tampered | Log: Complete

Log: Complete

When; October 10th, Evening
Rating; PG-13 for violence
Characters; Nagarov (

obliviomancy)
Summary; Roxas and his magical Keyblade face off against Nagarov and his alien nature. Science and supernatural power collide in the new Stadium.

Log; ( )

Roxas didn't look like the fighter he had expected, although he had seen the boy's network posts. From his ruffled spiky hair to his youthful but intense eyes, he couldn't have been older than eighteen. Sixteen, Nagarov guessed. And he held that impractical weapon in his hands, a large-handled pole with a ridge on its end, all of it shaped somewhat like a giant Earth key. None of it terribly sharp-looking, all of it hard metal.

Points in his favor. Metal was far easier for him to deal with. He stood a fair distance from the cloaked boy, flushing color into his red-gloved hands as the mock fabric rippled, merged in with his arms, and lengthened into thick claws at the ends of his fingers.

The fight with Claudine had started similarly, but he wouldn't underestimate Roxas as he had the fairy woman. He had become so flawed here, so human. He had to remember that competition was natural, even inescapable, and that he would have to fight his way to the top once more.

No matter. He looked forward to seeing what this boy's mind had to offer.

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His expression stayed impassive throughout Nagarov's scrutiny, neither provoked nor unsettled by the evaluation. Roxas didn't recognise his opponent. That made it harder and easier. It meant that Sora was less likely to have met him, too, and so was less likely to be indignant if Roxas happened to hurt him or something. An outraged Sora, on top of everything else that had been happening lately, would definitely be too much. On the other hand, it also meant that he had no idea what he was up against.

But then, had he ever? The point wasn't about missions anymore, wasn't about winning for a purpose. He'd lost that. Fighting was what that he understood - it was his way of hanging onto a world too far from his own.

And that would just have to be good enough.

As Nagarov's claws sharpened into being, Roxas half-crouched, Keyblades jerking up. They were used to fighting Heartless, things shaped from shadow and fear, but that didn't mean they weren't sharp enough to gouge in cases like these. For an instant, he only stood, tensed and waiting. Then Roxas threw himself forward and, closing in, swung hard.

He wasn't fast enough to duck back. His thousand-part mind was already detailing a probable trajectory, torque as a function of distance given estimated weight, force of impact, damage, range of effects on the future battle, and what was that second one doing?

Conclusion: best not to show off, but don't fear. React sensibly. Get out of the way.

Charging past the tip of the key, he hoped to lessen the blow as the pole came round. A martial arts-y trick. Come in close to keep away from the tip of the weapon. As he lunged in past the end of the key, he punched his claws out toward Roxas' face.

Faster than most Heartless, then, but not the Samurai. This he could deal with. Rather than retreat, Roxas dropped into a full crouch, just barely avoiding the claws. If it grazed him, he didn't feel it, and did it really matter? Getting him close was an opportunity that he wasn't going to waste.

Without sparing a moment, he lashed out again at two levels, one angled to strike Nagarov in the legs and the other just to catch him in the neck with the key's teeth. High and low, they traveled towards each other like two scissorblades with his opponent caught between them.

They rushed at him from both angles, trapping him there, and his thoughts drew out the sweeping arcs as they sliced toward him. He dropped down and let one of the keys rush over his head, clipping his hair as he brought his arm to intercept the second key. It came in with surprising force, gouging into his arm and bending it sharply out of line.

Instead of slicing muscle or bone, the teeth dragged to a halt in a viscous red mass that stuck to it, crawling out of the wound and wrapping about the end of the weapon. The hand came with it, merging the end of Nagarov's arm and the Keyblade in a Chinese-finger-trap hold.

Now he had something to work with. Pulling at the key, he tried to drag Roxas off balance.

Thrown off-course, Roxas nearly tumbled into Nagarov - but managed to shove Oblivion into the floor and propel himself into a jump backwards instead. Stumbling away, he narrowed his eyes at the sight of Oathkeeper trapped in the mass. That... definitely wasn't supposed to happen. He swept a brief glance over his opponent, trying to make out the inconsistencies that would give him more clues as to what else to expect.

