Setsuna

The bitter chill continued to blaze on around them, threatening to circumvent the player's survival as it howled. "Death is a lesson to those that survive it. You are so sure that they will learn, that they will witness their mistake or taste their own fear. What makes you believe that they will not seek out the easy solution again?" Hand resting on the handle of her blade, weighing her options. She knew damn well Alkor could keep up with her enough to make obliterating that scum difficult, and her element of surprise was all but gone.

"Those that survive them will learn from their mistakes, what happens to those that would make the same decision. How can you not see that? The taste of vengeance is nothing more than a side effect, it doesn't matter if it is fleeting. The memories of those lost will never be forgotten, becoming a permanent brand on the souls that are damned by them. It isn't pleasant and it isn't better. It is bitter but real." That screeching made the words louder, as she shouted against that bellowing creature of winter.

"They are all irrdeemable, every last one of them. They made their choices, they made their kill. Why should they be given a second chance, so they can abuse it. Do you think they will stop? Once the choice has been made once, it always lingers on the tip of the tongue. The taste of blood, it is easy and once it has been tasted it isn't one forgotten easily. You would speak to mercy to creatures unable to feel it, as if they would learn from it. They will use your mercy to slay more." She believed this to be the only truth.

"You are not my enemy, and you will not be able to stop me forever." The girl howled against those winds, a flickering frame still bleeding into that chill.

A harsh grinding as her blade is dragged against a rapid moving Alkor's, casting a shower of lights and sparks as they connect. Another slam as she vanishes and reappears, to Alkor's immediate right. Past those angry slivers of metal, a locked gaze betwixt the two. "You would preach to me of violence, after what I've seen their kind do?" The words came off harsh and cold like sandpaper. A vorpal tear and blades ring out, it would look like a storm to which Alkor was in the middle of, even still the man didn't seem bothered in the slightest. All that he'd reflect, was that same stalwart stare as he kept his senses open.

"What of the lives they inevitably destroy, with their selfish exploitation. What will you tell the ones who suffer at their hands?" There was an obvious outrage, those player killers would be long gone. All the girl would be is blind by her fury. Scoffing as she begins to remove her blade, staring Alkor down and contemplating giving pursuit. Her prey was not the man, but the one's he'd aided. "I am different, Alkor." a slight relax with that blade bleeding out smoke that joined the storm, held off to her. "This isn't how I ever imagined us meeting again, at ends over monsters masquerading as men. I'd say you've changed, but only in appearance."

A click as she redirects, apparating out of thin air and pressing her back into a frozen stone. The crunching of footfalls as bodies began to shuffle. Peering out as clumps of fog join with that blizzard, escaping the inch of steel of a rime cold blade. A sharp exhale, as she reaches into her clothes and removes a small vial. Her saya just beneath her wrist lights with a sword art being charged. With a thumb, she plucks the cork and casts out a tiny red light that quickly manifests into a loose shape.

"Use that potion."

Biting her teeth together so aggressively, it cut the lining of her cheek. "You won’t escape my vengeance." tightening her grip on that hilt, her feet spread low, shifting the snow. Her stance, akin to that of a runner, held taut that edge. A pulse forms a ring beneath where her feet were planted. That same darting light like a projectile, a single finite bit. A lethal slice aimed for the kill. Alkor blinds it at a nigh equal trail of his own, a swing finding a duplicate and making it disperse into powder. Lifting the blade and catching the soft patter, blades lock again.

"Why, do you know what they are here to do?" The girl spits through her mask, her name and cursor gone, and in its place a taste of outrage. Her appearance drastically different from the last time they'd met. A wave of shadow had consumed and changed her since.

A yelp of terror and the footsteps become faster paced. They would escape at this rate.

