Waterstrider

Basements, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

Cinto charged forwards into her death, fully understanding what she was giving her life for. She hated Cyrus, she really did. He was no good man. He was violent and murderous, and wished to grow his own power at the expense of all around him. He was a perfect unorthodox practitioner. Still, he would occasionally perform deeds that she could not help but see as positive. He had given great opportunity to the disenfranchised youth of Canvas Town, and now he had risked all of their lives to save the martial artists imprisoned here. Though Cinto knew for a fact that he would also willingly sacrifice them all for his own sake, she could not help but continue to act according to her own morals.

Rachel knew Cinto’s personality, and Cinto was well aware that the cruel woman knew how to read people and use them. She had originally been roped into this mess when Rachel had offered her the solution to all of her problems, if only she would sell her body and soul to their newly built sect. Where Cyrus was a demon, Rachel was assuredly a devil.

Still, it was not as if this meant that Cinto had any choice. She was entrenched in the organization now, and she had bonded with many of her new students. What’s more, she knew that she would not be able to simply avoid the battle. Someone needed to fend off the security force, at least for long enough for the elevators to run. And as a core formation practitioner who was largely uninjured, Cinto was one of the best choices.

The room was filled with the darkness of the grave, and Cinto had to strain her eyes to keep track of what was going on. As the battle fully commenced, she suspected more light would appear, but for the moment, the shadows dominated.

Before her, Orion cracked one of his whips downwards at one of the security guards, and it seared its way into his flesh with a loud hiss. Interestingly, Cinto realized that he did not appear to have any sort of movement technique, merely relying upon creating explosions to move himself around the battlefield at high speeds. Summoned stone kept the imminent force of the blast from injuring him, and he simply flung himself around the battlefield like a pinball, whips flashing as they cracked into multiple different Staiven.

Meanwhile, the soft-featured spirit refiner, whose identity Cinto suspected to be the Jihan that some of the captives had spoken of, simply charged for the center of the lines, each stride taking him far further than one would normally expect. He was holding Ran’s sword, and preparing to tear into the lines of the Staiven. Cinto was moving behind him, but was simply unable to move as rapidly. While her genesis techniques allowed her great strength, it came at the cost of increasing her weight, which slowed her down somewhat. She had heard that there were genesis techniques which could use pure kinetic energy to avoid this issue, but the Hadal Clan had not allowed them to be taught to the masses.

From birth to death, Cinto had never been a blessed one.

One of the Staiven, his red eyes seeming to herald the freedom of that which pulsed in Cinto’s veins, rapidly finished setting up what appeared to be some sort of heavy automatic firearm. Before Cinto and Jihan could reach the line of Staiven, they were met with a stream of white-hot metal slugs. Jihan leapt into the air, avoiding the line of fire, and so the guard focused it fully at Cinto. He was then sliced in half by the whirling glow of Orion’s whip.

Cinto dove to the ground to avoid the bullets, but wasn’t quite fast enough. One of them tore right through her upper arm. Due to the immense heat of the molten projectile, even her reinforcement technique was unable to stop its motion. She screamed, but still scrambled back up to her feet. It wasn’t a mortal wound, and the left arm wasn’t even her sword arm. It could be healed later, most likely.

Another guard raised his own firearm, and despite Cinto’s best attempts to dodge, the projectile still left a deep graze in her chest, heavily damaging one of her ribs. Every crack tore away just a little more of herself. Even if she were to survive, just how much of her would be left? Cinto could not help but wonder about the matter. It was already as if she had been split in two, one part focused on the battle before her, and the other part anything but. She was scared. Cinto felt she could admit that to herself, now.

There were around twenty-five guards left. With a glance, she could tell that Jihan and Orion, too, were not uninjured. The three of them were being mashed in a vice, clamped between the teeth of an enormous fiend. The element of surprise was gone, before Cinto really even had the opportunity to take advantage of it. The preparations of the Staiven were completed, their weapons ready to fire. She could see the vibrant colors of the Staiven eyes among those who were still lacking helmets, shining like spirit signals. It was as if they were saying from here on out, it would be a fair fight. They asked if she had really thought herself worthy to stand against the Pantheonic Government. They told her again that she would die here.

Oh, well. She thought. She was already dead, wasn’t she? What did any of it matter, anymore?

