T1 Match - Tidus Khaine (barney_fife) vs Riaze Nightroad (Lobos)

Lobos

The Big Bad Wolf
Ruleset: SC T1
Match Type: 1v1 Open
Time Limit: None
First Post: barney_fife

Setting

A section of city, 2.5km x 2.5km.

To the west, slightly more than half the arena is city streets in a grid pattern, apartment complexes and stores, with a single 40 story high rise in the northwest corner. It is empty, in a state of post-evacuation with parked cars and daily activities left in a hurry.

The eastern section is a city park, moderately dense woods with winding pathways forming broad circular tracks. A few paths circle around small clearings.

Along the main thoroughfare separating the park from the urban streets are three subway entrances, with the underground tracks open, a small maze of maintenance tunnels connecting two separate tracks.

The borders of the arena are marked with military blockades, staffed with mechanized division backed by an armor division.
 
The skies above the city were briefly, and brilliantly split asunder by a bright streak of white and orange flame. A deafening sonic boom preceded Tidus Khaine's arrival as his drop pod struck the asphalt of the main thoroughfare of the city. Cars shook from the impact, and a few nearby windows shattered.

The orbital drop pod came to it's final resting place, blasting open and sending thick metal plates in four directions, one shot out roughly a dozen feet, crushing a small passenger sedan in front of it.

Tidus stepped forward, visor sliding open to let in the natural light, as well as the wafting, pungent smoke to permeate out from inside his powered armor. His footstep was heavy, thick, heavy metal against concrete that made an audible thunk, followed by the subtle hiss of hydraulics, and armored servos.

"Target has been isolated, and identified, neutralize the threat at all costs, the fate of the Empire rests upon your shoulders."

"Get some..." He grunted, before pulling his heavy magnetron from it's magnetic hold on the back of his suit. He racked the weapon once, chambering a round and powering the weapon, before cradling it, and moving forward, shifting his cigar across his mouth.

The visor slammed shut, hiding his face once more, the Heads-up display flickered to life, broadcasting a superimposed map of the city, highlighting tactical avenues of approach, data cascaded down, and across his field of view as his suit's systems wirelessly synchronized to his weapon.

"Here, doggy, doggy, doggy, why don't you come out and play." He said in a low voice, grinning as he took two more steps forward.

The suit began it's diagnostic subroutene, shields were fully charged, suit integrity was full, the suit's systems were sealed, and locked, which meant that the suit's life support completely isolated Tidus from the outside world.

He cast a brief glance to the park, and then another, brief glance to the urban center to his left, he was walking north in the southbound lane, shoving a few cars out of his way. His opponent could be anywhere, a fact he knew all too well.
 
Primal fury and medieval grace flowed as one through the trees on the north end of the park, a deeper darkness within the lengthening shadows padding along at a leisurely pace through the trimmed grass. It's very presence silenced the calls of the animals that lived there, instincts of predator and the unknown ringing with profound alarm to be still, be silent, and pray that it passed by. The thought brought a huffing snort from a nose as big as a man's fist, sending plumes of breath in the chill air. As if a squirrel would satisfy such as he was.

Riaze Nightroad paused to glance skyward at the unnatural thunder, tracking the descending fireball with the bored curiosity a predator at the apex of any predator in history could afford. As he was, his overall shape was that of a canine, of a wolf, but of such scale to trigger confusion. He could stand shoulder with a Clydesdale, and his mass would rival the great white bears of the north. The eyes set in his disproportionately large head caught the fading light, making their crimson hue seem to glow from within as if by hellfire. The great shaggy coat over his heavy muscled frame was midnight in hue, and as he took a deep breath to scent the air in the wake of the sound of the impact, his lips peeled back in a silent snarl. The fangs he revealed were as long as stilettos, backed by a row of teeth to make a crocodile green with envy.

The form shivered for a moment, blurring as though in a haze. Pungents scents roiled off of it as the monstrous wolf seemed to fold into on itself, before a pair of bare, human feet stood between the oversized paw prints. Rolling his shoulders, Riaze strode forward through the thinning park woods, finding himself along a path. Wearing a black vest over a plain white shirt, with brown loose fitting pants, he stood of average height, leaner build. A beanie hat rested atop his head, while an eyepatch covered his left eye. Putting his hands in his pockets, he pulled out a beat up box of cigarettes, tapping one out before replacing it, then breaking a match out of a crumpled book and lighting up, waving it a few times before tossing it aside.

