Shogunate of Venezuela [CVnU Empire]

@the_shogun:

I feel like an old person saying this, but is this the fad now? OOC in spoiler captions?

@the_puzzler:

(On my phone so no blocks: it just seems to be a thing for this thread. Or in ye older tongue: forsooth! Thou needst not worry about thine out of date speech.

@temporal_hound:

Thank the god! Doth speak with, for pardon my tongue, a "mobeel device/.")

@ziah_darksong said:

@the_shogun:

Ziah's head tilted, so very slightly, an acknowledgment that she had heard the single syllable that had come her way from an unseen warrior. In that moment, that adjustment of the vertebrae in her neck, the Lorian fought a ten second war within herself.

The woman's voice had given her a commandment. An order. Not something that the Storm General tolerated. Yet, she was here with a specific goal in mind, a goal that needn't end in bloodshed as long as things went her way and she got the information that she'd come for. On the other hand, allowing any foreign dignitary, from a king to a peasant, to address her in such a way was an assault on her honor and deserved punishment of the most swift variety.

Ziah Darksong inhaled deeply, turning to face the shrouded woman completely and then exhaling, calming the pride boiling within her primordial blood. "On this occasion alone, I shall look past your transgression. Know that if you speak to me in such a way again, I will take your limbs with me upon my departure." Not waiting for a response, she willed the front of her helmet to become transparent, showing the entirety of her strong jaw and her cold, fierce eyes. "I desire an audience with your King, the dark warrior who calls himself 'Xenon.' It concerns the unusual metal that your country provides."

She paused then, if only briefly, her eyes not leaving the Shogun who was indeed so unknown to her. She then gestured towards the palace was a single wave of her armored hand, expecting the blind warrior to leap at her request. "Patience is not among my, admittedly few, virtues."

"Go f*ck yourself."

The country was under siege. The electronic hands of invisible enemies clamped around its throat. Money was the life's breath of a modern nation and that breath was being choked out of Venezuela as they spoke.

The stranger clearly knew nothing of the Shogunate's current struggles. Worthless. This was a waste of time.

Ivana didn't have time to waste. Every moment spent with the stranger was a moment her nation was without her leadership.

She pivoted on a heel, crimson cake flowing out behind her black armored form and begin walking away.

@the_shogun

The movements of Dark Vengeance through the tree line of the forest was expert if not masterful. Each twist and turn caused his flexible body to contort in extraordinary ways. The new armor that he had been adorned in was proof that he was just as much a practical inventor as his predecessor, creating items and forging weapons that not only enhanced his already peak skills, but complimented them in unheard of ways. Each leap from the the overgrown inhabitants of the garden and every grip of wooden branch was quickly and perfectly calculated, plotting a course that would not only circle around his would be assailant, but turn the tide of the fight and in doing so, making him the hunter.

The sound of a dry leaf cracking perked Vengeance's ears and directed his attention into the source of the area while still minding his evasion and The Shogun simultaneously. The echo of the sound was too loud for the Vibranium ruler of the mutant haven, but belonged to someone that had to have been much heavier or at least more direct. @

" @aphasic. Just according to plan"

The newly anointed Gothic savior whispered to himself. The schematics and details of the plot to overthrown the future dictator was being flawlessly executed even though it seemed like Dark Vengeance was fleeing. In actuality, he was the initial distraction that would cause The Shogun the deter her attention away and focus on the ebony bat, allowing The Hound of Justice to make his dramatic entrance opening a combined effort against her overwhelming power.

Well, all it had been going smooth until the thunderous crack of a bow string snapping forward, releasing one of the deadliest arrows to man. Vengeance had amazing hearing, and it was even better when he was wearing his enhanced cowl like he did now, but no amount of peak human training could have calculated where the deadly tipped arrow would pierce.

He didn't panic, but kept his wits and remained steady. Remained moving. Remained alert. He held on to the holocron teachings of Malcolm no matter how much danger his life was being put into.

The Shogun isn't one to waste an attack to gauge my distance or skill. She's just as cunning as myself and even more ruthless. Neither is she the type of assassin to drag a battle on, she is one of the infamous Strigidae. This is the death stroke.

The thoughts came to his mind in milliseconds as he continued his vaults and dodges within the canopy, his augmented hearing zipped a high pitched screecher louder and louder as the arrow screamed in closer and closer, seemingly directed towards his heart. The force alone would be enough to kill him. He gasped deeply, the tension in every single one of his muscle fibers and adrenaline pumping through every single artery and capillary was open like a flood gate. One final and splendid backwards double flip into a handstand summersault culminated to his figure moving like magical water in the air before landing onto the jungle ground. The arrow drilled through the steel charcoal defense of his right trap as if it were a searing hot knife melting through butter. It left completely missed his flesh but the shear speed and power behind the projectile dropped the Vigilante to his back and left a smoking hole.

Still in line with the plan, Aphastic didn't falter nor retreat to check on his ally, but continued to strike forward. An admirable quality that made him best suited to lead this operation whether or not it was his devision of the plan or not.

Ignoring the hole that was left, Vengeance jumped to his feet and sprinted back to ground zero with a flashbang drawn from his belt and onto his right hand while a steel lined trip cable was being brandished in his left. He was careful to leave his dashing footsteps to be as quite as possible, closing the distance, the Gothic native tossed the flash bang in the air and readied the trip cable.

