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Japan[/center]
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[color=RosyBrown]"Oh. My sincerest apologies, it was to my better knowledge that this was a [i]public[/i] event,"[/color] said the woman.

[color=#285D48]"What."[/color]

[color=RosyBrown]"I'll grant you the mercy and not assume you'd try and stop this... [i]man[/i] from receiving "medical attention", now would you?"[/color]

[color=#285D48]"[i]What.[/i]"[/color]

She and her procession were taking up a massive felled oni, apparently to spirit him away.  Khan wasn't following the train of thoughts involved in their little party, though he wasn't much interested in trying.

[color=#285D48]"What are you—Jesus I don't time for this.  If you're here to help, or—"[/color]

"Weak! Haha!"  

From out of the crowd, a body was sent flying, and it hit the ground hard.  Human, though Khan couldn't tell if it was a nomad or a normal.  The body wasn't moving, so Khan was guessing normal.  From where the fallen human had been thrown, an oni emerged from the fighting, grinning.  "Humans couldn't give a proper fight to save their—"

When he spotted the metal woman and her captive, he froze, and his face seemed to swell with rage, confusion, and disgust.  It seemed like he could see something Khan could not.  "Monster!  Get your hands off him!"

He lunged, and on instinct, so did Khan, the halo building up in his arms as he intercepted the oni by the legs and sent searing wounds through the life energy in the attacker's hamstrings.  Khan and the oni fell to the ground, but in seconds, wincing with pain, the oni was trying to force himself back to his feet, still lunging for the woman.

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[@Surtr]

Japan[/center][hr][hr]

"Come here!  Insolent human!"  The Emperor drew in his fist, and the wind rose up with a vindictive howl.  Verga was plucked from the ground, the breath forced from her lungs, and the windstorm yanked her straight towards Daichi.

He raised his weapon.

In midair, Verga somersaulted out of control, then straightened.  The Emperor was rushing close.  

She nearly lost control, again.  Like balancing a grain of sand on the tip of a violent-shaking needle—but her body stays upright.  Her body burns.  The air gouges at her red-raw skin.  But, at least, in midair, there was no way for the Emperor make her kneel.  Not yet.

For a split second, like a snapping string, Verga could imagine him winning, all his words and gloats and murders adding up to her, beaten, and him, unbowed.  There was nothing in the world more unbearable, there was no wound that stabbed deeper.  It fought for space inside her head with the poisonous, vindictive delight of wanting to hurt someone, which in the moment was better than love and better than friendship and better than money.

All the weather in the world seemed to bend towards the Emperor's silhouette.

He was on top of her now.  

[color=5f2ebf]"Come on!"[/color]

Into her hands, Verga dragged from out of herself flesh, blood, ki, light, like dredging the depths of a strip mine, and it overflowed burning from between her fingers, and the face of the Emperor was wide and furious, and the mace came down, and Verga came up, and the Time Warp and the Dark Matter and the Antiparticle boiled cruelly through her skin as she brought the cavalcade of attacks up to meet him.