Nothing.

Well, he'd never been good at observation anyway.

A gloved hand opened, then jerked into a fist. Still embedded in Nagarov, Oathkeeper shimmered for an instant and vanished, reappearing in Roxas's hand in a burst of light. Weapons regained, he settled back into the same old stance, waiting for the other to approach this time.

Edited 2008-10-12 05:13 (UTC)

As Roxas jerked forward, he swung out at the head -- only to miss as the boy planted his free weapon, released the other, and vaulted away. Just as Nagarov pulled at the fallen Keyblade, it glittered and warped away into the boy's hand. The sudden release of force sent him stumbling a few steps back.

...That was unfortunate. Apparently the weapons wouldn't stay with anyone but Roxas. That meant there was no way to avoid his dual keys.

But, now Roxas knew that a direct strike wasn't going to work so well. So, he would put more into his power. Forming both lower arms into single heavy hook-claws, he sacrificed some of the mass at his core to increase their weight and add fibers to his shoulders. Now he looked disproportionate, a lean and wiry body with broad, heavily muscled shoulders. He didn't even bother with the human look now, the extra fibers just laying over the skin in long red strips.

Baring his teeth in a moment's grin, he charged in toward Roxas, the fibers in his shoulder tensing as one of his arms came up and down hard toward the boy's chest.

That would obviously be intercepted. The second arm was morphing again, its claw straightening into a spike that he aimed at Roxas' hip.

As Nagarov's form warped, Roxas narrowed his eyes, unfazed but thoughtful. The shape reminded him of someone. He frowned, trying to shake the thought free from the battle-blurred midst. No, not a person - a thing. A creature. A Dusk. And that brought a new thought to the surface, an idea he couldn't quite shake. If it worked, the fight would be over in a second.

Before he could give it any more thought, Nagarov charged. Instantly, his options thinned down into a single thread. He could try a direct clash again. Even if Nagarov had changed his structure, he was still essentially human, and Roxas could block that. Except recalling a Keyblade each time would waste priceless seconds - seconds that he might need to recover now that he'd exposed part of what he could do.

No. Time to try a different approach.

He held his ground. And just as Nagarov reared to strike, Roxas stepped backwards into a portal.

Some ten feet behind Nagarov, a door opened and he reappeared. This advantage would only buy him a few moments, so Roxas seized them. He raised Oblivion, Oathkeeper still tensely gripped in one hand, and - it was high time Sora came in handy - cast. Blizzaga. A block of ice fired from the Keyblade, heading straight for Nagarov's back.

The boy vanished, and his claw swung over and down and planted into the ground. More teleporting. Did anyone in this City not have this ability other than him?

The spike was still intact, and he was drawing it up and glancing around when he felt a sudden blast of freezing cold against his back. It smashed into him like a brick, gouging into his back and sending him flying forward off his feet. His other arm was still earthed, so he fell onto it and used it to support himself while he whirled around it and worked to regain his footing. The wound from the block gathered beads of water and closed up, sealing as if it had never been there.

He had been toying with Roxas too much. It was time to end this before the boy could pull out any other tricks he wouldn't expect. By now, if he could shoot a gout of flame from his hands, Nagarov wouldn't be surprised. He couldn't stay with standard human-to-human combat anymore.

As he climbed back into balance, his free arm shifted and the spike fell off into a ball, forming a flail of sorts connected by a fluid red cord. He formed some quick digits, grabbed the mass, and flung it out with all the force he could manage.

It soared long into the air and then opened like a cat-o'-nine-tails, many long and flat strands flaring out and splattering red droplets on the ground and toward Roxas. They seemed to have minds of their own as their lengths rippled and twisted, not only shifting in dimension but also curling like snakes, thrashing out at Roxas and threatening to snare him.

So much for fighting someone human. Roxas exhaled sharply, a coarse and vicious hiss of a breath. From that distance, though he couldn't see how the water was absorbed, he could see the wound fading into undamaged flesh. Even Curaga wasn't that effective. So, great. He was fighting someone who could heal, while Roxas himself would run low once he slowed down and started to run low on magic. More Blizzagas were out of the question, then; he had to save those in case he needed to heal himself.

