[center][h3]Filia – Moon Over Bourbon Street, near Mahora[/h3]
[@Flamelord][/center]

Tailred's assertion received only a glum, uncertain look from Filia.  If this girl believed she could legitimately do good for people, well, good for her.  Somewhere, maybe, the classical idea of heroes lived on, with perfect standards of good and evil, good-looking and mighty heroes, and nefarious, irredeemable evildoers to be beaten down.  In Filia's world, however, no heroes existed.  Right and wrong were blurred, life for most was a fight to survive, and those with power seldom ascribed to heroic ideals.  New Meridian took heroes, chewed them up, and turned them into the very antithesis of all they thought they stood for.  Neither host nor parasite desired a fate like that.

Whether or not Tailred was delusional, Filia decided to attempt to enlighten her.  “Maybe...you're not looking at this the right way.  Back where I come from, there are these beings -the Skullgirls- that command incredible power.  I saw one once: her name was Marie.  She controlled life, shadow, and bones, able to raise the dead from all across history.  Her power...unreal.  Somehow, this Viewer seems worse.  Don't you think he'd like to obliterate heroes for entertainment?  I'm sorry, just...as far as I know, heroes can't exist in a world where evil is the supreme power.”

She jammed her hands in her pockets, still ill at ease.  Samson, meanwhile, watched her back as always, though with more of a disinterested air than usual.  Both faces, however, turned to curiosity when an announcement boomed through the district surrounding Mahora.  Filia winced, and her parasite scoffed.  [b]”Hah!  Perfect ironic timing!  Gonna go and help people, kid?  Maybe bein' a hero ain't so bad.  Don' worry about the Viewer jus' yet.  Remember, you got you an' me.”[/b]

Filia put a knuckle to her lips thoughtfully.  “Uh...maybe.  If we work with these people and get on their good side, they won't attack us, right?  Anyone calling themselves a hero can't do that.  I'll...give it a try.”  Her partner smirked and formed her hair into beetle wings, recycling the leftover into twintails like Tailred's, perhaps in an effort to associate herself with heroism.  Otherwise, Tailred was forgotten as the duo flapped away toward the train station.

The trip was short, and the schoolgirl touched down on the train's roof with a [i]clang[/i].  Samson spat out her hat and hid beneath it, trying to keep himself a secret from the Mahora bunch, and Filia climbed down manually to board the vehicle.  Her hands shook with nervousness.  Medieval times meant swords, axes, spears, knives, and more, all things great for cutting hair.

[center][h3][color=yellow][b]DIO – Positively 4th Street[/b][/color][/h3]
[@Luciansmentor][@Invisible Man][@GameguruGG][/center]

The seeking fingers, so tantalizing close to filling the veins of Forneus with a smotheringly frigid slurry, barely missed their target.  Instead, a few locks of DIO's opponent's hairs were flash-frozen and fell down to fracture on the sweet pavement below.  This did not perturb DIO whatsoever, even if it did seem to excite the abyssal lord somewhat.  After all, if his very first attack resulted in his enemy's death, the whole event would have to be logged as momentously disappointing, not to mention boring.  Of course, this didn't stop the vampire from noticing with a critical look that the Overlord failed to seize his opportunity and properly distract Forneus.

Overlord's evaluation would have to come later, for the abyssal lord began to craft his counterattack.  DIO leaned away, scraping some dirt from beneath a fingernail in the epitome of boredom.  Did all of Forneus's attacks take so long to set up?  A single punch would be enough to splatter the ground with a far more diverse array of fluids than water—but then again, perhaps the localized maelstrom around the demon hosted some sort of special property.  DIO compliantly chose to wait and see, watching as the magical attack formed, proved to be named something utterly ridiculous, and burst outward.  Clicking his tongue, the vampire held his arms crossed in front of his face and barely moved as the spikes of water penetrated his pale skin, slinging blood and vampiric essence into the storm.

Ultimately, though, the spikes did not make much progress.  Within DIO's arteries flowed an incredible cold, and upon breaching his blood vessels the water spikes froze solid.  For a split second, the vampire resented a monstrous, icy hedgehog, but he wasted little time before he flexed, and the icicles popped out of him to shatter lifelessly on the ground.  On the other side of Forneus, the Overlord appeared to be powering through the destructive spell's might to deliver a crushing mace attack, and an idea crept into DIO's mind.  [color=yellow]”Your struggles are in vain!  They are useless, useless, useless!  Mu-DA!”[/color]  As the Apocalyptor sank into Forneus's face, DIO twisted around and went low, aiming a ruthless, frigid elbow into the abyssal lord's spine.  If the demon could survive a horrific blow to his skull and an equally devastating attack to his spinal cord, perhaps he did deserve some credit, after all.  All the same, DIO imagined that he could not.