[h1]Parooz Vs Sóse[/h1]

[h3][b]Sóse[/b][/h3]

[indent][indent][indent][indent]The pale blue glow of the raised liftgate's LEDs shone over Sóse's sculpted bare torso. The ceramsteel nano-fiber that replaced his dermal system mimicked human skin better than most cyberflesh implants. He rummaged through the Escalade's spacious trunk for a moment before pulling on an aquatic patterned aramid-weave long-sleeve. The deep greens and blues of the ukiyo-e waves depicted on the fabric were highlighted with fiber optic threading that danced like sunlight on the water. He contemplated his choices for a moment then reached for a bundle of marengo gray. The bolero-style jacket draped over the broad oceanic vista of his torso as he slipped into the oversized garment. With a thought the neo-silk and Deflexion textiles conformed to his brawny proportions.

Sóse slid the silver lighter he'd taken from the prestigious principal's office into a utility pocket along the right thigh of his navy blue tacti-cloth cargo pants. After some minor adjustments to the magazine pouch attached to his belt Sóse stepped away from Mary Two-Axe’s trunk. The liftgate lowered automatically. Uktena’s anodized barrels swung out as he secured the weapon’s two-point sling across his torso. He gnawed on the end of an unlit cigar and peered around the nearly empty Nexus. 

Two fights down. How many to go? Does it matter? Should probably get a bottle of electrolyte water out of Mary before the next one.

Sóse turned to look at his vehicle. Only it wasn’t there. Neither were the gilded surroundings of the Nexus. Instead, Sóse found himself staring at an iron-wrought gate shut with heavy chains. He turned away from the gate and observed a large signboard at the end of a cracked lane. It was mostly obscured by a layer of gnarled undergrowth. As he approached to read its display, dull, dead leaves skittered across the asphalt in a frigid gust of wind that howled through the mostly barren trees that flanked the thoroughfare.
A crescent moon hung from the inky night sky high above Sóse at an odd angle. He reached the signboard in silence. With his new perspective, he easily read the sign’s eroded message: WELCOME TO OBAYASHI CAT SANCTUARY. The peeling words surrounded an uncanny illustration of a white Persian cat. Its haunting yellow eyes glared at Sóse. He considered cross-referencing the name with his digital archives when a forlorn mewl met his ears. 

Sóse looked down to see an emaciated calico circling his titanium-toed combat boots. He bent down to pet the abandoned cat when his cybernetic digits passed through it. This moment was accentuated by a burst of sheet lightning. Beneath the momentarily lit cloud he observed the twisted silhouette of a strange building. The structure loomed over a bare courtyard 100m away. Multiple overgrown paths crossed the interceding plaza. From within he could hear an antique grandfather clock ringing. Almost in response to the tolling clock, a torrent of blood poured from the illustrated Persian. The calico hungrily lapped at the fluid that trickled past his feet.

Midnight; the hour when graves give up their dead.
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[h3][b]Parooz[/b][/h3]

Proudly parading his panther pleat lapels, Parooz found himself dwarfed before a monolithic cat house columbarium. Each urn slot twirled outwards like the winter limbs of a contorted beech. The lingering incense trails of fleeing feline specters caressed his bad-postured figure in an aura laced with loneliness and dread. To Parooz's pleasure, the sweet smell of their suffering whelmed his asymmetrical nostrils. Still, however, he violently whisked away the aroma with his left hand. It was far too sweet and frilly of a scent to have tarrying around in his clothes.

The mobsters' glowing amber sclera worked like hazard lights. Without much effort, he illuminated the surfeit of engraved plaques befogged by the night mist. Mr. Bigglesworth, Felix, Garfield, Sylvester–The chilling list of names Parooz read went on. However, one name before the demon was obstructed by a sticky concoction of what seemed like a clump of litter. Curious, the mobster's ghoulish hand inched forward towards the plaque's silver-plated surface, brushing the display. Before the crumbling residue reached the ground, a cheshire grin filled the mafioso's face at the revelation of a familiar name.