The Keyblades wavered as he watched that human limb distort, flare out into things that resembled tentacles more than fingers. For a second he debated between fighting the strands and the other method. The debate didn't last long. Roxas couldn't get caught. He couldn't afford to get caught; the portals would be useless if those fleshy ropes managed to tangle him, and he'd never learned the trick of warping out of things the way Larxene had.

Time for desperate measures.

Once more, a portal flared open and shut, saving him from the weaving threads. This time, though, there was a significant break between vanishing and reappearing. At last, Roxas burst out again. One Keyblade swung out to guard against the strands - not that it'd be of much help if they decided to try the snag-and-yank trick again - while the other plunged forward towards what was, in theory, still Nagarov's chest. If it made contact with a heart, no matter how much of a monster he was, his opponent should split into Heartless and Dusk. And those were easy to take care of.

Twist and unlock.

Coming in close was exactly what he wanted, and he lashed the whipcords around Roxas' defending Keyblade. As Roxas came forward, the ends merged and crawled up toward his arm, snagging his coat sleeve and consuming the fabric as it reached out in webs along the hem and crawled toward the elbow.

The boy's arm drew back, plunged forward. Something was wrong. Roxas had to know that stabbing wasn't effective by now. Why wasn't he using his magic? The obvious answer was to pelt Nagarov from afar, teleporting back and forth and taking him by surprise. Lucky for him Roxas didn't have a Giant Firestorm spell or something like that.

The tip blazed forward in mental slow motion; he thrust out his claw and hooked it into the Keyblade's teeth, jamming the base against his chest so that the key landed with a hard thump only inches above him. It wasn't a stable hold, but it had kept away the first impact, and it had bought him time to work. The City made him so slow...this wouldn't have taken nearly as long in his world. And he wouldn't have thought the boy a threat at all. But now...

Thwarted, Roxas jabbed and twisted nonetheless, less to find the heart now than for spite. He wasn't used to being this inaccurate, to having every move countered and taken. This was what he was good at, and he was failing.

The risk hadn't been worth it either. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the flesh crawling up his arm for the moment, Roxas tightened his hold on the trapped Keyblade. So much for saving magic for Curaga - but then, he'd never been very good at strategies. Firaga. Fire roared in a harsh stream out of the Keyblade's tip and across the whipcords, a long spout that coiled upwards and towards the main body. Roxas used the fleeting give to drag another portal open, slip into it, and slam it shut on the fleshy strings stretching between Nagarov and his arm. In the darkness, he unzipped the coat and shrugged it off, kicking it in the shadows. Clothes were irrelevant, after all.

When he emerged, he called the other Keyblade back to hand again and caught it. His grip on the first was shaking; clearly Nagarov's catching him hadn't been without effect. After a moment, however, he steadied again, and raised them both for another spell.

Thundaga.

Lightning cracked from the sky (the roof?), raining sharp little bolts across the battle floor - most particularly, Nagarov's space.

Fire!

He shouted as the wave of flame rushed up his arm, burning up to his shoulder and sending him jumping back in pain and wrenching what was left of his morphed limb to the ground. Fire. He still couldn't deal with fire. Flesh had a burning point, no matter what you tried to do about it. As the portal slammed shut on him, he felt part of him separate and vanish, as if it had been vaporized, and the rest of it was dragging in the sand and aching from the burn. It drew back into his shoulder, sloughing off a thick layer of brown powder and ash. Dead cells. Most of it he could cannibalize, but that didn't change the fact that now he was fighting fire.

...That was something he didn't want. He needed mass to grow, and if the boy burned off and portaled away too much, he would end up shrinking. Past a certain point, that would cost him the match and his spoils.

As Roxas emerged from the portal again, he bared his teeth and muttered something between them that came out as a liquid snarl. What was in those keys, that they could spurt flame and ice and --

"Augh!" Dodging aside, he barely missed the bolt that came down and turned a patch of sand into glass. This was getting ridiculous. But now charging into the boy meant charging right into a fire.