The storm thickened, as bitter cold tore through flesh to bone. Bodies become buried in a sea of white. A predator in that white had robbed them of courage, and they'd succumbed to it. Nefarious purpose had set the dial on that clock far past the strokes of daylight. A slender draw of a blade from the scabbard on her waist, color becoming mixed within that flurry. Nestled in that white playing the part of camouflage easily, a ghost by all definition. A body becoming translucent and like vapor, as legs began to carry her.

A vow carrying her.

Faint cries from the boy still missing his arm, as that creeping death continued to trail itself up. For his throat, the toxin had found its host, and it wouldn't be long before the fever claimed him. Struggling to keep himself awake, as his vision became blurred. His companion, his better, cradling the last of three that were foolish enough to attempt to exploit others. A man, but a monster. His path was chosen, his fate was sealed. The darting cyan light like a bolt of lightning scatters through. Snow begins to follow suit, being caught in the vacuum behind the jarring trigger of multiple skills. A weapon moving for the kill, a single remaining head for the pike.

To set an example.

Inclusion of black on that pastel paper white backdrop, and her katana finds connection, but it was solid. Not flesh, for that would offer no resistance. A single clash of steel on steel, a spray of sparks. Looking past those interlocked guillotines, a pair of feral looking eyes emboldened with cyan desire to kill. Fury, focused to lethality. That blizzard takes reprieve for but a brief flash, the force pushing it back and forming an eye within the storm. Someone had the strength to halt her advance, and that was no simple feat. "You." it bites through a cloth covered mouth. It turns to smoke and evaporates.

A violent spray and a blood-curdling scream. A boy no older than 20 clutches his right arm at the elbow, and a glowing stump just past that. A weapon clatters to the ground and is quickly lapped up by the sleet. "PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!" Shouts an older man, adorned in thick leathers and hide to stave against the cold. Eyes dart as he squeezes the shoulder of his comrade, burning above his head a nice little amber crystal spinning. Watching carefully into the flurry, trying his damned to pick out their pursuer. It had struck without warning, and the result. A slowly climbing parasite in the form of frost on the youngers skin.

On his flank, as he scans, his ally shatters and becomes sucked into that blizzard. Nothing more than a "Hgah." to alert him to it. The volume quickly vanishes into the storm. Abruptly pivoting, still holding onto that kid with a tight grip. "Show yourself, damn it, Fucking coward!"

A smile forms across a pair of cloth covered lips. A boast of an ego too ashamed to admit... it was terrified.

"Then you prove me right." She spoke to her words prior, that there were two types of people. Those that could kill, and those that could not. It came down to perspectives, and a question of if someone was redeemable. Koga would have tried to change them, protect them. To have a change of heart. Sliding a lid to a box and watching it vanish into a pocket dimension, she slides her katana back to the space on her back. An intense stare as she peers back at him, as if still stuck in the night before. "We shall see. My name is Setsuna. You are one of the few who know it, consider yourself lucky. If it were anyone else, I would have to kill you. Maybe I still will."

A prompt pops up that breaks the silence, and she gestures open her inventory screen. Tapping it opens it larger, and she reaches to a mask on her throat. "Watch your back Marutaro, never know who might be watching." Eyes flash bright, like glass frosted over. Her shape becomes translucent, flickering as she draws a sliver of her steel. Billowing white fog cascades out from her. The girl turns on her heel and leaps, and disperses like smoke from a cigarette.

One vow against another, one of death and another of life. In conflict? or Harmony?

Thread Closure:

6817/30=227*5=1135

Koga:
1135*7=7945 EXP
7945*.15=1591 Col (Includes Thread Closure)

Setsuna:
1135*8=9080 EXP

Simmone (Guild Treasurer):
9080*.15=1362 Col

Echoes in the distance, as the floor would slowly begin to welcome a morning. Shutters on door frames slide open to greet morning air. "It is a question of 'if' as is all things. If it is relevant, or if it will ever happen. I focus on facts, cold hard truths. I leave others to do the dreaming, I do not have the luxury. Marotaru can continue to dream for me, hope for me. But do not mourn me when your dreams fail, keep that heart to yourself. Place it somewhere else, I do not want it." Watching the people as they moved, drifting a bit with eyes that were heavy and yet would never close. "I do rather find it interesting, if it is your world or mine that will become real." The soured perspective, the twisted outlook, still lingered on her thoughts.

