Swix vs Cirrial

[Swix]

Four humanoid figures enter the Challenge Arena together, the massive building located in the freezing cold of the Arctic Tundra. At first it looked as though they were simply latecomers to the fight that would soon ensue, since they began to make their way to the seats outside the Arena proper, where spectators could watch via holograms and screens as well as through the large forcefield that often enveloped combatants to prevent any interference.

There were however only three females sat on the outside, and there had definitely been a male with them when they'd first arrived. The taller, older of the three wore gold coloured clothing that matched her soft, shoulder length hair. She had tanned skin, and the exposed arms showed golden feathers running down the backs until they reached her hands. The woman also had a pretty face with slightly larger than usual, bright green eyes. This was the mutant Harpy, the combatants mother.

On either side of her sat the combatants sisters, to her left was a girl who would be five feet tall when standing. This girl had long grey hair, grey eyes and skin that was slightly darker than her mothers. She had a pair of large grey wings folded tightly against her back, and was quite strong looking. She was also clearly wearing the thick fur of an animal for clothing and had an extra pair of arms beneath where they'd usually be. This was Aura, the second oldest of the offspring.

To Harpy's right sat a girl who looked in every way smaller than the two sitting next to her, which was only natural since she'd been born the runt. She shared her mothers features perfectly, and had an extra pair of arms and wings like her sister, as well as the animal skin clothing. There were still a few differences though, such as her wings, hair and eyes being silver rather than grey or gold. She looked worried, a contrast to the others controlled excitement. This was Paola, the second youngest of the brood.

Ordell, the one who was going to take part in the challenge stepped out of the entrance into the arena proper. The mutamorphffer had wings, extra arms and animal skin clothing, his being the soft dark fur of the creatures they'd come to know as Pantheresks. His own skin was slightly darker than his mothers, and he looked far more muscular than any of them. The male stood at five foot two tall, his head topped off with messy brown hair. His large wings too were brown, folded tightly against his back. Ordell had inquisitive eyes that were as bright a green as Harpy's, and if you were close enough you'd be able to see his top canines were far more fang like.

Ordell looked around as the environment suddenly changed, apparently transporting him to a completely different place. He found himself standing atop a grassy knoll, which was itself on top of a cliff cut through by a large, violent river gushing below. On the opposite side of the cliff he was standing on was a wide field with gigantic trees sparsely mixed through it. If he squinted, he could just make out a city behind the trees.

There was only one thing left to do now. Wait for his opponent to show up.

((This is a one-on-one challenge between me and Cirrial. Whilst I've brought Ordells family in they're only here to watch, so I'll only be using him from now on.

There'll be a post limit of 30 each, and judge is yet to be decided . I'm counting this as my first post))

[Cirrial]

A large object falls from the sky, a metal cuboid of roughly the same proportions of four humanoids standing back to back and shoulder to shoulder. It tumbles hazardously through the air and smacks straight into the patch of trees on the other side of the ravine, tearing them asunder and finally landing with a loud dull smack. Clumps of dirt and grass fly everywhere, and the metal box lays motionless.

After a few seconds there are a few resounding thuds from inside, following by a metal, four-digited claw punching through the box. This in turn is followed by a muffled "that wasn't meant to happen", rattling noises and the click of a door being opened.

An anthopoid robot crawls out of the glorified metal crate, staggering around, the sun glinting off its talons, beak, and its wing and tail blades.

CAM-501 peers across the trees and over to the city. Guess the other guy never showed up.

He turns around and starts walking away, barely avoiding walking into the river. Glancing slowly up, he sees Ordell.

...Ah. ...Hm. Er. Ah. Well. Weapon time.

He moves his left arm in front of him and braces himself. There is a loud roar, milliseconds long, and three long blades of energy jut out from his left forearm at acute angles, seperated from each other. He swings his left arm around in a complicated routine, swaying the epheremal blade around. As the energy blade moves, trails of glow are left behind.

He clenches his left hand. He wouldn't be needing it to use the contraption.
With his right hand he pats his sides for a holstered ion pistol, and finds none. Damn. So much for range advantage...

He taps the right side of his head three times in quick succession. He hears nothing but static. After waiting optimistically for a few more seconds, he taps his head again and closes the channel.

He holds his left arm in the air and pulls his right arm in front of him, to act as a barrier, while the spokes of the energy blade glimmer menacingly high above him.

