[hr][center][u][b][h3][UnderCity - Forges Region, Outskirts][/h3][/b][/u][/center]
[center][A Fate001 / XianaEvermor Collaboration][/center][hr]


A small moment of hesitation: Yue [i]felt[/i] the impact of Alex's punch from where she'd been standing.  She hadn't seen any telltale blue flash of his barrier ability.  Admittedly, she was paying much more attention to the Hydra and the fight.  For the time being she dismissed the thought so she could focus on her job in this maneuver.

[i]Claw Rends.[/i]

Yue focused upwards, and the tendrils of lightning seemed to gather loosely towards the tip of the sword.  She stepped forward, letting the sword drop to gain momentum before she swept it forward and up into a crescent, landing back in the high guard. The sword bit into the earth and carved through it effortlessly, unleashing a narrow shockwave that ripped through the terrain.  It crashed like thunder as it swept the arena; lightning viciously raked the creature's body, blasting armored plates off its torso and burning its fur to cinders.

She followed behind it, slipping through the narrow window of frictionless vacuum behind the shockwave.  The creature thrashed, shattering its binding and whipping its tail around as it twisted itself back upright.  It impacted Yue's torso, lighting up her HUD like a Christmas tree.  Her whole side went numb despite the shock compensation and the Sword of Justice spiraled into the air still singing its crystal tone.  She grabbed hold of the tail reflexively, and was driven into the ground.

Alex winced as the barrier holding him flickered t of existence and dropped him to the ground. He hadn't had the time to really recover from that [Scream] and the rapid breaking of his constructs was straining him. He desperately wanted to rub his temples to try and alleviate the headache he had been trying to ignore from the start of the fight. 

Yue had taken a solid hit from the Hydra. And Alex had just about had it right there.

[i]Fight now, patch up later.[/i] 

Huffing angrily, Alex looked around for anything he could use while his telekinesis was essentially on cooldown. All there was were the busted up chunks of ground from the fight. . . Which happened to include a lot of sizable boulders of bead rock.

Monkey throw rock? [i]Monkey Throw Rock.[/i]

He scrambled over to one of the stones that had to be nearly five times his size and a few tons of mass. Part Of the boulder protruded out into a rough point. Perfect.

Just as the Hydra was about to begin coiling itself around Yue, he slammed the boulder into its back, shattering on impact and damaging its scales and spines. The earthen shrapnel was quickly followed by Alex slamming his own body onto the beasts damaged hide, ripping And tearing at anything he could get his hands on.

Did... he just throw a rock?  She was too buried beneath the mass of the creature to see exactly what happened, but she felt the impact and saw the shards of rubble fly past.  Things weren't adding up... the secondary impact gave Yue enough space to get back to her feet, however.  She shelved the nagging thought again.  As she took a deep breath, the pins and needles sensation of muted pain signals prickled her lungs uncomfortably.  [Crimson] welled up out of her skin as she felt her muscles coil.

[i]Fang Pierces[/i]

The Hydra's armored plates cracked beneath her hands as her fingers crushed into the creature's tail.  By the time it had whipped a head around to deal with her she lunged, pulling the tail taught.  Just as it was about to whip her away, she planted her feet, splintering the earth and heaving the creature over her head.  The force with which she slammed the creature back into the ground pulsed through the rock and echoed loudly throughout the arena as its three heads knocked together.

The tail whipped up suddenly and flung Yue into the air.  Time stopped... what now?  Yue thought furiously as her altitude was rapidly becoming unmanageable: she was moving at quite a clip.  Right.  Eliminate or suppress ranged attack, alter trajectory, vector to "safe" landing area.  She dug four disks out of her utility pouch, loading them into her Strategem launcher in sequence.  One was aimed at each head, and the fourth some distance to the side, hopefully out of the creature's reach.  Yue exhaled, time resumed.

[b][color=#CE2B95]"Pommel Flash to Fists of Vengeance, then Meteor Slam!!"[/color][/b] screamed Yue down at Alex.  All at once, as the heads turned up to her mouths agape, one exploded into a deluge of sand, and the middle was buried in rapidly hardening foam.  Something tiny shattered a few meters away from the creature's final head, ejecting a primed flash grenade into the air in front of its face.

Alex stopped his pummeling of the beasts back armor when he heard Yue's next callouts. He really wasn't gonna question how she was gonna blind the thing when she launched a bunch of stuff out of seemingly nowhere at each head, including a flash bang,. [Pommel Flash] . . . flash bang. That was one way to mimic a Paladin skill. Alex took no time to bound off the Apex's back as it tried to stitch itself together, flinging his arms out in a wide arc towards the disoriented hydra head. He might be durable but being blinded or deafened wasn't something he could just shrug off.  Thankfully his helmet had built in protection.

Feeling a sort of second wind hit, Alex spread a long pincer of hard light out from each arm, subsequently slamming them together to catch all three heads in a telekinetic vice. He slammed to the ground hard but quickly got enough footing to begin pulling at the cluster heads as if they were a stubborn dog on a leash. No splitting mental pain was a good sign, but he was instead gritting his teeth as he tried to pull against a creature whose entire body might as well be one dedicated muscular machine of death.

His usual overlay of hardlight flickered back into existence. As the floating plates reformed, long spiked hurried themselves into the ground to anchor him in place. The Hydra redoubled its efforts to buck and thrash in his "grip". [color=deepskyblue][b]"No you don't Fluffy, just Need you to stay riiiiiight there for a few more second you ugly bastard"[/b][/color] 

Yue flailed awkwardly as she hit her apex and began to tumble.  Even with the stabilizers deployed, the Drachenmail had a much different aerodynamic profile than her previous suit design and it threw her balance off.  The pillowy green mattress of sour apple gelatin that was blooming off to the side of the arena suddenly felt miles out of reach.  A twinge of panic lanced through her chest:  Even with the impact compensation, if she landed awkwardly she could easily get hurt.

 Looking back up, It quickly became apparent that Yue didn't have the means to replicate any form of aerial movement skills like he could given her current trajectory. Couldn't have that now. he mentally pushed and started creating a myriad of walls and platforms in the air around the hydra up and out towards where Yue was currently falling from. For someone that moved the way she did, it might as well had been a clear runway. 

[color=deepskyblue][b]"DON'T YOU DARE MISS!![/b][/Color] Alex yelled half jokingly, only having a hint of edge in his voice despite the circumstance.