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BartimaeusThe Book Keeper VS The Itinerant Exorcist - Rounds 2 & 3
Whilst Motley enjoyed the thrill of the chase, it did start getting old after a while. Especially when the weather was getting less than tolerable, and the individual he was chasing was starting to tire. In fact, it seemed like she was barely throwing any of those orbs of fire in his direction now - in a seemingly last-ditch effort, she flung about four at him in a tight cluster, an eye-rollingly poor effort considering her initial assault. Bored and wanting to finish her off- or at least get his hands on her phylactery, that soul container of hers- Motley promptly leapt diagonally sideways, into the wall of the still-medieval building she was just passing, then bounced off of that to land deftly in front of the mage, bringing her to an abrupt, gasping halt just a meter or two before him.
'Not to press the point, but this is getting old,' Motley drawled, glaring at her with only minor malice in his eyes. 'Cry uncle, or I'll make you.' And cliché aside, that was a promise, not a threat.
'Hahaha... I'm just... getting started...' the girl claimed, despite clearly being worn out. As if to prove a point, she promptly threw another grouping of four fireballs toward Motley, though to her credit, she did at least try to curve them in toward him from the four diagonals. Alas, she had left very obvious gaps in the formation, and so the vampire simply leapt over the upper two wisps, forming an arc toward the girl. What he had in mind was simple enough: with the nerve endings on his hands, shock her skull until she passed out, or at least keep her paralysed long enough to plug his phylactery into hers and steal her soul away.
What he hadn't expected was for her to rummage through her bag immediately after flinging the flames, and then to flick it in his direction as he jumped, like it would provide some form of protection. Almost insulted, Motley flicked the paper out of his path, only to suddenly grow weak, to land oddly and almost stumble before her, as the air pressure kept the note clinging to his hand for longer than desired.
Damn it, I forgot she was a magician for a moment, Motley cursed himself, even as he registered the spell's effects on him being notably lesser than they ought to - perhaps his innate willpower provided him some resistance to its effects, or maybe some other possibility was messing with its functionality. Of course she's trickier than she looks! And speaking of which, his preoccupation with the note and his sudden loss of strength had given her ample opportunity to further reveal this side of herself: with a yell of triumph, she brought forth the wisps she had fired at him earlier, apparently hidden behind her until this moment, curving them round her body and towards Motley again. With as much strength as he could muster, he leapt backward whilst tearing the note away from his palm, only to shriek in sudden agony as the four fireballs behind him slammed into his back, detonating on impact and setting him well and truly on fire, inciting a searing, seemingly-supernatural pain that he certainly wasn't used to experiencing.
'Ugh... I'm such a fool!' he lambasted himself in mid-air, stripping all of his articles of clothing away in one smooth motion of all his limbs now that his usual grace was restored, just to give himself a second longer to consider his next move. 'Of course she wasn't tired out. It was a ruse to make me lower my guard! HEAVY FUEL!' At the calling of his Stand's name, his body began to spew a flood of black gas from every pore and orifice other than his eye sockets, catching the fire on his body and forcing it away from his skin and flesh (and, since it was relevant, his clothing too, the fluid parting rapidly to allow the clothes to fall to the ground mostly unscathed), though the sensation and effect of being burned alive continued to manifest there, for now it was the Stand itself that burned, perhaps even faster than he himself would have.
Even so, he landed in a position of what he considered to be mostly advantage. Yes, his very soul was on fire, in a way that potentially threatened his life for its enhanced effect on both the undead and his Stand's natural weakness to flames of this sort, but it would maintain its form and substance for a while yet simply for how much of it he continued to emit; plus, he now had a lot more information about the girl, namely that she had greater stamina and was more cunning than he'd given her credit for.
But it seemed she was not immune to confusion, or embarrassment, the latter in particular an emotion he'd abandoned a long time ago. 'Uuuuh... w-why are you naked?' the girl asked, now unwilling to look at him for his exposed form, and in turn leaving herself open to attack. Had he just given her credit for being more cunning than expected?
