[center][h3]Coffee Conclusion[/h3]
Amaterasu & Harry Du Bois
[b]Word Count:[/b] 3501 (+4)[/center]

The divine wolf sat herself down on the top of the van and raised her snout to the heavens again, not to howl but instead as an act of frustration. Apparently these people had no respect for miracles. Perhaps they were simply too focused on themselves and the moment to recognise the impossibility of what had just occurred… or they were too used to the impossible for her to have had an impact. 

Then she had a thought that caused her to lower her head and tilted it in confusion. The reaction had seemed genuine to her sharp ears, which made her wonder how much of this was her doing, and how much G-Corp. 

Either way, her message had failed, and so now she was just sitting on the information she’d tried to convey with no way to communicate its complexity… unless…

With an idea in mind, the wolf hopped down off the van, and started to push her way through the crowd towards Harry, intending to grab him and take him to the Polar Star van so he could hear the tale from the bear’s mouth himself.

Harry looked disappointed in himself for not talking with his fist. But thought that fighting her would do nothing to help them. Even the wolf’s attempt to convey her message seemed to fail. He stood there, feeling awkward, as people went back to ignoring him and the other seekers. 

“Huh, did ya need something, Ammy?” He turned his head to Ammy, somewhat stumbling behind her. 

Ammy made a muffled bark as she thoroughly the hem of his jacket she was tugging, before letting him go and slinking her way through the crowd, expecting him to follow her. Once she got back to the polar star coffee van she sat down next to the bear and glanced between its proprietor and Harry, leaving the rest up to him.

The disgruntled polar bear had been hopeful for a moment as Amaterasu took her stand, but the wolf’s limited ability to communicate -and Azucena’s bravado- meant that her accusation went nowhere. That left the bear feeling more glum than ever, although now that he knew Amaterasu was intelligent, he did feel a little embarrassed for spilling his guts to her, since he didn’t actually want to ship Azucena off to Everdream Valley or anything.

When Ammy led Harry to him, the crestfallen bear turned to confusion. “Uh…did you want me to tell him, too?” Being in the vicinity the whole time, the bear could identify Harry as the heckler, who’d been bothering Azucena with baseless accusations but folded when the martial artist told him to put his money with his mouth was. He’d probably be happy to make a scene about the actual dirty deeds perpetrated by G-Corp, but due to his behavior he din’t have a whole lot of credibility right now. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try.

“Well, G-Corp’s been trying to put me out of business, since my coffee shop is Azucena’s competition,” the white-furred beast began after a moment. “First they built a shop right by mine and undercut me, stealing my sales. They could do that ‘cause they didn’t need to make money off the coffee. When I didn’t give up, they bought the building I’m leasing in and jacked up the rates so high I couldn’t pay.” The bear bared his teeth at Azucena. “And now here she is, doing this stunt of hers right where I’m tryin’ to sell coffee outta my truck, all smiles and laughs. Doesn’t she know what her G-Corp buddies have been doing to me? Or maybe she’s just that cold-hearted.”

The detective followed Ammy to the truck that was owned by a polar bear. This was strange to Harry as such a thing was not present in his world. But thought nothing of it because this world was quite strange. He had been crouching in front of the truck, but was now standing in front of the counter where the owner was. 

Carefully, he listened to the tale of how he was being shafted by G-Corp. Feeling a throbbing anger, hearing the injustice that had happened to him. But he wasn’t red in the face, screaming and ranting, although internally he felt that way. Harry had been rubbing his chin as he heard the Polar Bear’s story. He wasn’t sure to what extent Azucena knew about G-Corp screwing over the bear. But he didn’t want such an injustice to happen to other people. 

“I don’t know how much she knows about G-Corp screwing you over. But perhaps we could use this information to convince her to break ties with G-Corp.” Harry looked back at Azucena, who was still working the crowd. He hoped this story could make Azucena doubt her ties with G-Corp. The thought of her not wanting to speak to him came to mind, since he had made a first impression on her. 