All of her momentum suddenly ceased, stored into her meridians, deep within the genesis miasma. Even in the earlier fight she had not expended all of her stores. In fact, she had never done so in her life. It was dangerous to fight without reserve, as a genesis practitioner’s reserves were what kept their reinforcement techniques active. Vast amounts of kinetic energy exploded from her arms. For just an instant, Cinto was comparable to a spirit refiner. The energy exploded from her arms. With sword in one hand and fist in the other, Cinto bashed her way through the frontmost guards.

The nearest guard screamed as Cinto’s hand went right through her chest. Cinto could feel her body heating up from the energies accumulated inside, and ignored the feeling. Bones snapped in her arms, and she felt a tearing sensation, but she continued to fight with abandon. A bullet cracked its way through her clavicle, but still she fought.

She intended to do so until her very dantians shattered.

Basements, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

Jihan knew with perfect clarity the location of every individual nearby, even without having to open his eyes. Both the Staiven and his companions were within range of his senses, the eyes of his very soul.

While his weapon was in poor condition, it had once been a fine sword, and it would surely serve effectively to slaughter mere Staiven. The situation was perilous, he knew, but surely the Goddess would deliver him. The room they were in was one of deep darkness, lit up only by flashes of white light from the Staiven’s firearms, the glow from Orion’s flames, and the backlight from the hallway they had emerged from.

Jihan whispered a silent aria as he tore down with his sword, cleaving through a heavy Staiven machine gun. He believed it would be important to prioritize such large weapons, as they could be used to turn the tides against himself and the other martial artists. This was what aliens did, after all. They filled in the hole of their weakness with technology. It was pitiful, but the weak had no use for honor, a matter which Jihan understood. Honor did not protect one’s life, nor that of one’s family.

As he landed on the ground, he made a quick roll, springing back up to his feet as a muscle in his left leg popped, and a bullet tore across his cheek. The wound burned, but Jihan could barely feel the sensation. Given the amount of control Jihan held over his own body, he felt nothing that he did not wish to.

The Staiven talked, yammering and screaming under the assault of the martial artists. Orion was speaking as well, swears and insults. It was unbecoming of a martial artist, Jihan felt, but he did not particularly care, as he understood the reason for Orion’s anger. Just one glance at the man told Jihan why Orion was so angered. Even the man’s very soul had been warped slightly by the surgeries he had undergone. It was as if fragments of different individual’s souls had been embedded inside to see what would happen.

The other core formation practitioner, the woman who used genesis miasma, was a different story. Unlike her counterpart, she was silent, but the look in her eye spoke of deep internal turmoil and dread. It was as if she had been handed down a death sentence. Still, her determination was commendable. Her injuries were severe, particularly to her left arm, which appeared to be practitically hanging together by a thread. Loose cartilage and flaking skin and bone bone it lightly to her, and she continued to use it as a weapon, causing even more damage to herself in a bid to slaughter as many Staiven as possible in as brutal a manner as she could. She was like a dervish.

Suddenly, as Jihan was tearing after another machine like the one that had been used in the previous hallway, something odd shifted about the room. While the visual appearance did not change, the scent, the sound, and the essence of the place did. Through his Eyes of the Osine, Jihan saw that the souls of himself and the other two had seemed to multiply, as if they stood in different places at once. It was a great illusion beyond that which he had even believed to be possible.

It seemed that Rachel had decided to help. She had created illusions that would seem real to all senses but one- the visual sense, that which the martial artists had but the Staiven did not. Jihan smiled, knowing that the dangerous task had suddenly become a lot more feasible. Her gave thanks to the Lady of Shadows, but also to this strange extant practitioner whose powers defied his understanding. He was starting to think that perhaps she was near the threshold to immortality.

Soul/Ashatic Senses: [A rare sense for a mortal race to have, the ability to use a natural conduit to one's soul to use it as a sensory organ is very rare, only showing up in races such as the Seiyal and the Staiven, who were created by Ascendants. It is believed by many that such a sense cannot develop naturally, because its fundamental operation breaks the laws that govern this world. Only warpings can initiate such a process. The sense functions by analyzing the shifting of the individual's shroud as it reacts to the flow of ashata within the brink. Judging by the way that it moves can determine how the natural flows were interfered with by other nearby shrouds, and can be used to determine the rough locations of the other souls. It is said that it is possible for, using a progression system, this sense to be greatly enhanced by altering the structure of one's soul, to acquire very clear and refined use of this scent, able to determine not just the size and location of the souls, but also their structure and orientation. In theory, such an enhanced version of this sense would be the same as the function of the primary senses of spiritual beings such as the Osine.]