she was only going to make the problem worse; but she could turn back on herself now. She had come too far.
"Truce," she said,steeling herself, her power lingering just out of her grasp in case she needed it. "For now, at least."
Tsubaki's left hand immediately clasped the archer's, opting to leave the arm that was now plated in bone and jagged spines at her side in its stead. "Truce."
As the Templar Queen returned the woman's gesture with a firm but sincere handshake, the phone in her robe pocket began to chirp again. Extracting the small device, the smile that had blossomed on her features grew all the wider. "Well well, looks like our other robot friend has been spotted again 'Dee. And on top of that there's been another one sighted near it." Laughing lightly to herself, the Captain withdrew a duo of cigarettes from her robes, handing one to the firebrand Quincy.
"That's one for each of us, at the very least." Her smile faded somewhat after lighting the small white stick that now jutted from her mouth, the hand that had conjured the ebony flame had made the error of brushing against the second blade that the Templar Queen carried. Looking down at the red-wrapped blade of Kanzaki Tetsuo paid a rather unkind but not entirely undue reminder, a reel of treasured but seemingly distant memories playing before her mind's eye.
"I will never forgive this...Kanzaki Tetsuo...” Words and tears fell to an uninterested floor, leaving the Captain in sorrow and solitude. For the first time in centuries, Tsubaki had been made vulnerable and powerless to stop the situation at hand. As her fingers touched softly against the still-warm wrappings of Tetsuo’s weapon, only emptiness greeted her.
"Never."
She had seen it in the woman's eyes as they softened, be it only for a moment...knowing all too well it existed in hers as well. The fire to continue, the drive to fight and surpass all others could only be kindled by one fuel...loss. Though her time in Adena's presence had been minimal, it was far from difficult to see that the woman had lost people close to her. Perhaps by the actions of the Shinigami...perhaps by simple ennui. Regardless of the catalyst, the end result was the same.
"We have a destination, and a purpose Adena." Letting her hand fall away from Tetsuo's blade, Tsubaki started towards the appointed coordinates that had come in from the field reports. "If you know why I am content to be a monster then you know I'd be ill contented to stand here idle while good men and women die."
The abyssal aura around the Captain's departing frame gathered little by little in intensity and force, the lingering shadow of her full strength growing closer and closer by the second to fruition. It didn't matter how many of the massive beasts the enemy sent after them, as long as the will to fight lingered in her veins and the people she loved still lived...Tsubaki would slay any threat to their futures she could.
A long drag of crisp smoke left her lungs as the Captain began to depart, followed by a grim but no less determined chuckle.
"Although, if we're going to get there in any shape to fight...we're going to need to conserve our strength." Snapping her fingers, the air above the Captain rapidly churned and roared with an otherworldly fury. In the blink of an eye, a massive wyvern came to life from the depths of the ether, crashing to the ground just behind Tsubaki's diminutive frame. With a ferocious cry of rage that shook the battered remains of the shipping district to its very core, Gravios had come to the world of the living.
"Our chariot awaits."
[588/787 Final]
[May as well close this one this week, as we'll be heading to a fight in the coming week regardless.]