Dragging deep on the fag, he peered curiously from the tree line towards the main road, off-handedly brushing his fingers along the leather wrapped grip of the weapon slung across his back. A simple and obvious weapon, a sword of moderate size, though the details were shrouded, wrapped in layers of gauze woven around the blade and crossguard. Little more than a long, triangular shape, though his senses could feel the faint runes etched along its length, reassured at the sensation. Even in his human form, he could hear the sounds of cars being moved in ways they weren't designed to, a steady progress from the south heading his way.

Leaning up against a tree, he decided to wait and see what might be moving out there, though he kept a loose alertness to his posture, ready to move in a hurry if he needed to.
 
The adept of war moved at a rather slow, and lumbering pace through the crowded streets, shoving car after car aside to make way. He was a stark contrast to his surroundings, standing at nearly nine feet tall, and clocking in a over a ton with his brighgt blue type 86 power armor, Khaine was confident that there were few that could match the sheer brutality of an Imperial adept of war. Every detail was carefully engineered by scientists that excelled in their fields, while Riaze may have been the apex predator, Khaine was the absolute perfect soldier, no, he was a walking apocalypse.

He stared out at the wooded park before him, coming to a stop and facing the park directly, the sun glinting upon his golden blast visor, brilliant oranges against a purple backdrop highlighted the various fauna within the park, if it was warm blooded, the high-fidelity sensors in Khaine's suit could pick them up.

He rounded an abandoned tractor trailor, and would now be within full view of his prey, the Adepts of war never painted their armor any kind of camouflage, they chose to allow their enemies to know exactly who they were, to instill fear, and inevitably death upon their foes.

His eyes set upon a decidedly orange blob that stood out from the rest of the blurs within the tree-line, and the cigar shifted across the mouth once more, as Khaine took a deliberate puff of the cigar, letting the smoke fill the inside of his helmet, Targeting reticles flared to life, and pungent smoke plumed from his nostrils.

Silently, he leveled the gun into the tree-line, his fingers tensed up, and the weapon barked it's horrible report. 'thoom-thoom-thoom.... thoom." Twenty-millimeter high-velocity armor piercing projectiles moved downrange at a blinding twenty-five hundred meters per second, thick ancient oak trunks were splintered in an instant, along with whatever was behind them, even at a distance of about two hundred and fifty meters, each projectile packed a massive punch tearing through wood, stone, and concrete alike with four hundred kilojoules of kinetic energy. Despite the fact that the lit cigarette was like shining a massive beacon, Khaine didn't make any overt efforts to actually hit the large orange highlight in his field of vision, it was in Khaine's brutal nature to toy with his prey before delivering a violent execution.

His weapon fell silent, having loosed about ten rounds into the treeline, the Adept narrowing his eyes, waiting to see what this strange figure on his HUD would do next.
 
Calmly taking drags off of his cigarette as he watched curiously, all of that changed when the individual came into view. Even as the gun rose, Riaze darted forward, flicking the smoke away as he lunged to his right. Generations upon generations of selective breeding created a breed of lycanthrope with greatly superhuman ability, and the result was a spring that took him into a long jump nearly forty feet aside in a little over a second.

Rolling with the impact, Nightroad came up into a run, accelerating to a full sprint in three steps. Zero to seventy miles an hour, one hand drawing his blade on the move, slinging around the deceptively heavy weapon as his rapid pace closed the range quickly. Sudden sidesteps to either side made for an evasive approach, bleeding his speed ever so minutely to be all the harder to engage, his lone eye narrowed, searching for a suitable place to strike when he closed to his engagement range in the next few seconds.
 
As he fired his weapon into the treeline, his eyes kept focused on the leaping figure on his HUD, while Riaze had generations of selective breeding enabling his rapid movements, Khaine's superconducting neural dendrites and a dozen years of intensive training allowed him to fairly easily keep track of the approaching Riaze, this enhanced reaction culminated into a fluid movement, which took a mere second to accomplish.

By the time Riaze closed the halfway distance into melee range, Khaine clamped his rifle to his back, and in one smooth movement he smashed his hands together, crouching slightly in a fluid movement, his mind and his body in sync.

The figure had closed into melee range, with his sword drawn and ready to strike and Khaine's eyes, despite all the erratic movements didn't once leave Riaze. When Riaze moved into engagement range, Khaine, with both arms in front, lurched forward with the speed, and force of an approaching freight train, going from zero to a staggering forty meters per second in nearly an instant, he threw his right fist towards Riaze nearly center mass, using the suddenness of the movement, along with Riaze's forward momentum in an attempt to land a hit that could turn solid concrete into dust.
 
