towerofanimus | Endgame: This is the Way the World Ends

Entry tags:

Endgame: This is the Way the World Ends - RUANA

Characters: open to those who want to fight Ruana
Setting: the lower administrative levels
Format: action, please!
Summary: It's time to take control of the Tower.
Warnings: physical and psychological horror, violence

When everyone is assembled, Zo opens up a portal--rather, he rips into space violently, as if doing anything less will cause it to snap back shut again. The way the portal quivers and shakes at the edges, it really might. He'll hurry everyone through--and they'll all step into a bedroom. The bed in the center is decorated in pink, with a large canopy and curtains surrounding the bed itself. The curtains are closed. It's silent, but the pressure is so thick in the air it's a living thing all its own. It's completely silent.

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Avoid the lightning, avoid the creepy shadow hands. Nesir was needing everything she ever learned about being aware of all her surroundings whilst fighting. She got closer to Ruana, she had some real daggers that she had taken from Reno's pile, she threw one first, still a distance away. Throw and move, avoid the lightning and the hands. She found herself getting closer to Sephiroth as she did so.

Too busy dodging and keeping wits all around him to really take the time to will Masamune into existence again. After all, he wouldn't get any attack in from this distance so there was little point. With the Glamour down as well, he's without the ability now to fling fire at Ruana - which might interrupt the lightning.

He noticed Nesir starting to dodge her way closer to him but she drew his attention astray at the split second of a wrong moment. Sephiroth dodged again too late and a shadowy hand wrapped wrapped fast around his ankle. Despite trying to kick back at it with all the strength he had the electricity was too close just then; high voltage surged through him and he hissed intently enough for it to be more of a growl as it stole his strength and crashed him back down to a crouch - just catching himself before he might have completely hit the floor. Even though he was only wireframe and film he imagined he could smell the burning it gave to the surface of his skin as the charge ripped through him. It was all he could do but to clench fists and try to ride it. His real power was adaptable, too bad his body wasn't his own.

Gritting his jaw together tightly, Sephiroth reached deeply into his power and dragged his telekinesis to the surface. He attempted to will it out from himself like a single, strong pulse of a forcefield both to deflect the lightning and knock that shadow holding him, into oblivion.

Sephiroth's trick with the forcefield was enough to slightly loosen the hand's grip on his shadow, but it was not enough to completely free him on its own. The shadows trembled with his exertion and the effort it took to hold on.

Ruana's gaze followed Nesir as she moved, and for her attack, Ruana moved in turn, firing a burst of energy from her hands that struck Nesir's knife right out of the air with pinpoint accuracy. She quickly followed up with a barrage of attacks in Nesir's direction, firing concentrated psionic energy that weighed on the air like a storm.

"Tch-"

The trembling shadow that kept a lock around his ankle was promising but not good enough. It wasn't all that he had but it would take more concentration than he was able to give currently to force a charge like that off again, and as if in response the next crackling of electricity surged towards him.

"-urgh." Forced to that knee and a fist supporting him from crashing to the floor Sephiroth tried again to kick out against the shadow holding him. But the intense burning that the lightning left behind it was becoming more of a distraction to his focus than he liked. He groped around for the additional sword that was attached to his belt, unsheathing the ShinRa marked sword and attempting to gather enough of a focus aim to deflect the next electricity that came for him.

He'd survived a lot worse, in this Tower and it would be unacceptable to let Ruana defeat him like this now.

Nesir cursed as her dagger was struck from her but she didn't have time to draw another before another wave of energy hit her, she flew backwards pain flooding through her. Her ears rang and it was a moment before she could even work out how to open her eyes or begin to hear again.

Everything hurt and she forced her eyes to focus and pick out Sephiroth, she tried to work out what was injured. Her arm, both her arms, her leg. She tried to stand, reaching round to find more daggers, refusing to even contemplate giving up and falling back down.

The lightning that was deflected by Sephiroth struck the shadow holding onto him and caused it to dissipate. Hissing, Ruana ceased in her energy assault to summon eight psionic limbs from her back, skittering quickly along the floor to retreat up onto the wall and start firing bursts of flame at Sephiroth and Nesir, following their movements almost impossibly well.

There really was no time to feel the smallest hint of victory in being released by that hand-shadow no matter how much the first reaction might have been for him to collapse for just a split-second and at least attempt to force his own will to repair damage. He's not even sure how far his real power in that regard actually helps to repair real wire-frame and film.

