Tacitus Nusradai vs. Trei

A single glance was afforded to Trei as the enigmatic greying man seemed to shift in and out of a coporeal state as he prepared for the impending fight. He personally did not know him, just the same as the Overseer did not know most of those he did not bring to Genesis. This, however, did not stop this one Tacitus Nusradai from having to fight and maybe even kill the man before him. A rush of wind would pass from the rear as Tacitus resumed a solid state, crouching low with his back up straight and arms resting on his knees while his two large pistols hung from the holsters on his thighs. Grey hair rustled as the wind began to settle and terrain data began to stream in on the inner side of his jade visor. He seemed to be speaking to himself, "Whosoever shed last blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For immunity of god make he the man. Destroy all that which is evil. So that which is good may flourish. And I shall count thee amoung my favoured sheep. And you shall have the protection of all the angels in heaven."

His eyes flitted over the information displayed, a map forming of the general area as it provided a diagram of things of note in the area. The Wall of Force that hemmed them in was a nice touch and earned itself a smirk from the man. He couldn't yet get a readout on his opponent, and had done his best to keep away from reviews and reports of his previous fights. He could potentially run some tests now, but there was never much fun in that. His smirk became a true smile, "You've made it to the finals of our bracket, kid. I could give some prophetic declaration that you wouldn't be getting any further, but that would be cheating, and rather corny, now wouldn't it?"

Slowly the ecclesiastical man would rise from his crouching position, his eyes never leaving the form of his opponent. A sweep of his hands across his thighs would leave two oversized handguns held firmly by the slider. A glance to each and a swift click would disengage the safety on each before his hands shifted, moving to hold the firearms as they were intended to be held. Each seemed to give a few contended clicks as they literally twitched in anticipation of what was to come.

Could Trei ever imagine it?

Could Trei even see it?

Could Trei stop it?

But of course! A slight blurring within the fog and a stream of bullets would take to the air. For but a brief moment they would hang in midair in a pattern that resembled an X with the cross centered directly on Trei's torso. After hanging for that brief moment the whole would be released in a wave upon Trei with the basic intent of perforating his shell.

Trei would find the man staring straight at him as he broke through the defensive shield, one gun at the ready. The sound of a single gunshot would be defeaning as it tore through the air, quickly followed by a pulse of orange light moving in concentric rings away from the barrel. The bullet was moving at much greater velocities that it otherwise should have been, but would hardly do anywhere near as much physical harm as it otherwise would. Any shield produced this time around would find the bullet as almost nonexistant, passing through energy fields under the effect of a temporal phase variant that disallowed full contact with the timeline. It wasn't as deadly, aye, but it was moving incredibly fast and was a bitch to stop.

Why hadn't he fired with both guns...?

With the left-hand gun still extended the ashen haired man only seems to shift as much as is necessary. The fist will graze him, aye, but the right hand gun will shift into position, aiming at the poor boy's chest. The slider on the weapon almost seems to move in slow motion as each bullet issues forth, three doses of divine interdiction. Like the one fired but moments before these slip through energy fields with easy, though they have a lesser effect on organics. Each shell ejected seems to hang in the air, falling with a serene grace that contradicts the deadly payload they had only just unleashed.

Pain sears through Tac's side at the strike, his eyes going wide as he watched the three bullets spiral out to the far side of the arena. He can see them spend their force uselessly against the wall in three brief flashes as the pain slowly ebbs away. Thank you. My pleasure. The only indication of this telepathic communication would be a series of clicks from the firearm in his right hand as Tac began to move. Fragments of orange light would begin to dance in the air as Tac flung himself away from Trei, back and to the side opposite the previous strike. A phantom would be left in his wake as he moved, a focus set against the light to trap his image in that location while he slipped away. It wasn't an after-image in the traditional sense, as he was not moving nearly that fast, but accomplished the same goal. Even after tossing himself back the aged man wouldn't stop, heading back into the fog at his best speed in a sideways motion, keeping the left hand firearm aimed towards Trei.

He'd get away, aye, albeit with a nice hole in his side that he didn't even seem to feel, at least not anymore. Trei would find that trying to make contact with his blood inside Tacitus would be sluggish at best, as if it was just moving... slower. Furthermore, the blood didn't seem to spread, the whole of his circulatory system slowed down to the point where his heart beat about once every second. Trying to force beyond this flow would be incredibly difficult, like trying to push through molases, or something similar.

Another gunshot would slice through the air, but the bullet would not streak to connect with the thing that was Trei. Tacitus couldn't slow down the arena and he couldn't stand on air, the concentration of water vapor was simply too high, but that didn't keep him from knocking himself around a bit. A shower of grass and dirt would mark his location for a moment before he burst across the arena, away from Trei. The buildup of energy in the air began to become quite clear, divine will flooding the man's body and exuding from every pore. All the while his voice would dance through the air, distorted by the presense of the water vapor, "Try harder. This is pitiful."

Its damned foolish to allow a cleric any time at all, and giving him range only compounds the folly. A pulse of orange light extends from his body, rolling across the arena with a minimal shockwave in its wake. Those that were watching close enough would find specs of blood dispersed through the pulse and take note of the pristine flesh under tattered clothes.

The bastard was healing, no, pushing back time to undo the wound. He'd expelled the foreign blood cells and his flesh had put itself back together, albeit in a rather strange way, but it was done all the same. The man kept running, right hand tucked close to him as he fired rather erratic looking shots around the arena, even one just below his feet. Why waste the ammo?