Everything that could go wrong, everything that simply wouldn't work out. A million tiny variables that could alter the course, and with it sweep the lives of many. Like a blackened cloud that would blot out the sun. Carrying with it orphans that she'd protected with her life.

ID:203374 | Battle:3, Craft:6, Loot:11+5=16 (Stealth Rating)

Moments later, another simply entered her building and placed another order. A sigh as she scoured down on yet another customer. When did news get out about her shop, this was far too many. The slink of a needle through a stock of fabric, quickly and easily matching shapes together, a rather quickly produced suit of armor. If anything, it kept her skills sharp. Folded up and dropped in the center of the room, a ghost had delivered yet another armor to a fresh face.

Without a word, without even the semblance of sight, a simple folded package in white fabric. A folded garb bound tightly with a bit of twine.

Delivered to @Xeno:

2/6/22

Materials Sent: 6/25/21

Sold to Xena

Resting the katana across her lap, looking down into her bento. "True, but each require a devotion of time. Likewise, what I do isn't safe. If I were to use what time I had, assuming that I could somehow operate at full capacity doing both. And I were to fade away, then I would only be repeating the problem. Attachment leads to the potential for pain, unless it can be protected. Not everyone has the luxury of such safety. Closure happens when the wrong has been corrected, safety comes after my task." Legs folded beneath her, rice still in a half-eaten clump in one side of that little box.

"There are many ways to seek closure, either through repairing or rebuilding. Or destroying every remnant of what once was." Staring straight forward, her look peering for miles. A thousand yard stare. "I am not 'ok' with it, I'll never be 'ok' with it. But I can haunt those that had done it to me. I can make them feel what I felt that day. What it means to be weak and powerless. Know this, Marutaro, if a blade would ever find your back. Another player were to try and exploit you or your loved ones. It will be the thought of if I might be watching that will stay their hands." A circumstance, victory through fear.

The blade gleams as the whetstone passes down and back, and she twists it, peering down its length. A bit more rice, plain and standard. "What is the point, if like before it can all be stripped away. Rebuild a whole new life, manufactured and fake, just to attempt to make myself feel better. Force it to happen for simply the sake of doing it." The edge still had a single knick, having caught on a bit of armor, and it couldn't afford to have it. "Or I can use what I have left to make sure that it never happens to anyone else. That is real, relevant and solves the problem." Reversing the grip on her katana and slowly sliding it back into its saya, an audible click as it snaps shut. The second question catches her a bit off guard, and she turns to look at him and locking sights with Koga. Setsuna's resolve painted on her face. "They wouldn't be proud of what I am, they wouldn't even recognize what I have become." But there was no sorrow, no waver in her tone. Acceptance.

"Do I, well, looks can be deceiving." The girl was a walking epiphany of it, maybe 120 lbs. wet, and she could fell even the largest opponent. "I did, three someone's. They died right in front of me. During my earning a living, no less." It was no secret. "So, your loved one, I understand your reluctance. But the absence of an answer proves there is someone you have in mind. Imagine that person, being incapacitated in front of you. Paralyzed and slowly dismembered, just outside your reach. Being too weak to save them, and another player does the deed. I died then, there is no starting over. Everything was taken from me in an instant." Horrors cast a grim look over her face as she eyed that mirrored steel. The array of three names still haunted every night, in the twilight when activity was at a lull. Messages she could send, but would never be received. A life that could have been cut short by a knife, and since such an edge had done her in, it would do the same to that which had stolen it from her.