Ruana's hiss though might have been rooted somewhere deep inside his being and Sephiroth pushes sternly up and away from position he'd been held in and fried a bit. The voices from the lightning still screamed some in his head but now was the time for focus. As much as Nesir's part in this showdown is as important as his, he couldn't allow her to become his liability either -

It was a near-miss, the first burst of fire in his direction. The second and third were even closer, singing film that was supposed-to-be hair back more than a few inches as well. He then registers the limbs that have split away and makes a move for the nearest one- he couldn't see clearly how many there are but-

Masamune, in its fully-real glory was re-summoned as soon as he gets as close as he dares, dragging the great sword -one-handed- across the part of the wall that one of the limbs is stuck to. Hopefully all that electrical discharge hadn't clouded his judgment too much-

She got to her knees and considered it a victory, she built up the emptiness around her, blocking out the pain. She wished it blocked out noise as well, the screams vibrated through her slowing her as much as the pain did.

She brought a knife up to her ear and threw, just as fire came towards her. Fear flooded through her but she rolled, a desperate throw to one side.

And fire hit her anyways, the same fire, a second burst, she didn't know. All she knew was pain, the emptiness fled and she screamed.

Attacking the psionic limb causes Sephiroth to experience a suffocating silence and pressure all around him, as if he were entirely alone in a completely dark universe. It only lasts for a second after breaking contact with the limb, but it's enough to potentially make him an easy target for the white-hot flames Ruana is throwing around.

Nesir's knife almost reaches Ruana in her distraction, but she swipes it out of the air with one of her phantom limbs and throws it right back at Nesir with twice the force.

The immediate pressure and silence was stunning. Like falling within a dream and hitting the floor, only a second but just as shocking.

It was the smell that he registers even before the warmth, and then the pain was last as the room flicks back into his awareness. Like a ringing in ears just popped it all flooded back; he was on fire. All that swathe of violet-threaded microfilm that made up his hair under Glamour has gone up with the latest burst of flame he was too distracted to dodge.

Dropping and rolling on the floor wasn't an option and he can already feel the intense burn peeling up his back. Glancing at the limb to see what damage he did, if anything, he tightens a grip around Masamune's hilt and forces out yet another telekinetic pulse outwards from himself that -with any luck- may snuff the flames out and provide him with a few seconds more protection. If it didn't, then the momentum caused by the manifestation of his black-feathered wing might do it instead.

As he got back on the ball with the defensive he knew that he couldn't just be dodging and occasionally managing to deflect with one or the other sword. Each time he took damage like that, and it was deadly accurate, his power grasped for cells with which to rejuvenate, but they weren't there, never were really there. Failing that attempt his will worked to turn off the reaction to the damage, but it was still damaging his cage, making it harder to focus on delivering everything he had into the fight. Sephiroth started to attempt to quickly dart his way closer to Ruana at intervals, perhaps he might get a sword strike in, or at the very least to try to trick the bursts of fire to catch her instead.

She couldn't really see, everything was pain and fire, heat and burning. She was vaguely aware of screams, she wondered if they were hers.

The dagger hit her chest, for a moment it was just more pain added to the overwhelming amount that was already flooding her body. The force of it threw her backwards.

Blood, she was bleeding. It seemed so inconsequential considering the pain of the flames, she could barely breathe and she wondered if Sephiroth was still alive.

Of course Sephiroth was alive, he was a god and gods didn't die. But he had died, she had killed him... But he would survive here, he had to. He had to, they had to stop Ruana.

She didn't know if it was dark because of Ruana or because her vision was gone. Perhaps both. She contemplated the fact she was dying, she had done it enough here in this tower to be used to the sensation, of pain and suffering.

Fear gripped her, because she didn't want to die, not here, not now. She wanted to go home, back to the temple. Back to Lotte and Ral, back to the worlds being restored. They had fought for that. For choice, for not being controlled anymore.

But it seemed that in the end that choice was to be taken from her as well. All she could hope for was that they would win, those heroes gathered here; Sephiroth and the others. That they could break free.

Sometimes though hope wasn't enough and all there was was pain and the crushing feeling of failure as her consciousness ebbed away.

Ruana seemed satisfied with Nesir's fate. She turned her full attention on Sephiroth, then, darting back away from him as he unfurled his wing and blew out the flames eating at his wireframe body. The whole room pulsed once and then went dark, shrouded by an unnatural blackness that hid Ruana--and everything else, for that matter--from view, but nonetheless left her skittering footsteps audible as she tried to put some distance between her and Sephiroth.

It was possible to momentarily illuminate the room with alternate light sources, but never for more than a second, as all outside light would seem to be swallowed by the darkness Ruana had summoned.

He didn't dare move within the new blackness, all too conscious of the fact that those white hot flames might find him again. But it's not the blink of a second from last time. This darkness was more absolute. He had barely had the time to register Nesir's death, he couldn't allow it to weaken his resolve now.

Sephiroth forcibly stayed his blade and listened, expending his extended senses outwards with a pulse of his soul as he picked up on skittering footsteps. If nothing else, perhaps he could locate her by her own soul in the darkness - and so formulate a plan of continued attack, or at least a direction to go in.

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Endgame: This is the Way the World Ends - RUANA

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/skipping turn since Nesir-mun is away this weekend

I return!

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