The air screams as Tac grinds to a halt, his momentum reversing and moving him towards Trei with preternatural speed. For anyone else the stress of jerking their body as he did would certainly dislocate a few joints at the very least, but he seems not to notice. He would come hard and fast, keeping low to sweep the man's legs out from under him in what almost seems to be a sliding tackle, a faint shimmer of green running across his skin. His left handed weapon is kept close to fire off a few rounds into his chest with the force of a truck if he happens to fall on Tac. All around the world starts getting brighter, the fog burning away in the light of divine wrath. Lines of magical energy begin to criss-cross over the grasses of the arena, connecting each bullet to its mate. Seems he wasn't wasting ammo after all, simply setting up a gridwork to focus even greater divine will.

The arc of white energy splashes across Tacitus, screaming past him as shards of green glass break away from his body. They would quickly dissolve in the air behind him, a scar forming along the side of his right hand weapon. He keeps it held tight against his chest as if consoling an injured child or significant other. The left hand weapon would lash out, a guard growing over Tac's hand as the weapon extended slightly in length. The blade would slide against the metal, Tac's arm shifting to force the weapon down into the ground. The world began to paint itself in a blinding white, waves of orange washing out from each of the combatants. There was no anger or sadness in the man's face at his right hand weapon having been damaged, only an excited smile.

Almost as if Tacitus had not expected his own motion to come his right hand lashes out, twisting to catch Trei's blade in a similar manner as the left hand weapon had. Instead of lengthening to form into what seems to be a short gunblade like Orcus, Cari seems to be growing a shell, much like a buckler. With arms nearly crossed Orcus lowers and is set towards Trei, not aiming at any part in particular. That simple fact should be enough to give warning to what comes next, a burst of howling energy leaping forth with enough force to throw a grown man a good twenty feet. The blinding white persisted, the all-encompassing divine flame surging forth from the gridlines. The air grew thick as soothing flame began to grow warm, the sensation of an incredible source or concentration of mana filling the air in a sensation akin to high humidity.

Where the ecclesiastical man would generally encase himself in a stalwart defensive armor he seemed to instead have grown a gunblade and a shield. For anyone that watched Tacitus enough it would seem incredibly odd, keeping his defenses less than absolute. The air was slowly becoming dry and hot, the blinding white searing away the fog. A single orange pulse washed out from the ground as Tac took but a single step back, bringing Orcus up to level with Trei. The blinding white seemed irrelevant to his eyes as he aimed right between the man's eyes, "Come and kill me you unholy sonuvabitch." He did not, however, fire his weapon at Trei, his face utterly focused and straining against the trigger as if forcing his will into the next bullet.

The searing light abruptly fell away, but the incredible heat remained behind as an indication of the heavy mana hanging in the air. From light to arkness back into light a single beam exists the weapon as the blade shatters the barrier around Tac's midsection. The brilliant orange surge of light doesn't even have to touch Trei, the very idea is enough to deliver the attack. The light is just that: light, and at the trailing end of the nigh instantaneous burst is a single bullet moving about half normal speed. Eddies of orange light are left in its wake, temporal distortions that rip organics to shreds in the instability, where even something so small as a single cell can be in two different time streams. In the end anything caught within would be shredded into parts aging and reversing at variable speeds in no organized pattern.

This bullet only created these eddies as a side-effect of its true purpose. The pulses of orange light within the blinding white had acted as a tracer, and now that the white had faded a faint orange light would be seen around each combatant. This single bullet was drawn to Trei's aura, his Temporal Signature. In the same vein as a heat-seeking missile the bullet would find him whenever and wherever he went. Unlike such a missile, it was phased to disable nonphysical barriers and it wouldn't just hit him and stop. No, this bullet was one crazy mother fucker. It would begin to bounce around inside the area of his temporal signature, bouncing around like a pinball at varying speeds depending on where it hit and at what angle, not including movement by Trei, but never less than half speed. In short order Trei would be turned to mush being torn to shreds by eddies in time.

The only downside was that Tac would likely get the fuck beaten out of him by this all-encompassing death blast. He hated those kind, they always encompassed everything and made with so much death.

Intertwined the two are as one, held together by metal spars joined to their very souls. The lower half of Tac slams against the far wall as he hangs impaled on the man's blade. The pain sears not through his own brain, but pulses through the left weapon and dances out his horns in a spray of flicking black lightning with sparks of orange. The second cleaving blow is knocked aside by the shield that encompasses his right arm. His words bubble up with chunks of pink flesh and a trickle of blood, "Gotta try harder than that. Rest in peace and may the hereafter be kind to your stained soul, bloody bastard." As the slump to the ground Tac's right eye twitche, "I liked my legs...and all my fun parts too." In normal terms he was mortally wounded, aye, missing a good chunk of his everything, but he's got one last trick. His entire body ceases motion, all the blood remaining static as he falls into a temporal stasis.

Soon the Genesis Sphere would take him away to repair the major damage, but he'd not be fully healed for some time. Aye, they could put him back together and ensure he won't fall apart at the drop of a hat, but combat readiness would take time. And if anyone says the words 'We can rebuild him,' Tacitus will know, and he'll shank them in their sleep.

((Nah. Tac isn't dead and is still around, just moving so slow that he seems completely immobile. He's alive and conscious while Trei won't be. XP))

High above the sun glints off of a new moon slowly falling from its natural orbit into the realm of this world. A pristine sphere composed entirely of metal, the harbinger of a new dawn and a new world for all. A single figure seemed to drop from the sphere, a figure hardly humanoid with five arms and what could be called one and a half legs. The body was a pale green with the head composed of but a single huge floating eyeball set above an insectoid torso. This was Xa`nite, the Aquisitions Officer for Genesis, come to examine the Temporal Overseer once the match was officially called and to haul him back to the Genesis Sphere. He looked to be alive, barely, and conscious within the confines of his defensive mechanism, while his opponent looked to be having some fun with one of the Overseer's bullets.