[center][h2][color=gray]Apostate[/color][/h2][/center]
[center][color=beige]”...Of Course you’d be here…”[/color][/center]

[color=yellow]Setting: The Garden of Hevel[/color]

	“I should have known… You'd be here...”

	Apostate’s voice rumbled out of his metallic chest, sending ripples in the air. His secret gaze pierced the smokey figure of his opponent. The copy of Apostate growled back, lifting a sword to point it at his rival.

	“Of course I am…”

	A pause as the two thought.

	“You… asked me to be here.”

	[i][b]”That’s right!”[/b][/i] The original Apostate boomed, flourishing his own blade. “And you have arrived at your doom!”

	Apostate’s opposer let out a low rumble of his own, a sinister growl rolling from the smoke. 

	“Fight me.”

	The ground shook and the wind screamed as Apostate blurred from where he was standing, his form cutting towards the enemy. With equally lightning reflexes, the opponent lifted their blade and caught Apostate’s swing. An immense crash sounded and sparks bloomed as the two stood frozen for a moment, faces mere inches from each other, looking over the length of dark blades. 
	
	Apostate let out a battlecry and as he did, a pulse of smoke formed behind him, only to charge back into his, giving him a surge of momentum. With air shaking strength, he let loose a powerful shove. A shockwave formed and the enemy was blasted from the clash, the sky whistling as he cut through it at supersonic speeds. Not wanting to let his quarry escape, Apostate went exploding through the air after him.

	The enemy was a blur on the winds, the world around him and the chasing Apostate were streaks as they traveled. A large dark mass formed in the distance and in a fraction of a second, the enemy was shot through a mountainside, leaving a gaping hole, only to slam into another cliff face, this time leaving a shower of rocks and a crater. 

	Fist first, Apostate burst into the crater after him, causing another eruption of stones to blast from the rocky bowl. The enemy folded from the blow but before Apostate could bring his blade down to finish the fight, the copy hefted his own. Slamming the flat of the blade against Apostate, he wrenched himself free and rolled to his smoky feet.

	“Come.” 

	Both swords swung wildly, sparking off each other as the two fought in the crater. Streaks of fire were scarring the sky with smoke from the clash, but it was an even match. The clone swung, but Apostate bounced the blade off of his own and stabbed in riposte, but the clone was ready and jumped back. Eagerly, Apostate leapt forward to close the gap and put his enemy on their back heel, oppressing their blade with heavy swings. Finding an opening, the clone bucked Apostate back a little with a jab of his blade's guard, resetting their fight.
	Attempting to find a new opening, Apostate swung, but the copy ducked and rose with a stab of his own. Apostate anticipated the strike and side-stepped then swung his pommel. The pommel sank through the smoke enemy and following up, Apostate turned the blade to deliver a final stab through the chest, piercing the area any heart would be present. The two stood there dramatically in this pose until finally Apostate growled.

	“Fool.”
	
	The hazy enemy disappeared, the wisps of smoke that had formed it returning to Apostate’s body. Now he stood alone in a crater in the middle of nowhere, blade dramatically poised in an invisible enemy’s crippled body. The victor let out a rumbling groan.

	“Bored.”
[hr]

	Though victorious, Apostate was defeated with boredom and so he walked back to the garden instead of taking a more action-filled route as was his exit from the garden. Even if he wasn’t a god, finding the way back would have been easy enough: if the hole in the mountain didn’t point the way, the long straight trail of destruction the fly-over caused did. The fight had happened so fast and so abruptly that even as Apostate made his way back to the garden, debris was still littering down from the sky.

	By the time he reached the garden, a faint buzz bore into his heart. It bequizzled Apostate, provoking him to cup his chest with an ethereal hand. He looked down, as if he would find the cause of the anxiety. Something hurt, but why?

	It was faint, and only noticeable now that Apostate was thinking about it, but deep in his heart he felt a ringing pain, as if something was wrong. It felt distant, far away, but annoying all the same. As he stood by his statue, he let out a long rumbling sigh — something wasn’t right.

	Deep down, he knew that this pain meant more than a simple anxiety, and that in time it would only grow along with the world — a certain truth in his mind told him this. He knew his purpose, he knew what he was and by putting it all together he could only deduct he found the natural motivation of who he was. Unfortunately, Apostate applied, it spoke through pain.

	He groaned.

	“Give your worst.”

	As true as the tiny pain, Apostate knew he would push against it more than it could ever push against him. He’d never buckle, never surrender. Apostate would sooner grind himself into nothing before such a trifle bent him useless, no matter how strong it would grow! Though, the god admitted (for once), he was getting ahead of himself. For now it was but a small sting, mirroring the youth of creation… but at the very least, he’d never be bored again. 

[hider=Summary]

Slow heavy metal music plays as Apostate encounters a worthy opponent, himself (sorta). Him and his clone brandish blades and share a few choice words before engaging in mortal kombat. The battle soon takes to the skies and the pair go blasting all the way from the gardens into the mountains to the west. After sending his enemy through a mountain and into another, the pair share their final blows before Apostate reigns victorious over his enemy (which then simply seeped back into Apostate, no harm done, being just a smokey shadow of himself).

	After this, Apostate admits he is bored and tramps back to the garden, following the absolute destruction his play match caused. When he makes it home, he feels a pain inside of him for the first time, which he quickly deduces is the result of being the avatar of defiance. The pain, he notices, is small — since the world is still in its infancy — but he expects it to grow with time and so he goes over the top and declares how he will fight the pain on the beaches, he will fight the pain on the streets, he will… well you get it. He won’t give into pain, and as a bonus, he’s no longer bored!
[/hider]
	[hider=Vigor]No Vigor spent, still at 9[/hider]