While this was happening, Hilde continued to grow uneasy. With no clear plan in mind, and no idea what her new associated were doing, but a rising need to do [i]something[/i], the lady knight began to sidle closer to the Gigas through the crowd. In a normal city a woman in silver armor might have been the center of attention, but among the vast and varied fighters of Esaka she was a little less unusual than one might think, so it wouldn’t be long before she was within striking distance of Azucena’s bodyguards. If she took the initiative against the bioweapons and caused a scene, the others might be able to take advantage of the distraction to do something about Azucena before the city’s Aurumatons showed up.

The woman was still unusual enough for Amatarasu’s sharp eyes to spot her moving. She had, admittedly, almost forgotten about the knight, but there was no mistaking that she was moving with some sort of purpose now, which was worrying given that they had no idea what it was.

At the same time, she was the only one among them who’d not made a fool of themselves at this juncture. Yet anyway. Whatever she was up to might well become a problem given she wasn’t working with the info they now both had.

As such, the divine wolf gave a bark, and then slipped into the crowd again to head the knight off at the pass. As she did so she paused the world, rendering it into her canvas, and drew two horizontal lines to slow time and give her the time she needed to make it to her destination. Once there’ she’d grab the butt of her spear and give it a tug in an attempt to request a forestalling of violence and to try and direct her to Harry so he could relay the info to her in turn. At the tug, Hilde stopped in her tracks and looked down at Amaterasu with a quizzical look.

Harry was trying to intercept Hilde from doing anything drastic. He sprinted, or really, he was jogging towards her. Feeling beads of sweat running down his face and flabby body. By the time Ammy was tugging at the hilt of her spear, Harry was right behind her, panting loudly. His body arched forward, and his hands were placed on his knees. After a few seconds of catching his breath, he told her the new information he just learned. 

“Hi…miss i just learned something we could use against Azucena. They bought the building near his store and stole most of his customers. And then they hiked the lease rate for the building where he had his store. Now he’s stuck selling coffee in a truck.” All of this was a stream of consciousness, only taking a deep breath after he had finished relaying this information. If she wanted to know more about the situation, he would take a deep breath before explaining it properly. 

Hilde’s eyes widened. This information changed everything. Taking Harry aside, she listened carefully to the specifics of the fate that had befallen Polar Star Coffee and its unlucky ursine owner. A plan began to form in her mind as she nodded along, and after a moment she gave the exhausted detective a reassuring (if somewhat reluctant) pat on the shoulder. “Understood. I’ll take it from here.”

The lady knight stepped forward from the crowd, waving the standard attached to her spear for attention. Azucena noticed her, of course, and treated Hilde to a toothy smile. “Oho! After seeing you waiting in the wings, I was hoping you’d step forward, señora! Looking to take on my Coffee Challenge?”

Hilde began by giving a polite bow, just the sort of formality one might expect of a knight, and just the opposite from how Harry began his own interaction. “Good afternoon. I do indeed intend to challenge you, but not your combat skills, which are clearly beyond repute.”

The flattery stoked Azucena’s ego even more because it came from a woman decked out in weapons and armor. “Well, I can’t blame you!” she replied, beaming. “But then, how’s this challenge gonna work? A dance-off?” She spun around and clapped her hands.

“Your principles,” the German told her. “Tell me, are you aware of Polar Star Coffee?”

The name elicited a raised eyebrow. “Polar Star?” Azucena gaze briefly wandered to the truck nearby. She had already noticed it, after all. “I guess. They’ve got guts competing against me, I’ll tell you that much?”

Hilde shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Not much of a competition when G-Corp seems to be fighting dirty. Undercutting them, pricing them out of their own building, all in an effort to drive them out of business and force customers to you. You seem to pride yourself on your brand’s own strength, your coffee’s ability to speak for itself. A shame your sponsors lack your confidence, and think you can only win by cheap tricks.”

“What?” Azucena scowled, her pride besmirched. “I don’t need any cheap tricks! Just like my coffee, I can win any competition fair and square!” She glanced back at the polar bear’s truck, then at Harry. “No way that’s true. G-Corp’s a little shady, I get it, but they’re just here for marketing!”

The knight’s gaze was as steely as her armor. “Do you really believe that, after the bombing last night?”