[Swix]

((2, and sorry for being so late with my reply. The 'net decided this week was a good one to mess me about))

The brown haired boy above had spotted the metal crate as it smacked down into the trees below. It was quite hard to miss a large rectangular object falling from the sky after all.

'Oh no, it's raining boxes again' was the first thing to go through the mutamorphffers mind after he'd spotted it, and the boy turned to look behind him for any signs of shelter, anything to stay under until it had stopped. He was disappointed to see that there was none, behind him there was nothing but knolls, small hills and the occasional bush stretching as far as the eye could see. The only shelter against anything heavy around here was the city, and that was too far away for him to get to in time, even if he risked flying.

'There should have been more by now' Ordell thought again, turning his head to the sky, half expecting to get smacked with something as he did. But the sky was clear, and nothing else was falling from it. The puzzled young creature once again turned his attention to the land below him, just in time to see 501 start waving his odd weaponry about.

'What a strange creature,' Ordell thought as he opened his brown feathered wings just enough that he'd be able to catch himself after a leap 'it reminds me of mother when she changes, but it's so different. So... metallic. It doesn't look like anything alive should' He'd be sure to try and ply this thing with questions afterwards. With that idea firmly lodged in mind, the mutamorphffer took one step towards the edge and leapt off it, his momentum carrying him in such a way that it looked as though he was performing a headfirst suicide dive.

'I know what I'll do' Ordell thought again as the air tugged at his messy hair and primitive clothing, whilst the idea that unpleasantly tugged at him simultaneously was that he should have thought of that before he'd committed himself like this shot through his mind.

Once he deemed himself to be close enough, which was probably slightly miscalculated, Ordell bared his top teeth and shot a jet of acid from the holes in his fangs at the unnatural avian creature below him.

[Cirrial]

501 stares up. Wow, that's a long way up- uh oh

He watches his opponent dive from the cliff top and slightly curve straight towards him. 501 takes a few steps back, slowly moving his arms to make a quick stab or slash with the energy blades more easy to pull off without severing his own arms in the process.

He was so intent on not losing track of the flying Ordell that the acid comes as a complete surprise. First he hears sizzling, and then he looks at his arms and legs.

Vapour is pouring off of them as the acid tries to eat its way through the darkened-steel composite material 501's almost completely covered in. He stares with a slight feeling of disbelief before realising what's happening. "Ah, no, no no no..." The energy blade shuts off with a synthetic bloop.

He runs incredibly fast towards the river he's still nearby. Nothing eats through me like that! Especially not these haphazard biological venoms or acids or whatever - ow - owwww! burning!

He dives into the river and thrashes about violently, trying to rinse the acid off of his supposedly-acid-immune metal skin. After a good minute of this, he raises his arm to the sky just outside of the water, the rest of him submerged.

The energy sword then flashes back into life, held up at an orientation to skewer Ordell, should he be reckless enough to simply dive straight for 501.

[Swix]

((3))

Ordell is elated with his success at hitting the strange metal creature, though for a split second he'd thought it had had no effect. The sight of the hissing vapour and 501 running towards the river soon rectified this though... it was about the same time the mutamorphffer realized he should have opened his wings fully by now, as he was coming close to the ground far too fast.

'Uh oh, mother's not going to be happy with me after this' was the main thought going through Ordells mind as he flared his wings as wide as he possibly could, jerking himself back enough that he felt the tug on his joints as he was suddenly jolted upright, but not enough to stop his downward momentum. The thought that pain was soon coming was nowhere near as scary as the thought he'd displease Harpy with his flying skills.

Ordell flapped his large wings, struggling against the wind with every beat, to try to slow himself down a little more. He'd rather not break his legs at the minute after all.

His feet hit the ground with a loud 'thud', his knees bent as he fell forward slightly and caught himself with his hands and arms. This absorbed much of the shock, though the offspring felt all three pairs of limbs recieve a powerful shock from the impact.

After waiting for a few seconds so the pain would subside, Ordell stood up slowly with his back to the river. He turned around as quickly as he dared, fearing the avian thing would attack him from behind, and was mildly surprised that it wasn't there.

He received something of a shock when 501s arm made its appearance out of the water, the blade flaring to life again almost simultaneously. The mutamorphffer regarded the river apprehensively before backing away from it, remembering the last time he'd gone for a 'swim'.

'No, this is not good' Ordell thought whilst he kept a close eye on the arm as he retreated backwards 'I hate deep water'. He wasn't a very good swimmer for that matter, either. His large feathered wings had a tendency to weigh him down.