The sudden acceleration towards him with a straight right caught Riaze slightly off guard. He could see clearly his opponent clearly outmassed him by a significant margin, and the anticipation was for braced defense, not sudden offense. Ultimately, however, adrenaline flow during a fight dilated his perception of time to a crawl, and despite the relative velocity of over 150mph, he wasn't unduly concerned. Even committed in motion, he had a means to change his vector.

His sword arm pistoned to his right and downwards at 200mph, twisting at the last moment to awkwardly stab the front quarter of the blade into the concrete with a piercing screech of stone on asphalt, sparks shedding from the forced intrusion. Wincing, he allowed his body to follow the momentum of the swing, 60lbs of counterweight drawing his center of gravity to one side and then with the sudden anchor, pivoting around the fulcrum in a high speed rotation. Swinging cleanly out of the right jab's line to Tidus' left, then back around, beginning to sharply decelerate...

Another screech announced the sword's emergence, before it rippled around with a howl as it's craggy figure chopped the air. Riaze spun on his heels as he brought his blade around in a sweeping haymaker stroke, adding that momentum to hurl the stone edge around at nearly 300mph aimed at the middle of Tidus's torso on his right side. Such was the forces involved that 40 tons of punch was backing the middle two feet of the blade, the lycan's surety in his stroke such that he was commited, unable to stop of change his momentum if he'd had the desire to.
 
While committed in his movement, it would be difficult for the hulking adept of war to suddenly change his own movements to accommodate for the changes in Riaze's own, as one-thousand pounds of mass could only be slightly redirected. Khaine's HUD, and his eyes tracked the sudden stab of Riaze's sword arm into the ground, in a scant few nanoseconds the suit's internal combat assist AI calculated planned trajectories, while Khaine formulated his next move in an instant. Tidus redirected his own movements, his boots digging into the concrete, which cracked, and shattered in protest to bring himself around sharply to the right, redirecting the energy of his blow to come back around, shifting his own center of gravity to spin to the right, using his left fist as a counterweight.

He could not dodge the incoming attack, and there was a dull, but loud 'clunk' as stone met alloy, the granite blade cleaving into the kanvium plate that protected his torso, there were no sparks, but the sheer force imparted upon the armor seemed to force a little bit of give.

The metal itself seemed to ripple, and striking it felt not unlike hitting a piece of foam, but such curiosities couldn't be afforded to the lycan, as Khaine's left hand shot out in a fluid movement with his spin, massive hands aiming to wrap around Riaze's wrist, forearm, and sword hilt, closing around it with enough force to crush bone. Should a grip be gained, Khaine would pull his left arm inwards, with enough force to separate bone from socket, and tear flesh, and muscles. The end goal being that Riaze would find his arm torn from his body, or his whole body unceremoniously jerked closer towards the hulking adept.
 
He'd expected a specific sensation on contact, but what he felt when his strike fell true was not as expected. It was such that he almost missed the grab for his arm, and on reflex, began to veer. Limbs suddenly blossomed outwards, an arm become a paw much wider around. What was a man was suddenly far more immense, likely no less a shock to Riaze as it would be to his foe. The strength of the grip that caught his forelimb and squeezed clued him into the threat, however, and as quickly as he veered, so did he semble, throwing himself backwards.

His slimmer arm slid free of that crushing hand intact, though his sword, assuming it wasn't embedded in the armor it had hit, would fall free without a hand to hold it. He tumbled backwards in a barely controlled roll, springing away from the Adept as quickly as he got his feet under him, where he would land, warily regarding back the way he'd come.

It wasn't often that his kind encountered another strong enough to compete in that aspect, and the experience both rattled and made him all the more cautious.
 
The Adept was caught briefly by surprise as tactile sensors registered a sudden expansion of the limb caught within his grasp. The moment his mind reacted, sending more power to the crushing grip, the creature turned back into a man, and pulled away from the Adept's grip entirely, tumbling backwards.

There was a small notch in the Kanvium armor about a millimeter deep, a scar from the impact as the sword clattered to the side, the sound of granite on stone registering in Khaine's aural sensors.

A Compartment in his back snapped open, and the hilt of the Bane of Xenos snapped upwards, keeping his eyes on the figure before him, he reached with his right arm and grasped the weapon, unsheathing it as it spooled to life.

A split moment later, the compartment snapped shut, and Khaine lowered the chain-sword to a combat stance, revving the weapon, which made an angry buzzing sound, the teeth spinning along the blade of the weapon, each mono-molecular tooth buzzing around. Two or three revs later, the towering adept stepped forward, readying the sword to strike.
 
Back
Top