TWC Championships: Euphaire Lancaster Vs Faustus Clemens!

"I do. Been keeping it safe right here."


Faustus patted his pocket twice before reaching in and pulling out a loose coil of off-silver hair that breezed with life as a wayward gust picked up. The bright street signs coming down from Times Square reflected off of the slick-black Batman, Mobile-esque Lexus IS 350, and more so, the golden, shimmering eyes of the man who stood atop of it.


"We do meet again. I can't say I'm suprised. I knew you'd end up being my opponent. Fate has a funny way of reuniting me with people of whom I have unifnished business."


And with that, Faustus aimed to finish that business. A light forward leap brought him from the top of the car, onto the street. No sooner than his foot touched earth, did the asphalt rise up like snakes from the street, and lift his car with them at alarming, but not particularly spectacular speed. The car vaulted forward with a sharp creeeeeak aiming to crush the Dark Templar. Though there was something special about the slick-black lexus. Stabbed within its gas tank was a scalpal, singular, and glossed with a blue film. Once it was in range, a single electric spark would ignite the tank, and swallow Euphaire in a maw of steel and flames.


As the attack transpired, more tendrils of Asphalt came forward, whirling and snapping viciously around Faustus.

While Euphaire was intent on dancing like some wild buffoon, for some reason fixated on trying to get them placed last, Faustus offered back the opposite; Precise, careful, practiced steps. It was the difference between a child swinging around a sword randomly, and then watching a master cleave through solid concrete. The judges would be wow'd. That's for certain.


Though he had to offer it to her, despite her brutish ways, she had to put a great deal of thought into whatever she had done to not detonate the car. Maybe there was a brain in that tin can after all.


Just as Faustus saw that frothing, hungry shadow material build up around the woman's arm, it didn't take a genius, which Faustus was, to figure out what was happening. All about him he called the command of even more asphalt, the Gaia Markings wreathed upon his thumbs glowing sonorously. Like a great egg, the asphalt tendrils wrapped around Faustus, incubating him from the blasts of turbulent, raging crimson tongues that surrounded him, though his shell could not last forever. It cracked, allowing a bright sliver of heat and light in, the cracks growing more cumulous until the egg all but shattered into obsololetion just as the explosion had finished its roar, the force of which propelled Faustus back, at an upward angle, also bringing him out of the range of the whipping tendrils of short lived darkness.


He levied himself sideways against the window panes of some office building, standing there as though the laws of gravity had inversed horizontally, no doubt by some means of infernal sorcery. Two stories up, looking diagonally to the Dark Templar. Euphaire would definitely take stock of the glowing faceplate of his watch. As his feet came to contact with the window panes, his knees bent, and he brought tucked clenched fists to his sides, and the structure of the glass seemed to warp inward, then up and out like rippling waves in the ocean, only to finally burst forward into a million tiny shards. Faustus' hands shot forward, directly controlling the volley of glass, tainted black by the faculty of his Xynicht taint. If Euphaire touched, or even exerted a metaphysical influence over the glass, she'd find herself nothing short of braindead, slaved to Faustus' will.


In the commotion, Faustus slipped inside of the office building, taking cover behind a workdesk, his back pressed taut against it at an uncomfortable angle so as to prevent even the faintest sliver of flesh from being revealed. He picked up a large piece of shattered glass offered to him by his previous volley, and held it out with reserved care, to try and catch a glimpse of the reflection of what was going on outside. He could only see a haze of smoke from the impact point.


"Hey, Sweetheart!" He mocked. "You still alive out there!? Don't tell me this is all you got!"

Faustus, taking a break from his next scheme, which took the form of two scalpals stabbed into the grey carpet of this floor of the office building, faint-verdure energy coallescing between them, took another look into his third set of eyes; the shattered glass to see the fate of Euphaire. The dust had just settled, and where he expected to see either a mangled corpse, or a hideous zombie, he saw nothing! That could only mean two things. She was either sheared into anatomical nothingness, or she had moved. Faustus knew the former wasn't even a slight possibility. So, that brought him to the most obvious question; where was she?


Then he heard it. The call of power. The sound of metal grinding against gravity and wind. Most would assume that in these situations, the enemy would opt for the most logical place to strike, the back. It only made sense. It offered suprise, and gave the enemy superior positioning. But Euphaire was a different type of monster. The right!