[Cirrial]

501's energy sword starts to falter and cuts out, as 501's arm sinks back into the river.

As he drifts down to the river bed, he ponders. Okay, running into the river might not have been a good idea, considering how I'm much, much denser than water. Further more, based on that fact, how am I going to get out of here?

He tries to swim upwards, and ends up pushing himself further down. How deep is this river anyway?! He flails towards a visible wall of dirt and tries to grab at it. It was fortunate enough that the river hadn't already washed him far from the arena.

After pulling chunks of soft, loose mud out of the bank of the river, he writhes around in anger. This flurry of movement propels him upwards, and he manages to somehow end up on the grass beside the river, as if the sheer fury at his situation itself just scooped him up.

He slowly stands up, shakes his limbs one-by-one, and looks over to Ordell. He assumes the same defensive stance as earlier and his energy sword flickers back into being yet again.

"You there. Whatever you are. I'd like to return the favour."

[Swix]

((4))

'Okay then...' Ordell thought to himself, after the shiny sharp weapon disappeared again, quickly followed by the sinking arm. The mutamorphffer folded his own set of four arms as he tilted his head, like birds sometimes do when they're confronted with something new.

'I hope he can't move through the soil or anything like that' he thought again, causing him to half open his wings on instinct. He'd lived in the Wilds of Blackstar since birth so something like that happening was a distinct possibility to him.

'He's been down there for a while now...' Ordell thought again 'I wonder if he can breathe. Does metal need to breathe?'

He didn't need to ponder for too long however, as the mechanical birds unfamiliar voice rang through the air, from somewhere to his right.

"You there. Whatever you are. I'd like to return the favour."

Ordell turned around as fast as he dared with his wings half open, unfolding his arms as he did so, just in case he needed to protect himself from an impending attack. The mechanical creature didn't though, it seemed to just be wanting a response, and had taken the same position as the mutamorphffer had seen him do from the cliff.

"I'm a Mutamorphffer. That's what Mother calls us" Ordell replied, feeling his feathers getting ruffled, so to speak. The offspring was also slightly confused, which soon became glaringly obvious as he responded with "Can you spit acid too?"

[Cirrial]

501 pauses for a second, sinking inside himself and cutting off all his external senses.

After a sea of blue, a colour he was extremely accustomed to, and traces and shades of concepts and symbols, he comes out of his momentary trance after verifying something he had already guessed. Nope, not anything the Floating Arm libraries have anything about. Well, he looks fairly humanoid. Same rules apply, maybe?

He is taken aback by Ordell's question. "Well, if I told you that, I'd have nothing left to fall back on, would I?" He then pauses, puts a talon to his beak, and wonders if his recent utterings made any sense. Mentally shrugging, he advances slowly towards Ordell and raises the energy sword.

He breaks into a faster pace. "Here's a tip for you, though! Dodge!" He shifts the energy sword in front of him and begins to charge, making no noise save for the dull thud of metal on grass.

[Swix]

((5))

"Well, if I told you that, I'd have nothing left to fall back on, would I?"

Ordell hears the bird reply, whilst watching him curiously. The metal thing had a point there, he should probably leave his questions for later.

"Here's a tip for you, though! Dodge!"

"Huh?" the startled Mutamorphffer suddenly snaps his head up just in time to see a mechanical monster charging at him, eyes suddenly growing wider. Ordell does a quick side step out of the immediate path of the robotic creature, one foot in front of the other. However, whilst his body was not hurt, 501s energy sword had caught Ordells lower right arm and caused him to yelp in pain. The sword had sliced open a wound on the lower part of the arms and caused it to bleed yellow tinted, red blood.

In both anger and pain, the Mutamorphffer sent a smaller amount of his biological acid in 501's direction, purely out of instinct. In other words, he didn't actually mean to do it.

[Cirrial]

501 slows his charging speed to a gentle walk, and stops altogether. With a loud reverse-swoosh, the energy sword dies away for what must be the third time so far.

He slowly turns around, and gets squirted with acid in the face.

Well, based on that scream I heard, it sounds like I did some damage. And... oh no no NOT AGAIN AHHH

His mental scream slowly builds up into a real one as he runs around in a wide circle, flailing his arms as if consumed by an invisible fire.

"NOT GOOD! ACID BURN! AAAAAAGHH!"

His vision seems to blur in parts as the transparent plastics covering his gleaming yellow eyes is slowly etched away by Ordell's acid reflex, and he charges even faster than he did previously towards the river again.