He had to do this. He wouldn't be able to rise to full height, but he had a better form and now he had to use it. In retrospect, he regretted leaving his gun behind, if only because if he managed to get one piercing shot into the boy, that would assure him a win.

As the bolts rained down, he melted together into a long red column that thinned and stretched upward. One of the strikes caught its side, and the fluid mass curled down as if pained, a puff of brown powder flying away into the wind where the strike once was. It stung, but not nearly as much as the fire had.

The base bulged out and thrust down two long forelimbs, the rear coiling into a tail and heavy haunches. Rising up from that was a long neck and a reptilian snout with four eyes -- two in front and one on each side -- and a mouth full of long, misaligned teeth.

Though he stood an imposing eight feet at the shoulder, he didn't have the mass to back it up, and he was lightweight and strung together like a set of hollow shells. Why did the arena have to be covered in sand? Why not grass? Leaves? Soil? Anything other than silica?

As his head rose high above the ground, he hunkered down into a battle position and carefully circled the boy, scanning him first with his forward eyes, then one side eye.

He charged Roxas, snapping his head down toward the boy's shoulders, teeth dripping with the red fluid, jaws stretching apart like a snake's. Unwise, given his resources. But one of the few options he had now. He was regrowing, but slowly, and using what energy reserves he had here.

Fire worked the way ice hadn't - Roxas didn't quite understand the brown dust Nagarov shucked, but it was something he hadn't seen before, and it didn't look good for his opponent. It wasn't much, but he'd have to find a way to take advantage of it. Before he could think of how, however, Nagarov distorted again - and this time, he didn't look human at all. For an instant, Roxas lifted his head to take the sight in. This was what he was used to - battling something monstrous, something with bestial eyes and killing instincts poised at the very surface. No pretenses about being civilized, about hiding behind a human shell. From here, he knew where to go. As Nagarov charged him, Roxas readied the Keyblades again. Fire. Again and again - spells in repetition. Fire, smaller than the first that he'd shot at Nagarov, snarled from the tip in bursts, one after another. He followed, whirling, as Nagarov circled him, firing a shot once in a while and struggling not to see the fire fade too soon.

It wasn't enough. He didn't see the flimsiness in Nagarov's current build, only that it was tall and strong and could heal itself and turn wounds to dust. None of what Roxas was doing had much visible effect. And, to top it all off, his spells were already fizzling slightly, dimming even though he'd given them no command to ebb. Short on actual experience as he was, Roxas was running out of magic. This wasn't his element. He wasn't good at these spells the way -- other people were. In spite of all his practice, he was wearing thin, and fast. It wasn't a hard thought, but it distracted him for the instant that it took for Nagarov's teeth to catch him in the shoulder.

Pain exploded down his arm. He might have cried out or not but, for a blinded beat, all he knew was the bleak white madness of agony. Quick - quick - quick, but all he could come up with were more spells, and one slotted into place before he could think twice about it. Lifting his free hand, Roxas stabbed the notch against the side of Nagarov's head and said: "Firaga."

Ragged and snarled and low, and that was all it took before fire spun out in a torrent.

The bursts of flame grazed him here and there as he ducked and weaved, taking a solid hit in the chest and snarling as he bent forward under the sudden lack of support. The red strands knitted themselves back together, but they were so thin that they gaped here and there and revealed a bit of spongy interior. Still he kept his head on its course, and the teeth bit down deep into Roxas' shoulder. He clamped his jaw on and was gathering all his remaining spare mass into crushing force to bite away the arm entirely, but then he felt the key push into the side of his head, sinking in an inch until the teeth caught on his skin.

And all of time slowed to a single calculated pause. Key. Word. Spell. A single flicker of time and a wide open eye that stared into Roxas' face with his narrowed eyes and twisted-up lips and pained brow and--

The fire took his head off in a blast of red and orange and black ash.

The rest of his body stumbled back, neck flailing around and sputtering flame like a live wire cut. Gravity took it to the sand, where it thrashed around and rubbed out the flame after another two feet or so of it turned to powder and ash and fell away. With only the base plus a thin foot of it left, it sealed over and didn't regrow this time.