Peeling a bit of rice out and cramming it into her lips, before she uncorks a small bottle. A pungent stink comes out of it, and she peels free the tweezers and clutches the katana's hilt. Drawing it out casts a dry ice fog that rolls out from her. Skin pale white and getting just that much whiter. Eventually it disperses, and reveals a silverish blue edge that frost begins to coagulate on it. Dragging a cotton swab down the length before eating more rice, and moving to a stone. "I suppose." The girl remarks, paying careful mind honing the edge.  "They would not and should not. I am no longer living." She turns to look at him, and she looked like a ghost. An ode to the rumor regarding her on floor 4. "I died long ago, when everything was taken away from me in an instant." Her face sours just a bit, as if there was more, but it is forced down and gone without issue. Practiced and careful. "Who would mourn you? That would die as I have if you were gone?" The question was worded as if a trade, non-negotiable.

A flick of the wrist and Setsuna returns that needle into the scarf around her neck, disappearing into the purple fabric. The image fades and the clones turn to snow and fall gracefully on the wind. Point proven. "I have a guild, my friends are dead. No one would mourn me, if that is your question." The reply was numb, unfeeling and cold. Sliding open a menu, and typing away a quick response. To the overwatch, that her opponents rushed away and would need tracking. In the same slide between menus, she peels out a small box and slides down a wall of stone near a pile of bones. The girl looked so alone, and despite it, she was defiant in her silence.

Sliding open the top reveals a plain portion of rice, of food that was meant for nothing more than to sustain her. An exhalation as she appeared tired, and yet alert. From her hip, a katana, riding her right shoulder. A small container removed from the bento, one of leather. Unfurling, it reveals a bottle and a pair of tweezers. "Thanks for the meal." The girl murmurs, leaving Koga to move as he wished.

"I am." he'd weighed what she'd done, which, considering it for a moment as if he'd given her something grand to decipher. A sour look on her face starts to fade, as it sunk in. "You are correct, allowing the mobs to weaken you would have been ideal. I could have killed you, and it wouldn't have been difficult." Slinking back as the bitter cold fades, a brash sense of anger along with it. To the mask on her lips, a ring of her HUD. The night was over, and a new day was being born. Beginning to dust off her shoulders. "They won't operate now. I wasted too much time talking." A shuffle of her menu open silences a screaming pigeon that was an alarm, twisting a hand into the scarf around her neck, she peels out a small sliverish blue hued metal.

"Hold still." The girl starts to run a needle in a part near his right shoulder, mainly as an apology for making such a jump to conclusion. Slinking it through a hole that was starting to form it begins to patch it up with a bit of dangling string. It doesn't take more than a few seconds. "It is important, PKer's that are a bit of the 'smarter' kind are trying to choke players out. It's my job to make sure that doesn't happen. Your grinding up here? So are other players, and they attempt to flood and overwhelm you. It doesn't matter if you're higher level, unless you were a strong tank you were likely to get obliterated."

Looking at the piece as she weighs the guy "It wouldn't have mattered if you scream or not. They wouldn't have found me." The girl looks back at him with an emotionless deadpan as her tone became deeper. Her image begins to flicker and distort in white mist as she tested a new voice carefully. Moments later Koga was staring back at himself that started duplicating into multiples.

"You really should take better care of your armor. I bet you have someone to care about you, which makes your life more valuable than mine."

A slight twist of her head, a quarry would go unanswered. Like a puppy. "What would you expect, I do not understand your reticence." Catching on that sigh, that dismissal as if defeated. He was holding back something. Tension lingered on the air, so damn thick that it could almost be felt. "You don't seem the slightest bit concerned about my motives, my actions. To the point that you offered to aid me." Setsuna had done him a service declining his offer, not the other way around. That pause, that disconnect was almost scathing.

"Too trusting, too willing to stick your neck out. I remember you from my store, talking to one of my mannequins like an imbecile." Without reprieve, she moves in closer to the boy, each word both true and serrated. Nothing more than a foot between them, Setsuna clearly shorter as she looked up at him. A pair of skill charged eyes, glowing like candles in an abandoned cabin. "Is that what you are? An imbecile? my decline is to protect you, idiot. Not because I discount what you can do. You are not predictable, my enemies are."