“Uh…”

At that moment, the Gigas pushed past Azucena, lumbering toward Hilde and Harry. The shove seemed to flare up her indignation more as she gave the brutes an incredulous look. “Hey, what’re you doing? I didn’t say to throw ‘em out yet!” One of them took a mighty swing at Hilde, who narrowly managed to backstep out of range. When Azucena went to grab one’s shoulder, it reached back and shoved her away. “HEY!” Her confusion turned to rage in an instant as Galeem’s influence activated. She ran forward and delivered a flying kick to one Gigas’ back, which sent it stumbling into a skewering thrust from Hilde’s spear. 

Harry had been listening to the conversation between Hilde and Azucena. His eyes were more focused on the Gigas that were coming closer towards the group. Jumping into the action when it was apparent that they took a swing at Hilde.  The detective closed the distance between himself and another Gigas coming towards them. Harry jumped a few feet in the air, trying to spin-kick one of the Gigas in the head.

Seeing this, Amatarasu put a bit of divine oomf into his kick, flicking a swirl of wind to boost his rotation and then dabbing an inkbullet on the impact site. In between pauses of time she hurried on after him, ducking low and sweeping a lash of her divine beads underneath his jump, aiming the divine weapon at the Gigas’s legs to try and destabilize him.

The pair’s combined efforts were more effective against the Gigas than the brutish bioweapon expected. Once its head got rattled, the divine beads were enough to sweep a leg and bring it down to one knee. Of course, with such enormous arms it didn’t need to haul itself back up to reach Harry. With a bellow, it reached out to try and grab the man’s leg, pull him to the ground, and then fall on him in a heavy body slam.

At the same time, the Gigas impaled by Hilde fought back despite the polearm lodged through its midsection, spurred on by anger and the potent chemicals flowing through its veins. It walloped a surprised Hilde with a one-two punch from its burly arms, then aimed a double overhead fist slam at her that forced her back. The next moment, Azucena struck him with a low kick into a backswing punch. Gigas turned to block her next strike, then aimed a massive haymaker, but the martial artist had already clapped and begun to strut forward in Libertador Stance. Head-first, she slipped past the knockout blow and launched Gigas with a reckless upward hook. A couple jabs kept him juggled long enough for Hilde to draw her sword, jump forward, and knock the bioweapon back down with a silver slash.

Harry felt the large hands grab onto his leg. Panic was starting to set in as the worst situation came to mind. His thoughts changed to the pain he was feeling as his body was slammed onto the ground. Harry felt as if all the breath was being taken out of his lungs. He took a couple of deep breaths as his Pain Threshold was trying to get him through the pain. It would impress his comrades as he quickly got back onto his feet. 

“Okay, pal now your askin for it.” Harry huffed and puffed as he rolled up the sleeves of his jacket. His Endurance thoughts encouraged him that he was strong enough to take on the Gigas. Harry clenched his fist and tried punching one of the Gigas in the jaw. It cracked the bioweapon’s face mask, but did not really impede it as it wound up for a giant punch.

Amaterasu paused time and added a dot of an ink bullet to the impact site, before twisting her view around and drawing a line through as many of the tubes on its back as possible to try and slice through them. Then, with her divine weapons left unavailable by her excessive use of ink, she leapt up, grabbed the tube on the Giga’s shoulder with her jaws, and put all of her weight into yanking down on it to offbalance the supersoldier.

While slicing the dangling tubes (which seemed to serve no practical purpose) didn’t do much, the full weight and strength of the wolf goddess were enough to throw the Gigas off and send it stumbling past Harry as its haymaker narrowly whiffed, passing so close to the detective that he could feel the displaced air. Grunting, the Gigas grabbed at Amaterasu to try and pull her off, then hurl her as far away as it could.

In response the divine wolf released her grip on the decorative pipe she was holding at the same time as she kicked off of the Gigas’ body with all four paws, sending her flying away but not nearly as far the Gigas might have wanted. She then double jumped in the air to adjust her flight and landed softly on all fours. 

Meanwhile, the ladies were making headway against the other Gigas. With its immense strength and distorted proportions, it did not fight with any kind of martial art so much as throw its weight around with flailing motions. Hilde’s excellent defense meant that she had no need to play a game of cat and mouse, however. With a combination of spear and sword, she kept it at arms length, checking the brute’s unstructured offense with quick jabs to give Azucena the chance to beat it down. The Peruvian’s aggressive style was even more potent than her coffee, despite the vast difference in weight class, she could juggle and combo the Gigas with ease. Being experienced fighters, the two women got a sense of how to cooperate without needing to communicate, and it wasn’t long before the two were making a spectacle of the bioweapon before the crowd.