"Mae Mae

They arrived, shortly died.”

"Purrrfection!"

The demon got a kick out of rolling his forked tongue. Sepias couldn't help but admire his own work so he took it one step beyond and liquified the plaque with just the heat of his finger. Grabbing the interment of ashes, he peppered his hands, utilizing the remains as if it were some sort of performance chalk and he was preparing to play a basketball game. With no use for the rest, to any spirit or stray still watching in horror, with his cupped hands, this absolute degenerate slung it upwards into the air like a pregame ritual. As bizarre as this was, In many ways, he was preparing for a contest in his own right as the mobster knew he had yet another round of combat to endure.
The more rounds to pass, the further skilled he assumed his opponent to be, though, if he had another round like the prior, there wasn't much he'd object to. Figuring he had enough fun, Parooz perused the literal catacombs of feline remains, navigating a winding pathway in which countless bombays hissed and swiped their claws angrily at the mobster. Parooz barely gave their leers any real estate as the grandfather's clock’s bell reached his pointed ears. Passing through the sanctum’s corridors, moonlight bathed the demon in a lunar light. Standing in the archway, he noticed the presence of someone approaching from the corresponding courtyard. Instinctually, he began to blend his naturally permeating bog into the low coasting fog in his immediate area. He wanted to see just what exactly was coming but a psychic jolt, caromed off his skull. A sharp message, one that had to be damn near omnipotent to single him out through the vastness of the nexus.

Ealdorman’s message to him was clear. Return to the speakeasy and begin operations on Earth F67x. What the demon was not aware of was how unstable the telepathic signal became due to traveling such a distance. Its telegram was easily intercepted...

[h3][b]Sóse[/b][/h3]

[indent][indent][indent][indent]A curious figure manifested before the heavy sound of the antique clock’s final knell broke through the twisted structure and rolled across the plaza. The rich copper of Sóse’s pupillary apertures widened as the variable zoom function doubled his visual range. He observed a hunched shape, cloaked beneath the hood of a soiled wool robe, trudge towards a darkened archway. They bore an enormous salver of tarnished pewter. The platter was heavy with hundreds of fish heads; lifeless eyes swollen to nearly bursting. Plodding steps were accompanied by the strained concerto of a dozen injured songbirds; they hobbled with broken wings woven to the heavy robe with barbed wire. 

The eerie outsider knelt beyond the darkened archway while a strange fog crawled out of the gloom. A series of sharp hisses escaped the hood. Grimalkin silhouettes surrounded the genuflect and for a moment all was still. Then Ultharian hordes descended on the scullion and their offering. Gluttonous yowls filled the air. Lonesome stars swirled and descended into a skybound scowl as the crescent moon overhead contorted into the fanged grin of a celestial cheshire. 

Oh, fuck this.
Lustrous beads of emerald helixed around Sóse's left leg. Tawiskaron’s 13” barrel remained rigid in its holster, secured to his belt and relocated to his right hip, as the cybernetic detective chambered his size 22 titanium-toed combat boot. The virescent spheres condensed into a turbulent nimbus around Sóse's left leg below the knee. His leg shot forward like a professional soccer player. The titanium plate flashed with arcs of the brightest green as Sóse made solid contact with the phantom calico. Its caterwaul faded to silence as its spectral form tore rocketed across the sky at terminal velocity. The feline projectile struck the cheshire in the center of its deranged grin. The skybound smile erupted into a phantasmagoric meteor shower above the still thrashing form of the genuflect.

I’m burning this whole thing to the ground.

[/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]

[h3][b]Parooz[/b][/h3]

Recovering from the psychic shock, the downpouring phantasm of apparitional remains bedazzled Parooz’s senses, alerting the mobster to quite the hellacious scene. Momentarily in a daze, his eyes lit up like a kid in a candy shop as he watched the gangrenous flesh of the keeper snatched off his kneeling feeble bones. The devil had a front-row seat to the spectacle but the jazz music seemingly stopped as he traversed the fog, causing his haunting presence to hover over the now photo-still cats. A single one of his wing-tipped boots went forward and the red sea parted, clearing the way to an individual he assumed created the shower. His leaking fog told him that much. 