Then the glass shattered, and the human cannonball came right at him. His head snapped to the right, and he twisted his torso, hand held firm on the hilt of his sword, and with the practice and direction of a true samurai, Faustus drew his weapon from its pitch black sheathe. It took only a second to realize what was happening. His luminal blade passed through the 'gate' created by his scalpals, and a faint-verdure weave of energy spread out in a wondrous blast that budded like a flower, then plumed back out of the window Euphaire had entered from. The result? Faustus' edge had collided with Euphaire's -invisible- sword. With her top half, which Faustus took stock of, but was far from being impressed by a cheap thrill he had already tasted once, being unprotected, she'd be blown in half.


It was, in fact, an accident. Faustus knew about the Dark Blade Eden Raid, but had never seen it within its sheathe. Call it luck. Call it intuition. Either way, Faustus lived.


Not only lived, but thrived.


The positive energy granted by the scalpal gate all but destroyed Euphaire's containment sheathe, but she came with a force he was not prepared for. As their blades met, Faustus was pushed with a deep thud offered by Euphaire's gravitational superweight. Boy was she heavier than she looked! Her gravity, which should have been a boon for her, actually became a fortuitous condition for Faustus. It gave him space.


He was sent flying backward, and he tucked himself into a tight backwards roll, building strength and momentum in his legs, pushing out of the opposite ended window Euphaire, and out of the building. Edge gleamed bright in against the street signs and flashing lights of Time Square, and with the strength of a beast, he swung, and that light-gilded edge was cast forward in a searing hot horizontal path, and beamed completely through the lower half of the building. Its support cut through like a knife through butter, it was more than enough to collapse it all in a blink, with Euphaire still inside.


His return sent, Faustus dropped back down to street level, cushioning his fall by bending the knees and stopping on his hands. He looked to the pile of destruction he had left in his wake. He waited for anything. A subtle movement of debris. The faint sound of someone gasping for air. He wouldn't take any chances.


"If you're still squirming around in there, if you think that little show back there was going to get me all hot for you, you're wrong! Your breasts are way too small for me, and oddly misshapen. I can do a whole lot better than you, don't ya' think!? Besides, you could lose a little weight, you nearly crushed me back there!"

Faustus watched with bated breath for one moment. Then two. Then three. Then, finally he brought himself back up to full stock from his low-crouched position, wiping the sweat from his brow, and stray blood from his lip. He was sure that he had just emerged from the tournament the victor. He looked to the night sky that was slowly being gorged upon by the spotty, murky blues of a sun ready to break out over the skyline, and he turned his back to the pile of attrition and the cityscape, ready to leave in the quiet of dawn.


But then, just as he had taken no more than two steps, he stopped in his tracks. Electricity had a particular scent. It was pervasive, and intruding. He'd recognize it anywhere. He turned back to the destruction, and sure enough there it was; the sparks of electricity arcing periodically, and he immediately knew what was coming. His sense of danger screamed, and just as Euphaire had emerged from her prison of concrete, Faustus had articulated a specially crafted defense.


Lightning was his domain.


Faustus' eyes scrolled to his watch, the glowing faceplate flashed a medley of colors, and then that light engulfed him and the surrounding area in its warm, bountiful wake. A transluscent, Dyson sphere of gyrating energy formed about Faustus' body. Its function was simple, but its polymorphism superior. Where a normal Dyson Sphere siphoned energy from that which it surrounded, Faustus' was reconfigured through the faculty of his spellwatch to siphon energy from third party sources, and transfer it to himself, or disperse it as thermal energy.


Faustus launched himself forward, cratering the earth beneath his feet, meeting Euphaire's blast head on. The two forces collided like trains along the same path, and struggled against one another for a moment afore the bright-blue beam of electricity faulted, and constricted around the Dyson sphere like a snake constricting, creating a dome of crackling, glowing light. And then, it burst ed away, creating a deep depression in the earth, revealing the hidden pipelines of the undercity, water spewing forth and looking to fill the hole, though Faustus was gone.


Though where did he go?


Euphaire would have to find him to find out. But for all the readers, I can let you in on the secret. Faustus had changed the pace of the battle. Insanity is described as doing the same thing repeatedly, yet expecting a different result. While Faustus was nothing short of insane, he did not like making a habit of exacerbating the process of losing his mind, and mindlessly trading blows with an opponent who, so far, was matching him blow for blow was proving fruitless. Paradigm shift.


Where Euphaire might have taken Faustus' disappearance as a precursor to some sort of suprise attack, he had actually escaped into the jagged, departed crater he had caused, and into the cities undercarriage, several meters away. He sat with his back propped against a wall, his watch glowing hungrily. There Faustus had begun chanting, meditation style with his legs folded, and his hands supported by his knees, thumbs meeting his middle fingers. As he chante with the precision and speed of an automaton, strings of azure power began to build and vibrate around him.