'So my clothes aren't set on fire. I only have the one set,' Motley explained, already planning his next move and mastering the pain of melting and remelting muscle in his mind, for a sensation as base as pain should ultimately be meaningless to the undead, even if it was supernaturally-inflicted. And this time, he'd make sure she didn't ruin his attack with one of those... talismans, were they? Whatever they were, he couldn't touch them without losing strength, and he suspected touching them with Heavy Fuel would have the same result.
'Um... okay... w-well anyway, it seems I underestimated you,' the girl responded, echoing his own thoughts back at him in a shy, but still overconfident tone, 'for not only are you a filthy murderous vampire, but a vampire who has been possessed! By some form of, uh... smog ghost. And it burns just as freely as you, at that!'
'On the one hand, true. On the other hand, you can't burn something twice,' Motley responded, matter-of-factly. In the next moment, he sent Heavy Fuel out toward her, still burning with that unnatural fire, and now ready to punish her for her inattention, for clearly she was focused on not glimpsing his nudity.
And yet something else clearly had noticed. A humanoid figure, indistinct through the purplish haze, called for her to "Look out, master!", and though she spied the oncoming mass of darkness, her immediate reaction of "more wisps of fire" was a woefully inadequate response. They certainly detonated against the Stand, but barely affected its charge at all for the firewall it already presented; in the next second, Heavy Fuel had engulfed her, setting her ablaze in turn and drawing out a feminine yell of pain, before a portion of its form pooled into a mass of oil and wrapped round her ankle, flinging her over the head of its master to smack against the cobbles of the street with a thud that, for any other being, would be sickening to hear. A hard full-body blow, but non-lethal, just enough to wind and daze the girl rather than crack her bones, for though the Stand's physical strength was no more than Motley's own without enhancement, that was certainly sufficient to kill a normal human being with one hit.
And after that, he simply desummoned Heavy Fuel. The Stand vanished, and the flames boiling both his form and that of his foe with it once deprived of fuel. Yes, it had hurt like nothing else, but he'd recover rapidly. She, however, likely would not, and at that was quite singed - he guessed, however inaccurately, first-degree burns across her body, an evidently painful experience at best. Blisters everywhere, an experience he'd once been intimately privy to. Just now, as it happened, though perhaps "broiling flesh" was a bit more extreme than that.
Still, he couldn't sympathise with her. He still had a fight to win, and so strolled over to the groaning body, nabbing his own soul container from within his shirt and jacket as he passed that pile, and lifting the woman by the nape of her neck, her hood falling away as- wait, were those animal ears?
'Oh, that's what I'm smelling...' the vampire muttered, understanding the source of his foe's strange scent at last. Or at least guessed so, judging by the ears emerging from the top of her skull. Not lupine or feline, so from the shape and size, they were presumably vulpine - in other words, she was part fox. He supposed he really hadn't smelt any foxes around before, so that explained why he didn't recognise the musk. Interesting.
He'd ask about it later, if she gave any straight answers. Right now, he had a phylactery to recover. Espying the chain round her neck, he tactlessly dug his hand between her cleavage, drawing the item proper forth with little struggle for her state. Simple enough. He brought his own phylactery up from where it lay, ready to place them together.
The slight sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath, much quieter than many television shows would pretend, was the only warning he had, but it was enough for him to lean back, losing only his hand at the wrist to the sudden swipe of a katana aimed at his neck. Whilst he'd intended to curse her for concealing the weapon until now, he didn't get a chance before a reverse-swipe came back toward him, this time far more on the mark - though he stepped backward, it caught his throat and sliced it open, spilling the blood from the artery in his neck, silencing his voice, and most importantly disrupting his breathing somewhat. He'd barely processed that suddenly, she was showing skill beyond what her initial cowardice suggested, before she lunged at him, a third sword strike finishing the job and decapitating him entirely, again despite his superior speed. And now he was confused, a mild 'Wryy?' escaping his mouth in spite of its separation from his lungs.