The demon leer of the underboss analyzed the streetwear-attired blocky individual opposite of him. Even from the view on this end of the courtyard, there was much he didn’t like. For one, he looked like a narc in disguise, and immediately that didn't sit right with him regardless if he was a fed or not. To introduce himself, Parooz reached into his blazer digging excessively for a particular item. Concerned, his slick talking pistol, Barrel-Tone Tony’s stark yellow eyes shot open like he awoke from a nightmare. The gun began to hysterically rattle as its shaky voice lashed out.

“Hey, you're going to use that blasted thing, aren't you? As if you haven’t tormented it enough!”

The pistol shimmied out of Parooz's pin-striped trousers watching in disgust as the mafioso presented what appeared to be a pickle-me-Elmo out of nowhere. It was in a moonshine jar of a special devil’s cut of alcohol with a laminated tag haphazardly taped along its bottom rim reading ‘Do not open.'
“This guy still owes me a couple of wishes.”
 
Parooz was legitimately enraged. The demon served a wicked fastball in submarine form, hurling the corkscrewing jar toward the man opposite of him. As it got halfway, Barrel-Tone-Tony shot straight forward, right through the jar, shattering it, releasing the wispy astral existence of a powerful Jinn. A torrent of gale winds shot outwards, ripping away much of the fog, overgrowth, and spiritual beings about, sending a few feline spirits and more flying as their cries drowned in the howling gusts. The misty form of the malevolent genie couldn't expand much since the incendiary rounds of the bullets spawned a chain reaction with the supernatural 666-proof moonshine. To the creature's dissent, it morphed into an ifrit bathed in Parooz’s cerulean blaze.

With the turning of Sepias’ clenched right fist, the jinn's body shriveled, condensing into a ball the size of a volleyball now on a collision course with the wedge-shaped man. What wasn’t clear to the booner opposite the mobster was that the ball emitted a daemonical cool flame within a ten-meter radius. Its hidden inferno, capable of smoldering through other forms of energy, intensified the closer an individual was to the core. With an attack like this, the man wouldn't even have to get hit by the glowing ball to feel the hellish might of the heat. 

“Hey, that’s not funny, leave him alone, Parooz. I didn’t mean for you to make it worse. You intended for that to happen you asshole. I liked it better when you were a lifeless zombie. Ealdorman should fuck your mind again. Maybe then I could be a weapon for Ixxa or something. Maybe even Merse. He's still alive, isn't he?”

[h3][b]Sóse[/b][/h3]

[indent][indent][indent][indent]The all-terrain polyamide sole of Sóse’s bio-force wreathed boot returned to the cracked driveway when he noticed a figure traverse the crimson-shrouded archway, heralded by twin beams of hellish light that cut through the phantasmagoric shower. Sóse stood by the Raimian signboard (which actively gushed blood) and scoffed internally at what he observed. Across the overgrown courtyard, at a distance of 80m, slouched a being out of Tóta’s ghost stories around the campfire back when he’d visit the rez. Sóse couldn’t tell which he found more repulsive: the scarlet complexion beneath that shock of lifeless gray hair or the garish ensemble straight from the latest giallo brain-dances coming out of Nuovo Italia. Their momentary mutual assessment ended the moment the fiendish fop reached for something inside his catamount-lapeled blazer; an act mirrored by the cybernetic digits of Sóse’s right hand seizing Tawiskaron’s grip. 