Sight gone. A fifth or more of his mass gone. Roxas gone as far as he could tell. He tried to summon more to regrow his head, but as soon as he pulled any from his rear legs, his heavy chest pulled him down onto his elbows. His tail lashed about but missed the boy entirely; he couldn't manage this form anymore, and now he didn't know where he was relative to anyone. The sand kept him from sensing Roxas' footsteps, and there was no wind. Nothing.

And so he shrank down, the neck drawing back into the body, tail coiling up as he managed to rise to his feet. Claws receded into hands that hung loosely at his sides.

He didn't put the appropriate pained look on his face, but it wasn't difficult to see that something was wrong -- he was shorter, thinner, and much warier. His skin was rippling, falling down as if he were about to melt into a weary puddle and then seeming to catch itself and rise back up before collapsing again.

Without venom or delight, he watched as Nagarov fell. He could feel his arm throbbing now where the teeth had sunk in and-- Had his fangs been dripping red? Was that poison? His thoughts were spiraling out, coiling low and down into exhaustion. How stupid it had been to let himself get caught in that. Still - it was almost done. Almost. Just another spell-- but the keyblade was trembling in his grip, and when he looked, Roxas found that his arm was trembling, too. Clearly it had all worn on him more than he'd thought that it would.

He took a shaken step forward. Blood spattered on the sand, and he remembered. Curaga. He had to save enough energy for Curaga.

Hunching his shoulders - which jabbed another violent spark from his wounded arm - Roxas stalked clumsily over to Nagarov. He had to make sure. Nothing was ever done until the heart was out. Blinking, Roxas frowned vaguely down at the body. It looked - different again somehow, the proportions all wrong. But this wasn't the time to study.

Without another moment's hesitation, Roxas stabbed a Keyblade into the center of the torso and twisted. This time, he saw the familiar shadows twisting up, condensing into a Heartless - and a paler outline, a Dusk. A simple slash took care of the Shadow, and Roxas left the Dusk to weave in the sands. He was sinking to his knees now, ignoring the stadium's roars. As his vision wavered, he thought that he still saw Nagarov's body in the sand - but that couldn't be right. A human's heart, when opened, split into Heartless and Nobody. Nothing was left over. ...Was it?

What was he?

It didn't matter now. Done at last, Roxas collapsed in the sand.

The arm's burning was his only consolation -- he could sense the flesh dissolving away and feeding the patch growing into the target. As distant as it was, he finally had a foothold. This had been much harder than it should have been, much more disappointing. But now the boy was his, and it was ov--

A sudden pressure as the key's end plunged into him, burying itself in the center of his body. He jerked, twisting his head to look up at Roxas. No pleasure, no pain, just determination. As the bar rattled with tension, he tried to reach up and grab it. The same strategy as before. This had significance.

But then it jerked to the side, a single quarter-turn that dragged through him and pulled the fibers out that held up the shoulder. As his arm fell limp and tried to pull itself back up, he felt his mind shift and blink.

One of the voices, one far in the background, fell silent and faded away, much to the group consternation of the rest. Part of his body pulled away into a black pool and then a black shadow-shape with round yellow eyes. From the other side, a silvery shape formed that wobbled in the sand and wavered back and forth as it watched Roxas. He could see through both their eyes, but they were so different than himself -- like a one-voice extension of his own thoughts, that mind had been stripped away and put into these. They weren't too smart, and were only distantly connected to him. One of them was a killer, the other devoid of emotion.

What were they? What had Roxas done to him? And if he didn't do something, would he remove all the others like that?

Roxas cut down the shadow, then backed away and collapsed.

He wished to whatever forces the universe and City had that he could have continued his attack, but the red pool slid off the boy's shoulder and spilled to the ground, and he lay on the sand as the silver creature sprawled out beside him. Too weary and pained to get up. All the fire, and that key trick...

The stadium's roars were a distant whisper compared to the overjoyed screaming in his mind. He wished, once in a while, that they would all shut up.

(ooc: WHOO, end of log! I'll change the header to Complete, and yay!)

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Log: Complete

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