Brucenorris007

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce felt Jenso's Ki before he heard him.

He heard Jenso's declaration before he saw him.

The first thing he saw upon reaching the next floor was Jenso's output vanishing courtesy of Nexus.

'Annoying.'

"Jenso may be a fool," Bruce said, walking past Jenso to stand between him and Nexus. "But at least he's alive."

Bruce had been preparing for his fight too long to make a speech. He only felt he owed Nexus some effort to make him understand.

"You can't sell hope when you've been dying for centuries," Bruce said, surreptitiously tossing his wooden instrument behind him for Jenso to catch. "The living prove their existence by saying something. Even the dead can speak. You've been undead for too long, Nexus- you haven't been saying anything."

Even if Ki wouldn't last in front of him, Bruce lay his hand over the hilt of his sheathed blade.

"It's time to let others speak."

Bruce glanced behind him at Jenso.

"When you need strength," he said, casting a significant look at the instrument. "Just use your fire to call upon my power."

Bruce had confidence enough in his efforts to have infused a drastic fraction of his Ki into the item- he would support him with all his power, as he's promised.

Bruce turned his back to Jenso again. His posture spoke of relaxation, yet he exuded purposeful readiness.

"Go."

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce's eyes flickered from Oz to Zelriane and the exit.

Bruce wanted to finish the fight, but the desire passed. His meditation, while not ideal, had yielded some success in making his walls more aesthetic than necessity. He'd come to terms with all that he was.

His phantoms returned to his body, disappearing while his form regained substance and volume. Save a few chinks, he was largely unharmed.

Bruce nodded at Oz and set off sprinting for the staircase to catch up to Jenso. Zelriane wasn't likely to just let him go, but it didn't matter.

"We're not the prey," he murmured- evidently, he'd found a new rhythm and melody that he was acting upon. "We are the hunters."

A Hero Tale {Complete}

"Pay it back in spades now."

Despite Zelriane pressing the offensive, Bruce maintained his vague dissociation from the scene, though 'dissociation' really didn't describe it adequately.

As he was, Zelriane's attempts at taunts were rendered moot on every level. Beyond listening to anything superfluous, Bruce kept track of the dispatching of his clones.

Fighting one so much faster than him made taking damage inevitable- thankfully, among other things, Bruce had improved his compartmentalization of pain drastically when he developed his phantom technique. Because, being that Bruce's true body was left more vulnerable state in exchange for using the more versatile, faster and infinitely reactionary material of his Sage state, the damage he took translated to more significant damage in direct correlation to how much material he used of his body.

The benefits, particularly in his current fight, included disorientation that replicas composed of Earth-born material could not achieve, in large part because his inherent Ki came away with each 'Guardian' such that he could not easily replicate with other golems.

'May get uncomfortable'

The incomplete thought flashed across Bruce's mind and fell away, neither disregarded nor allowed to provoke concern. He simply acted.

He dug deeper, and the form of his true body visibly shrank a little beneath his robes. Phantoms appeared half a step to his left, right, and continued flowing out and fully forming. With each new double he seemed to grow a new head and arms, and his footwork was nearly indiscernible among no fewer than twenty-four feet.

Before he could make an offensive move, however, he sensed Oz's heavy presence through the scattered particles he'd left around the chamber. Those same particles shivered at a rippling power headed in their direction. Rather than avoid and give Zelriane more opportunity to either duck back or try disabling him, Bruce armed each phantom.

Seeing twelve arms bent at different angles with alternating weapons, and seeming to grow out of one another- a mace and a sword often next to one another, though there was no obvious pattern- was a disorienting sight.

Each of his phantoms lunged with their weapons- slashing crosswise, vertically, horizontally and heaving massive maces downward.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce's phantom, being comprised of material that had originally been Bruce's own skin, reacted the same as though Zelriane had made contact with his body.

Moving based on gut feeling and tactile sensation rather than sight, he reacted a little faster than he otherwise could have. The blade in his right hand dissipated and the blade in his left hand lengthened. With an upward flick of his wrist, the blade came in an arc toward Zelriane's outstretched hand, intent on cleaving through palm, fingers and forearm as much as possible.

A moment after that, the two clones nearest either flank stepped forward, slashing crosswise to send slicing waves of Ki at the encroaching threat.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

"Strike back."

Bruce's tune seemed to have changed. The melody intensified, chords struck deeper and higher and more rapidly.

'Gaian Guardian.'

The technique name, admittedly more in homage to Ross than technical accuracy, passed through Bruce's mind.

Recognition of Zelriane's shift in offensive style clicked in his mind, still orbiting a median of his psyche. Reactionary rather than brute force.