Ceramsteel myomeres adjusted their density for maximum output along Sóse’s legs; the equivalent of tensing the muscles in preparation to move with explosive speed. The emerald nimbus of bio-force enveloped the cybernetic detective’s left side, up to the shoulder, by the time a grotesque pistol slithered out of the mafioso’s pinstripe trousers. The firearm’s sallow eyes opened wide as it floated by its wielder.  A moment later and the infernal figure produced a mason jar filled with a wispy substance. Its soiled label read 666-PROOF while a laminated tag around its sealed lid warned: Do not open. His brows rose a fraction of an inch in understanding while the red-skinned devil bent at the torso, shoulders shifting like old-schooler Joe Smith back during his rookie year with the Mets.

This gangoon wants to play ball. Okay, motherfucker. Let’s see the pitch.
The jar corkscrewed towards Sóse at a wicked 170 mph. At the speed of hyper-accelerated thought, the cybernetic detective mapped out the projectile's trajectory and calculated the appropriate responses. The ersatz missile had traveled 40m when a flash erupted from the conscious weapon’s barrel at the mobster’s side and shattered the jar. Motion sensors along the AUGUR implanted in Sóse’s cranium register the round’s acceleration and shuffled the additional variables into his calculations.

Now.

The illustrated Persian let loose one final, demonic yowl as the 6’9 detective leapt through the signboard that splintered beneath his emerald-wreathed left shoulder. Meanwhile, his right hand drew Tawiskaron from its holster. The previously trapped apparition transitioned from its initial form to a condensed projectile. It hurtled towards Sóse’s original position, incinerating the dry foliage in a 10m radius of its azure nucleus. 

By then the cybernetic detective was diagonally propelled 15m into the courtyard at 300 mph with his lunge. The motion-damping and stability-inducing subsystems of Sóse’s n0 sc0p3 augment kicked on while he was airborne. Decentralized nanocircuits along his inner-ear, optic nerves, and cerebellum adjusted his balance and orientation, thereby narrowing his fire zone to allow for greater accuracy while moving at high speeds. He hip-fired Tawiskaron. Arcs of cobalt gleamed along the fiber optic threads of his aramid long-sleeve as they spiraled down the 13” barrel. A .950 osmium alloy projectile tore through the shortened distance between Sóse and the stygian gangster at Mach 3.8 towards its target. If unchecked, the round would strike a stark yellow eye of the grotesque pistol dead in its center.
Sóse traveled another 3m before his polyamide soles met the courtyard’s cracked cobblestones. In those final floating meters, Sóse’s right arm rose. Tawiskaron swung upwards with a new target in mind: the condensed projectile now 30m away from the cybernetic detective’s original position.
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[h3][b]Parooz[/b][/h3]

Parooz's watchful eyes blinked sideways, examining the burly figure opposite of him, never taking his eyes off the man with his piercing fog-light vision. While in his windup, he noticed the individual seemed to be waiting for something. Perhaps his opponent knew in baseball there was one well-known fact about pitching. After delivering his pitch, even with his grossly root-like vein-riddled tri and biceps tossing a projectile at generally incomprehensible speeds, Parooz, like any other pitcher, was vulnerable until he regained his footing. In that split second you could hear Parooz's bones and joints grotesquely crack and pop as he contorted his body to move in time. Somehow, his movement was undeterred, and his talon-like feet burst through the expensive boot soles like cleats as he picked up superhuman speed.

His opponent sprung sideways and Parooz, cognizant of the trajectory of a potential counter, kept advancing forward and right to the detective, closing the distance. He had an exceptionally solid view of the man considering the blast of gale winds cleared anything that may have been obstructing his view. Even the sign the map he leaped through instantaneously blew away at the release of the Jinn.

Initially, the mobster assumed the man would aim at him, so he made an effort to stay constantly moving, but his target was Tony, still within the restraints of his belt but watching in genuine terror.
"He's trying to–"

The pistol's words were cut off when the whizzing round eclipsed his body narrowly, scarring the edge of the pistol's slide stop. Tony didn't even see it coming. Parooz's cartoonish "C"-Shaped contorting of his figure, while freakishly maintaining semblance of a stride, saved him by completely overestimating how wide the round possibly was despite Sośe's hip-firing gun. It wasn't reflex, it was the sheer unorthodox nature of his movements which were equal parts nimble and sportaticly chaotic. This mostly likely gave Sośe fits considering how accurate his shot actually was despite it.

