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"And this is what the humans call diplomacy?" roared the Emperor. "You insult me!"

[color=5f2ebf] “If no one else was going to do it,”[/color] muttered Verga, the vindictive satisfaction soothing her like warm water over snow-numbed fingers.  With the Emperor blind and distracted, maybe this was her chance—but there was no clean shot through the wreckage anymore, action bursting to life among the nomads and the demons.  It was a proper fight, now.  But there was still an Emperor to deal with.  Verga had decided already that this was her victory, and no one elses.

Ducking through fighters and magic and flailing martial arts, she forced her way towards the Emperor’s procession.  She wasn’t even halfway there before a poleaxe nearly took her head off.  A well timed punch shattered the blade as it went by, and Verga drew herself up into a proper stance as her path was blocked by one, then two oni.  From behind, two more.  

Verga had no patience for clean, honorable fighting, but clean, honorable fighting—one on one, no interruptions—was how she’d been trained, and as the mountainous demons bared their fangs and pounded their weapons with ritual rhythm, and growled from their throats with the sound of trees growing in fast forward, she knew she had no advantage here.  Abandoning any pretension at martial arts, Verga dropped her stance and drew up a packet of heat and ki into her chest, and once again there was a gush of light and heat.  Another ring of boiling gold stardust blasted out from Verga’s body.  It exploded over her attackers, and they went flying.  

For a moment, Verga stood and shook in place, sweat hissing off her skin as evaporated steam, and her hands would not stay steady.  Twice, in just minutes—there’d be no more stardust like that any time soon.  

Stilling herself, she turned to try and locate the Emperor again, and as she did something heavy and metal came rushing up to her out of the fighting.  Verga raised her hands, a hardened shell coming up out of the air between her and the oncoming shape, but she wasn’t fast enough; with a lightning-sharp snapping sound, the lens of gravity was blown apart, and Verga went stumbling and skidding backwards in a crash of metal and electricity, her legs pinwheeling.

She struck her head against a rock, and she saw stars, and blood.  For what could’ve been a second, or maybe a minute, her brain spun like helicopter blades.

[i]No.  Screw it.  Screw this.  And screw him.[/i]

Verga rubbed the blood from out of her eye, blue hair glued stickily to her forehead and cheeks, and after a quick glance, she caught sight of the Emperor.  

The air gathered up in her hands, and so did the light, and when her hands were full to the brim with something white and dangerous-looking, Verga flickered like a million tiny bulletshots.  Then, just a scissor-snip through space and time, and Verga was there in front of the Emperor.  

Her fistfuls of aether were thrown out in front of her, and momentum carried Verga straight and true to go crashing across his face.  A crack of light and a heavy sigh of wind.  They went to the ground in a sprawl, undignified as possible.  Smaller, lighter, she was sent skidding away from his fallen, hilltop-shaped form, but still half-sliding over the ground Verga stumbled to one knee and turned on the Emperor.

[color=5f2ebf] “What next, huh?”[/color]  She spat gooey blood and saliva from her mouth, and she gestured at the ruins of the arena, the clouded-up sky, the brawlers and the fighters and the leftovers.  [color=5f2ebf] “Humans aren’t oni.  Wretched, undisciplined, never unified—you said it yourself.  It’s hollow, hypocrite justice, holding a creature like that to oni law.”[/color]

Stumbling up to another knee now, but still not quite standing:  [color=5f2ebf] “And if you’re here because you’re power-hungry?  You’re Emperor for a few weeks, you kill a few hundred people, and then you remember the world’s a big place, dozens of governments with more power than sense come down on you and your dome, and inside the dome there’s nonstop fighting from rebel nomads and rebel spirits and whatever the hell else until it all finally blows over—You don't win this.”[/color]

Now she was upright.  One hand shoved the blood-uglied hair from her face.  The other held a bunched-up knot of spacetime.  [color=5f2ebf] “If you want revenge for a human crime, you'd be better off negotiating.  Just do it with someone who isn’t an ass-kisser.  And if you want a fight, drop the pretend-justice and just fucking punch me.”[/color]