Harry moved out of the way of the punch, being lucky that he did so, or his head would have been knocked off his shoulders. The detective gave a couple of hard kicks to its midsection, trying to knock it down. He hoped this would be enough to take out one of them. He was thankful he had Ammy and Hilde around to help fight these things.  When he felt his kicks weren't doing enough, he started shoulder-tackling it, trying to topple it over. 

Amaterasu joined in with this, rushing in and delivering a flying tackle to the Gigas in union with Harry’s own, unsteadying their foe. A warning screech of tires then sounded behind them as Amaterasu’s summoned striker, Cris the Car, revved its engines and then came roaring towards the super soldier.

Harry, seeing the car, jumped out of the way in a comical manner. Scrapping his elbow in the process.

As it came in, Amatarasu leapt up onto the bonnet of the demonic vehicle and then backflipped off of it. Her sundisk re-manifesting as she leapt, and she put the momentum of both the backflip and the car’s motion into a downward slam of the flat of the disk which she delivered to the Gigas’ head. A full-on car crash (however spiritual) followed by the terrific wallop of Amaterasu’s sundisk provided enough to fell even the mighty Gigas. The bioweapon slumped down, its helmet cracked and its six glowing lights replaced by spirals.

The noise from that massive collision, not to mention the spectacle of a runaway vehicle in the middle of a fairly crowded metropolitan street corner, were just the distraction Azucena needed to pull off a thrown on her own Gigas. After climbing around and atop the super-soldier’s shoulders, she locked her leg around its neck and squeezed hard enough to make its helmet lights go teary-eyed, then rolled forward to use the Gigas’ weight against it and flip it onto its back. As it staggered to her feet, Hilde moved in. “Behold my power!” She lashed out with a series of spear and sword slashes, ending with a thrust that speared the Gigas through. “The wolf claws, it bites!” Using her sword, she ground the blade along her spear to create a shower of sparks, setting her polearm ablaze. She whirled her spear around, then lunged forward to deliver a stab surrounded in a fiery tornado. “It tears asunder!” With a guttural roar, the Gigas tumbled backward and stayed down, unable to fight any further.

After a brief moment of silence, the nearby spectators began to clap and cheer. Nobody really understood what was going on; to them, it was all a show. Azucena, Hilde, Amaterasu, and Harry stood victorious, the Peruvian breathing heavily as the rage of Galeem left her eyes and her adrenaline subsided. She still seemed annoyed enough to spit at the fallen Gigas, though. “Some ‘bodyguards’ you were. Who do you think you are?”

Harry was getting back onto his feet; he looked quite tired. The detective was huffing and puffing loudly. Harry looked over towards the others before speaking. “Good jobs guys. Guess like your relationship with G-corp is over?” Even if it wasn’t from this fight, then Harry would tell her what G-corp had done to the  Ursinae’s coffee shop. 

If the detective was correct, then Amaterasu would be very pleased indeed. Well. She’d slightly regret the vandalism she’d done. After all, it seemed the woman was no hypocrite, just a bit blind to the truth and given the sunset glow in her eyes, that wasn’t exactly unexpected.

When Azucena learned what G-Corp had been doing to Polar Star Coffee without her knowledge, she was furious. “That’s so stupid! If Azucena Blend can’t win on its own merits, it shouldn’t win at all. There’s no point in winning a rigged fight.” Her anger gave way to embarrassment as she looked around at the crowd that remained. “Should’ve expected as much from G-Corp, eh? Guess I ought to take a step back for now and get my act together. The spotlight isn’t worth all this.”

And there it was, job done and with minimal casualties. Other than the Gigas anyway, which Amaterasu sniffed at, thinking she might as well learn their scent in case they were an issue again in the future. Being able to have a whiff of warning of their presence could only be a boon.

Harry was glad this whole deal was over. But the voices in his head was saying the contrary. In fact their war was still going on, and was going to only escalate. Harry fished out his flask and took a quick swig from it.