[center][b][h3]Type 0011 “Severa”[/h3][/b] PL 910 Human Cyborg [b]Location:[/b] VR Training World “Gehenna” / Secret Facility in Central Capital[/center] From the moment she started to become aware of her surroundings, Severa could tell that nothing made sense. Golden light filtered through spindly dark objects, far enough away that the haze obscured their forms, leaving only four things in focus. To her left stood some sort of edifice, lacking detail but awash in a strange feeling. [i]Home.[/i] Try as she might, Severa couldn't quite control herself; she felt as though she were strapped into someone else's head, watching from a first-person perspective but unable to direct her body's movements. Yet, despite the confusion and restriction she felt no fear. In fact, something unfamiliar and strange warmed her heart...a sensation that long since drifted away. Her eyes drifted between the faces of the people nearby one by one, but a sort of jitteriness blanketed their features, leaving them essentially faceless. The only thing Severa knew for sure was that she cared for them, and they for her. In this bizarrely vague but carefree place, she felt the handshakes of old strangers: affection and security, which so long ago had ceased to darken her door. Within the back of her mind, however, a lingering unease told her that this comforting scene was not hers, and never was. Though joy surrounded her, Severa was overcome by a longing sorrow, a sadness that spawned from the troubling assurance that none of this was real. Shaking, she looked back at those around her, seeking reassurance, but already they were moving away. The cheery sunshine receded, and as Severa reached out to take the hand of the closest person, she could feel it slide away like water between her fingers. Around her, the colors began to move faster and faster, the landscape melting away, until there remained only darkness and a pining for the touch of home. Severa gasped, her head swimming painfully. A quick look around made it apparent that the world was upside-down, but she could grasp from the ropes around her feet that it was she who was misaligned. Further examination revealed that she hung, upside-down, from a gnarled tree. Below her yawned a pit lined by torches and filled with stakes, their blood-encrusted points rammed in some cases through stinking corpses. Around her, other bodies hung, but their stillness and her silence told her all she needed to know. As always, Severa was alone, and tonight the scent of death threatened to choke her before she could even impale herself. In every direction, more trees stood like looming spectators, watching those suspended in their midst in quiet anticipation. Her face, however, bore neither fear nor irritation, but instead a grimace of resignation. Fraught with danger as it was, this current predicament interested her far less than the odd hollowness somewhere deep within her mind. She knew that, moments ago, she'd been dreaming, but she could not recall her dream's subject. It left her bitter, as though she'd been denied a small convenience. No matter. Inexplicable feelings troubled her daily, and as blasé as this situation was, she might as well get it over with. Tightening her stomach muscles, Severa curled upward, then straightened out. In such a manner she began to swing back and forth. For several passes she performed this same motion, a living pendulum, until she deemed her arc satisfactorily large. This time, when she curled, she reached out a hand toward the ropes that trapped her. In front of her fingers, the air began to spin, coalescing into a bladed disc that sawed straight through her bindings with a sound more like a ringing bell than a machine. Immediately she began to drop, but her swing brought her close enough to one of the other hanging bodies that she could plant her feet against it and push off. The impact of her shoes against the rotting flesh caused the skin to slough off, but Severa paid it no mind as she springboarded herself to safety. A midair flip brought her into the ideal position to land on the edge of the spike-pit with a roll, and after getting to her feet the girl dusted herself off and walked to the nearest tree. Two larger sawblades formed, one for each hand, and in a matter of moments Severa had stripped the tree of a sheet of bark. From there, it took only a short time to carve a suitable hole into the wood, which she entered before stretching the bark back over the opening. Then, with a slit in the bark to peek through, it was time to wait. A quarter-hour passed before she spotted the shadows moving among the foliage on the other side of the spike-pit. Severa observed with nonchalance as a [url=https://orig00.deviantart.net/f497/f/2017/224/b/2/pzo90119_cyth_vsug_cultistlow_by_morkardfc-dbjucj1.jpg]man[/url] entered the torchlight. His clothes marked him as a farmer, but the swelling of his left shoulder, and the spiny-toothed orifice nestled there, cast doubt on the notion of him ever being human. He walked toward the pit, a notched sword in hand and a yellow-green glare in his eyes. Behind him three similar creatures followed, and they spread out around the gruesome hole. One placed her back near Severa's hiding spot, and after making sure that no other monsters were coming, she went to work. She burst from her cavity without much in the way of aplomb, leaping toward the nearest creature with two sawblades summoned. The first strike, a backhand slash, plowed through her target's midsection. Severa executed a full twirl, bringing her reverse hand in for a messy cut through the shock creature's torso, and the final slice after the spin put the miserable thing out of its misery by shearing its head into halves. The creature to her right turned toward her, scythe upraised, and Severa slung her right hand's sawblade into his chest vertically, where it dug itself in for a full second before losing its spin. Without time to admire her handiwork, Severa executed a corkscrew dive across the spike pit, forming another sawblade so that she could execute an x-slash to reduce the hapless monster to four quarters. Not counting the one struggling with the blade lodged in its ribcage, that left only the original. A tongue lashed out from his shoulder-mouth, seeking to bury its tip in Severa's face, but lopping it off with a blade was the very definition of easy. Her target swung his sword, which Severa intercepted with both blades at once. Its force threatened to break through, or push her backward into the pit, but the spin of the girl's saws sent incessant vibrations down the metal weapon into the creature's hand, numbing the nerves. A moment later, Severa shoved the sword to the side and dashed the opposite way, allowing the orbiting blades to strike once each before disappearing as she passed behind the monster. Before the thing could turn around, she dealt a swift kick to its back, causing the monster to tumble toward its own pit. It did not reach the spikes. Severa's first sawblade, reacting to her summon, flew from its dying victim's chest to hang just above the pit, over the spikes. The monsters she kicked fell upon it, held on the bloodstrained edge by gravity, screeching until its halves fell into the pit on either side of the blade, which vanished back into the air. Just like that, the forest was quiet once again. Her face unchanged, Severa scooped up the fallen sword and turned to jog away into the foliage.