It wasn't that she'd gotten faster, either... no, she was simply moving more efficiently, spending energy to attack instead of flailing her limbs around like a child manhandling a ragdoll. Could the entity he'd seen before have something to do with that? Perhaps she did have a Stand after all, or at least something similar. And now that Motley was aware of that... well, there wasn't much he could do to stop her from stabbing him through the heart, apparently a form of staking irrelevant to a vampire of his sort, but only because he'd taken the split-second opportunity to extend his blood vessels out of his neck to reattach to the body in the right places, and to then do the same again from his wrist stump to meet his hand. But by then, she'd raised a hand overhead and called forth... well, probably as many wisps of fire as she could, all destined to meet with Motley's face if he didn't act fast.
And what luck, for fast was the speed at which he acted best. Head and body communicating once again despite the continued disconnect of his spinal cord, his right arm moved, connecting a solid punch to the sudden assassin's jaw to stun her, and disrupt her casting entirely. That in turn gave him to time to reel his body parts in, neck and hand meeting and merging with their respective stumps again just two seconds after they'd first left it. And that allowed him to breath effectively once more - his body might have been able to use the Ripple sans head, but he figured the risk wasn't worth it, if Heavy Fuel's effect only remained in one part or the other of his person.
And so, he finally allowed his annoyance to flow free. Whether or not he maintained some of his humanity from his Stand, he was still a vampire at the end of the day. And she had, after all, done some notable damage to his person. A rapid flurry of punches, crackling with what seemed like black electricity, struck her torso over and over again, accompanied by a war cry of 'Soul Breaker Overdrive! WRYYYYYYY!' The attack ended with a much harder cross punch, flinging her sideways into the building they had stopped by, hard enough to crack the outer layer of the wall of the house itself. Naturally, the girl was unconscious before she slumped to the ground, defeated outright by the attack. Still not dead - he'd limited his Dead Ripple to a smaller fraction of its full strength, and even then her own energy had seemingly been substantial enough to absorb the hit and then some - but she'd probably be out for a while, and she'd certainly be too bruised and enervated to use any more magic even if she were up on her feet.
At last relieved of the spell of combat, and regenerating nicely thanks to the life energy he had stolen, Motley sighed deeply, content that he was finally safe to deal with himself and his first foe as he saw fit. The first step of that: getting her soul. Striding over to her figure, he grabbed her phylactery from where it lay over her shirt in one hand, bringing his own soul container to hers with the other, and... the smith had said the "nozzle" of the receiving container should be used to draw forth the soul from the giving container, so he pressed the spike of his own phylactery into the hole at the center of hers.
...well, that seemed to do the trick, anyway. Step two: return his clothes to his body. He could walk around the city nude, but that would just be inconvenient for, amongst other reasons, keeping his phylactery hidden and maintaining an element of surprise. Thus, he gathered the items he had shedded and pulled them back on, noting where each article of clothing had taken damage from that cursed magical fire. Honestly, that was just rude of her.
As for step three... well, if he intended to make a combat ally of her, he supposed he ought to make sure she didn't get eaten whilst she couldn't defend herself. Grabbing and lifting the fox-girl over one shoulder, he brought her into the house he'd just flung her against, looking round to ensure nobody was home, before taking her to what seemed like a nice enough bed- that is, it was the most modern alternative to the literal beds of straw elsewhere in the building- and laying her down upon it. As it happened, there were few rooms in the building, old and peasant-built as it was, and if he sat next to the girl's torso, he could see both the entrance door and most of the plasma-screen television on the far wall that drew its power from who knew where. It was no book, but it'd do for keeping himself entertained. Leaving his charge's side for just long enough to recover the remote control, he turned the TV on, and began to flick through the channels. He supposed he'd be doing that a lot over the next few hours.