He doesn't even bother to so much as glance towards Ordell as he runs almost straight next to him.

[Swix]

((6))

As though the metal beings very existence wasn't puzzling the Mutamorphffer enough already, now it was running around screaming and flailing its arms about like some trapped animal.

'Oh no, I made it mad' Ordell thought as he backed away again, green eyes wide open in fear.

"Argh" he yelled as he dived out of the way of the charging bird, absolutely sure it intended to carry him down into the river with it and not wanting to suffer the horrible wet and deep of the water. "I'm sorry!" he called out just before he hit the floor and got a mouthful of soil, whilst his arm left a small blood trail behind him. 'I didn't mean to! Why'd I have to get such strong reflexes off Dad?'

[Cirrial]

After thrashing wildly around in the river, 501 clambers out hesitantly, his eyes just above the surface of the water.

Well, things are going well so far. I nicked him with the sword, and he gave me acid burns all over the place! Well, time for a different strategy!

501 leaps out of the water and onto the river bank in a single graceful arc, his arms low and to his sides for balance.

Wow, I can't believe that worked!

He slowly straightens up, takes one step forwards, and trips over a small twig, leaving a conical hole where his beak is shoved into the grass.

After stumbling back up to his feet with the grace of a drunken moose, he flails his arms, loses his balance, and falls back into the river with a stifled yelp.

He finally emerges from the river, soaked, treading carefully to avoid slipping on anything else.

He lifts the arm the energy sword is attached to menacingly. Nothing happens. He casually glances to it, and still nothing happens. Staring at his arm a little more concerned, nothing continues to happen. He shakes his arm. Nothing. He flails his arm wildly, desperate.

Nothing. A faint hum and then a loud pop, and nothing more.

"Oh, it just gets better and better, doesn't it?!"

[Swix]

((7... and sorry again , the Consortium took over my creative juices there))

Ordell removed his upper arms from covering his head and neck, after he'd stayed face down in the dirt for a short while he realised that nothing had been going to happen to him despite his fears. Feeling a little embarrassed, his mother was watching him after all, the Mutamorphffer slowly raised himself up on his three uninjured arms and spat out the bitter tasting soil that had become bitter tasting mud in his mouth.

The offspring then heard a 'thud' behind him as something heavy hit the ground, so he whipped himself over onto his back to see what had happened. He was treated to the frightening sight of 501 flailing his arms about again, followed by the heavy splash as the mechanical bird went backwards into the river, again.

Ordell slowly stood up, keeping an eye on the place where 501 had 'fallen' in. It could be a trap, the creature didn't seem to mind the water all that much.

"There's no way I'm going in there after you" he called over to the calm water unnecessarily 'Not on purpose, anyway'. Instead, he began making his way into the overgrown forest on foot, since his wing joints were still aching from that jolt earlier. His main thought was to get as far away from the water as he could.

[Cirrial]

501 watches Ordell run a long distance away towards the cover of the forest.

He lowers his arm, mentally cursing himself for not recharging the energy sword the night before using it.

He pauses, a claw below his beak, and ponders.

Well, the sword's shot, I don't have any guns, but what do I have?

He braces himself. On his back, his folded wingblades slice out into the air, unfolding and extending into a wide fractal, humming softly, then loudly, then screaming like tiny jet engines.

501 looks up, crouches down, and jumps. And he soars upwards, blue trails left in the air as he flies. He streaks into the sky in a single, precise arc, his head turned to the ground. He searches for his opponent through the thick green cover of the trees below.

[Swix]

(( 8 ))

As Ordell ruan, he didn't hear the sound of 501s engines until they flared up to the small screaming jet sound, but when he did he finds he cannot resist turning around to look. He always found the sight of small planes fascinating and this one seemed so close. He's rewarded with the almost entirely useless sight of two fading blue lights arcing up into the air, which results in his disappointment. Still. at least that creature hadn't run after him...

Wait... that thing was metal yes, but it was still a bird in essence wasn't it? Maybe turning his back on it wasn't a good idea, now he didn't know whether it was above or below him.

The mutamorphffer jumped into a tree, using six limbs to help him climb up whilst his wings remained folded onto his back. Once he'd gotten about halfway up the creature changed, all eight limbs including his wings morphed into the legs of a huge spider, whilst his body grew hair and changed into the body of the arachnid. He even grew six extra compound eyes, although they remained the bright green colour he'd inherited. The now-dark brown spider that was Ordell waited and watched for something above or something below, but at least he was too close to neither now.