"It isn't wise." The girl remarked, reaching for the mask around her throat. "I know nothing of your capabilities other than a brief glimpse and words." Sliding it back over her lips and nose, her cursor begins to fade, as if fog on a window clearing. "It would be equally brash of you to attempt to fight an enemy you know nothing about. Swallow your pride, there is no debt." The seas of Tartarus were blooming, blinding in their effervescent cyan glow. A beautiful landscape of color, and to some it would be enrapturing. But for those that operated in this limelight, before the dawn it would go unnoticed. A task had to be performed and although Koga wished it, she could not trust his ability or his drive. It was one thing to convince oneself that they could kill another, but it took something else entirely to do so. It was a fact not lost on the girl.

Wiser than he let on, able to decipher at least her immediate goals. "It doesn't for the careful, for the ones that can slip the system. They are a bit harder to deal with, but can be nonetheless." A more relaxed posture allows Setsuna the same. "To put it loosely, they've been rushing back and forth between Tomoika and Charko. Attacking the route between them, hoping to blindside players who are questing and taking advantage of the bat creatures. Best to steer clear of that area at nightfall." A small analysis, just enough to give the man a place to avoid. Turning on her heel, she starts to scan the effervescent surroundings. Memories of quite a few little affairs in these halls, some lethal, others farming like he appeared to be. Twilight across the darkened water, time alludes to the prospect of another bellowing horn and an ascent into Val Halla. She'd been through her own share of exchanges, and as she snaps from one viewpoint to the next, it would be obvious she was looking to move on. Koga had shifted from threat, to part of the scenery, rather quickly.

"Neither, not a choice but a choice just the same." The girl's hand hovering a handle seems to move just a few inches away and lax. "I am hunting, for the very things that would have killed you. Simple, and it is all the detail I am capable of giving you. I cannot know your motives." She was alluding to that revealing them to him would mean that he was a risk, or it would put him at risk. "A strange place to farm, but it speaks to your capabilities. If..." The words broke as she reached for a cloth covering and slowly removed it.

Her cursor which had been absent until now becomes visible, a dormant emerald spinning over her head revealed. The lower half of her face, the same.

Soft flickering black flames, still smoldering and offering a slight glow. "It is the truth." Another sonar like pulse rings out from her, eyes still engulfed with a surplus of skills in constant demand. This exposure was difficult, but it was a confirmation without giving away too much detail. She finds no known foes within the brush, perhaps maybe. They were alone.

1/25/22

Materials Sent: 8/23/21

Name: Ryuusou
ID: 198287
Roll: CD:12+1/LD: 2
Enhancements: EVA 3
Tier: 1
Description: A  short sleeved green tabbard with golden embroidery on the edges and center, covering plain grey loose fitting pants tucked into the knee high leather boots. The tabbard comes with a full leather arm guard fitted to the right arm, that leaves no skin visible, and a leather fingerless glove that ends at the elbow on the left. Adorned with three linking plates of leather held to the sides of the hips by interlinking leather straps. A large brown cape is attached to the tabbard on the top held in place by a large silver plate

A callous remark, from someone who was walking right out in plain view. The mobs agreed with her, that he was basically a beacon for trouble. "What I am supposed to, I get around with much less attention." Instead of the walking dinner bell, telling everything within earshot to 'Eat me' with his actions. Soft pattering tabi dig into the dust, a sonar like pulse echoes out from her seeking other hostiles within proximity. "You would be wrong, quite a number of players frequent these grounds when night falls."

A twist of her face, still adorned in that covering, you can faintly make out her lips moving. Eying him cautiously, "But those that do, aren't usually up to any good. So, are you predator or prey?" She'd saved his life not moments before, presumably, and yet even still her words held an edge. Was he out here looking to cut his teeth on something sinister, preying on someone that appeared as helpless as he? Or was he an imbecile, that just happened to find himself where a sect of murderers were using as a hunting ground.