Tony was used to firing off the shots, not being a target himself and now he was mad. Relaying a message telepathically to Parooz, it seemingly distracted him from controlling the Jinn.

"I AM BAANIM, THE BOUNDFUL. I WILL NOT BE SOME MERE INSTRUMENT OF BATTLE!"

The unbound body of the genie expanded from a ball, morphing into a form akin to its original. However, its flames plagued existence and all its hazards remained. The raging spirit accelerated like a runaway train on the way to assault Parooz but through Sośe caught in the middle of its blind fury. Its nebulous cloud of fire exploded forward like lighter fluid hitting a grill, approaching in a hugging form about twenty meters wide. Because its inferno was less concentrated out of its ball state, the flames were very much visible but merely jumping to the side would baptize Parooz opponent this time.

As smoke from the inferno wafted into the courtyard again, the gun centric fighter had to deal with the rise in temperature which was not only a threat to him but his ammunition.

It was very possible any rounds inside the barrel of his weapon stock could heat up to the point of ignition temperature for the primer or propellant, causing them to go off unexpectedly. This was especially true for any non railguns he could be carrying, and Sośe could very well discharge on himself.

To make things worse, an enormous switchblade conjured out of a blaze in Parooz's left hand, glimmering in a malignant amount of energy concentrated on just the blade's edge. Mindful of his opponent's drawn barrel and its trajectory, staying clear, he diligently progressed towards his opponent.

[h3][b]Sóse[/b][/h3]

[indent][indent][indent][indent]

As Sóse soared through the air following his shot he observed the pinstriped devil go full Merrie Melodies mid-stride to barely avoid the .950 round that streaked off into the gloomy woods surrounding the courtyard. The projectile left a series of smoking craters through the bare trees along its trajectory, highlighting the destructive force that almost struck true. 

This has gotta be cartoon cat hell.

Sóse hit the courtyard’s broken cobbles boot-first and used that momentum for a controlled lateral roll. His head tilted against his right shoulder to prevent injury as his luminous left shoulder met the ground. The shoulder roll ended with Sóse in a kneeling shooting position, left foot forward, oriented towards the moving mafioso’s direction. Simultaneously, the coruscating emerald nimbus completely enveloped the cybernetic detective.

IZO MOLECULAR ASSEMBLER ENGAGED
DESIGNATION: OFFENSIVE

During Sóse’s roll, his outstretched right arm continued to track his secondary target via a combination of n0 sc0p3 working in conjunction with the bioplastic shock compressors of the STEADFAST system housed within his shoulders. The condensed ball shifted again after a voice like a hurricane roared across the courtyard; a nebulous inferno, twenty meters wide, surrounded its airy form as it furiously reeled on its fleet former warden. Meanwhile the molecular assembler hidden within Sóse’s left thigh flash-fabricated graphene plates out of a silicon carbide cartridge.
The firestorm phantom traveled 10m on its path towards the advancing mobster when Sóse fired a second shot through its scorching haze. A miniature vaporous vortex appeared in the round’s wake as it sped through the phantom’s flames towards the demon at the moment a large switchblade appeared in his red right hand with a hellish flourish.

This diversionary shot coincided with the navy blue tacti-cloth of his cargo pants shredding at his raised left knee. With a blur, Tawiskaron returned to his right hip as opaque graphene llamelar plates horizontally spiral in a hexagonal-matrix from Sóse’s kneecap in the shape of tower shield 6’ tall by 4’ wide when held vertically. In an instant Sóse gripped the handle with his free left hand and peered over the shield’s edge as the emerald nimbus crept over its atramentous panels.

“…enough.”[/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent]


[hider=Judgement]Coinflip! Sose wins!

[/hider]