Bruce's very skin, composed still of stone, moved. Material moved so fast it gave the impression of a phantom that moved a half-step, then a full step ahead of his true body. The skin-deep composition moved in tandem with Bruce's real body.

In the phantom's right hand his mace took form, swinging forward to strike. A step behind, Bruce thrust forward with his right handed sword, the blade elongating to pass through the Earthborn phantom while the mace aimed for Zelriane's head.

Bruce's left blade rose with his left forearm at crosswise with his torso.

The clones still behind Bruce tightened their formation around him.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce murmured, apparently still in the midst of a song in his head.

Thoughts flitted through his mind, perceiving and reacting to the world.

Zelriane's odd pause caught his eye, and while stone clones took a few moments to reform, Ki remained nebulous when not outright destroyed- chains where the disintegrated clones had been came together again, tracking toward Zelriane's presence to Bruce's left and flying toward him from arcing angles in a semicircle, those nearer the invisible line from Zelriane's position to Bruce's flying straight toward the Order member.

The dirt sent flying back slowed and paused in its midair flight, swirling together in a vortex to summon again new limbs that joined the fray, each with palms up vertically facing Zelriane, blades of Ki protruding from them.

For his own part, Bruce followed kept pace with the attack, maintaining a few Earthen clones at his back.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce hummed at Zelriane. Well, it might have been at Zelriane, but with the way his attentions were divided it was impossible to tell if he was even listening.

'Is he talking?'

Okay, so Bruce was obviously not listening anymore with Jenso having cleared the chamber.

He whistled once, the opening note to the tune he'd been playing on the way to the tower. The melody continued in his mind while he called up more elaborate golems in his image. They appeared in formation around him, one almost pressed against his back, and he put a bit more Ki into their creation than usual- lengths of chain lay beneath their Earthen exteriors. Those on the left held their weapons left-handed, mirrored on the other side.

Bruce himself unsheathed his sword, doubling up the way he had on the ground floor- one held backwards with the blade running up his forearm, the other outward and offensive.

As one, the formation ran toward Zelriane, those behind Bruce keeping pace.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce may not have been able to follow Zelriane's movements, but having fought him once, he was familiar with his tactics. The fact that the faster Order member took Jenso's back was hardly a surprise, and precious moments were not wasted collecting the sand Bruce had spread around the chamber beneath Jenso.

Two arms of sand, identical to Bruce's, flew up just behind Jenso, golden Ki concentrating, folding over and humming in synchronized melody in each hand. In the right hand, Bruce's blade took form again and slashed upward, intention of severing Zelriane's hands clear. In the left hand, spiked chains materialized and erupted forward to embed themselves in Zelriane's torso.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce didn't flinch- not so much as a muscle on his face moved to betray that he heard Jenso from his communicator. He doubted it mattered, but he was multitasking a bit, trying to attain peace.

Nonetheless, the manipulation of his earth changed slightly to accommodate Jenso's request- just before the final stretch of the maze that lay between him and the stairs, which Bruce knew by tracking his progress via the sand, golems crawled out from the ever-changing walls.

Some were composed of stone, others cement, a few even of sand, but all had Jenso's features in common. Bruce opened up the area, but maintained the walls keeping Jenso from sight for the moment. He'd be moving forward soon, and the golems, also still out of sight, would move in formation ahead of him in reaction to his Ki signature approaching.

That done, Bruce waved his right hand and his familiar blade came into being. He didn't wield it, however. The disembodied replica of his own hand made another appearance, clutching the blade by the hilt and slashing horizontally, sending a Ki wave toward Zelriane and Shaidra.

None of it meant to be a real threat- it was a warning.

"This will be less of a hassle, Bruce said to Alvios coolly, neither acknowledging nor ignoring anything Zelriane had been saying. "If we fight back-to-back."

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Bruce spread out his hand, palm down, distributing sand particles throughout the chamber. It wasn't a uniform layer, but enough for him to feel where everyone stood and when they moved.

He glanced behind him to Jenso and, in addition to motioning him forward with a flicker of his eyes, mouthed "Go."

Inside of a few seconds, Bruce had a stone wall erected between Jenso and everyone else, cutting him off from sight.

'If she cannot see, he might get through.'

A mass of earth particles shot out of the bag, hovering in the air and shifting rapidly to extend the wall blocking Jenso from view. At the same time, behind that wall, a complex maze of turns, crawl spaces high enough to slide under and elevated gaps took shape. All of the walls continually morphed and changed position- a path leading to the stairs was always present, but it never stayed the same for more than a handful of moments, and the only constant was that one had to be inside the maze to actually see anyone else who was also inside.