A whistle on the wind, one that would seem familiar to those that had braved a dark winter night. Flames danced and weapons raised, catching a bit of lingering ash on that chill. It joins and is dismembered by it, in a muddied mixture of kindling and sparks, an apparition of white evoked within it. A melding of temperatures, a bleeding of difference and yet shared intentions. The click of a scabbard as it turned, clutched in a pale ivory hand. A harsh grinding in an explosive pull.

It slowly drags on the top of a saya, as the light in the air fades. Clicking shut, the girl looks back at the player on her flank, that had bought her the opening she needed. Through that moonlight, a pair of eyes leaving trails behind them as she shifts. Atop a deep purple colored face mask, one can barely make out the shape of the lower half of a mouth and nose. Flames still flickering in a ring around them both, dancing softly at the corners with a threat of spreading.

One after another, bodies cascade down, shortly after a head does.

"It isn't safe to be this high up, alone, at this time of night." The warning came off cold, calculating as it emulated concern. There was a tinge of a twist to it, like frostbite, in a way that made it feel numb and unpleasant. 

Narrative Damage: x11 {30+16+5+4} = 605 to 4 targets, Then a Vanish

"Tch." The girl remarks with a sudden flare of blue on her iris, and the light patter of footfalls find her move in for the kill. A single gleaming blade scatters across the field in a blinding blue line, revealing for a brief instant the silver haired girl made woman. "Okami..." A murmur through a purple cloth covering shielding the lower half of her face from view. From the sky above her, like a homing missile, a tiny little bird screams right into the dirt. It connects hard, before tendrils of ice spray out like roots and impale a couple of the freshly spawned opponents. Slowly sliding her weapon into its scabbard, it was as if it was a trigger to something waiting to kick in.

Four freeze solid, becoming nothing more than statues locked in time. Alive and yet trapped in their respective torments until they thawed, and the wounds would inevitably open, and they'd die a gruesome bisection. Living only on borrowed time. Without a moment to spare, the girl flickers in and out of existence, her form becoming incorporeal. It disperses in a white fog, as if she never really was there at all. She was on a mission, but there was sometime before she'd need to be at the location.

ID:203033 | Battle:10, Craft:8, Loot:18+6=24 (Stealth Rating)

An eerie white fog crept slowly over the shambling decay, a ghost that could easily be counted among the number of those native on the floor. A single set of piercing cyan blue eyes watch carefully, cautiously from the dark as that bitter cold crawls out in rolling snow like mist. "Male and a canine." Moving in closer for a callous, almost surgical inspection, staying just beyond the peripheral and like a shadow for the kill. Beneath the stones where she held out of sight, getting closer, weighing Koga as a potential opponent. "He's been in my store." The girl remarks in epiphany, sizing him up as the dead began to build in number, aiming for his life. What he would see, is a single blue line easily distinguishable as a sword art trail like a bouncing bullet. An undead unfortunate enough to make the katana's acquaintance sees its head fall to the floor as the body kept walking for a good three or so steps before collapsing and evolving into digital confetti without warning.

"I do not believe you're ready to accompany on such a thing. Starting small is much more preferred. Hit me..." Setsuna remarks toward the blonde tank, without warning. A proof of concept, for if the tank was willing to see how far this rabbit hole would go. She would need to be prepared for anything, which included the possibility that her opponents would use her appearance against them. It wouldn't be the first and certainly wouldn't be the last. Once the blonde would hesitate, Setsuna moves for the warp pad. "I will show you my world, but you will not partake until you will not be a hindrance to what must be done." The whole of Firm Anima and specifically O&I was combating the world's most vicious foes, ones that would not hesitate in the way most would. Mobs and people were different, and it took a special brand of courage completely beside the standard to face them without that lingering pause. It required a toggle of emotion and acting on instinct. That was how you kept the upper hand when hunting man.