4....3.....2....*Bang*

The ear piercing and shattering squeal of the blast rebounded throughout the forest, but did nothing to stop Vengeances approach as he released the cable and aimed the twisting wire towards the 23rd Strigidae's ankles. Leaving no moment wasted to see if he had ensnared his opponent, he vaulted behind her muscular but feminine frame and released a flurry of jabs and hooks directed towards her collar bone.

@_vex_:

@_vex_:

The Temporal Hound found that it's target had made an unexpected change in its movement pattern and the tree attack did nothing. Never one to be so easily frustrated the Great Beast waited for another moment. It did not have long to wait before the flash bang went off.

The Temporal Hound's infinite intellect divided tasks in its brain by the thousands and each one was processed by genius level intelligence. Within a second it knew where to move to stop the trip wire, having already calculated its trajectory and speed based on Dark Vengeance's movements and tactical tendencies this far.

The Temporal Hound steppes in the path of the wire and shifted into the regular flow of time, its immense bulk suddenly materializing out of thin air at the precise moment the trip wire struck its tree trunk sized leg and bounced off. The Great Beast swivled its huge head in the direction of @aphasic with a tremendous snarl. Not content to observe any longer it swept a great claw at the future warrior with the force of an oncoming train.

@_vex_: @the_shogun: @temporal_hound:

His fist missed the Shogun's chin by a millimeter, and the kinetic force, the surging electrical power that the superman punch sought to violently bombard the 23rd Strigidae with, instead shocked and seized the air by the throat, scorching it for but a minuscule moment before the German super soldier's taciturn gaze shifted behind the emerald lenses of his goggles to rest on the Shogun. But then, then the world seemed to crash. His adversary's fingers had drilled into specific vulnerable points lined along his torso. It was a counter-strike. Thee perfect counter-strike. Why? Because it did not 'rock' the opponent, nor did it knock them unconscious. It killed. Murdered. It did not ensure that the combatant achieved victory. It ensured that the combatant acquired their opponent's soul.

And during that particular moment, the Black Baron felt his spirit slipping from his body. He collapsed. The Shogun's attack had landed with perfection and its effects began to do as she intended, stop Bastian's heart. Had it not been for the convenient combination of his superhuman physiology and cybernetic enhancements, he would be dead, his heart would have been stopped in an instant. Instead, his body grew weak and he struggled to breath, even with the breathing aids of his mask, his body was failing as he felt fatigued and dizzy. Then a bomb of chest pain erupted and the world went black as he fell unconscious. Blood circulation was no longer effective, it was stopped, his heart was failing to contract correctly in a vicious episode of cardiac arrest.

His sinoatrial node was failing to create a heartbeat, and so countless other cells within his heart attempted to create the beast instead. The result was numerous areas of Bastian's heart 'shocking' it simultaneously from different directions. Instead of a steady contracting beat, his heart was essentially suffering from a seizure, all from the first strike the Shogun had landed. His heart was no longer pumping blood through it. He was going to die. Or at least, he would have, had he been someone else. But because his brain was no brain but instead a quantum supercomputer that was still functional, it seized control of his cybernetic and quantum tech implants in a desperate attempt to save Bastian's life. And it did so by harnessing the reserves of electrical energy stored in the Black Baron's personal quantum dimensional state.

There was only one for the Black Baron to live. And the quantum computer in his body worked feverishly to persuade all of the different areas of his heart to work in unison. And it did so with a shock, a shock that delivered more electricity than the cells themselves were creating, and forced all of the electrolytes out of them. Soon his heart's normal operation of electrolytes passing across the cell membranes in an organized fashion took over. Though he was collapsed on the ground, he would live. His condition was now stable. But it was no longer Bastian who would engage the Shogun in battle. It would be the quantum supercomputer that now seized control of the German super soldier's body. It would continue the mission while allowing the German's consciousness to rest. Rising from the dirt, the Black Baron's first course of action was to erect of a force field of continually replenishing virtual particles, a field of particles that could not be properly annulled by energy or applied force from an object in most cases.

It was the quantum computer's response to the Shogun's nearly fatal blow, it could not allow her to manipulate Bastian's pressure points again. And indirectly, the force field served as a barrier against an unnamed beast's violent claw swipe. It garnered no response from the Black Baron. While his force field held, physically he was still recovering and resolved to only attack the mission's target, and from a distance, he was in no condition for martial engagement at the moment. So instead, he sought to use his cybernetic implants to create a strong magnetic field to contain a dense mass of generated superheated plasma around the 23rd Strigidae following the success or failure of Dark Venegance's trip wire. The attack's intention was clear, to assault Ivana's 70% water body without mercy. It hoped to evaporate her bodily fluids, boil her brain, melt her skin and char her bones.

Some things, traditionally, were better left unsaid.

Such had been the case when Ivana Strigidae, Shogun of Venezuela, had told Ziah Darksong that she should... what was it... 'go f**k herself.'

Long gone were the Storm General's inhibitions or desire to be diplomatic. She'd never made a good diplomat, anyway. If this was the type of Kingdom that Xenon had left behind, and these were the types of vassals that spoke in his name, then he would have to be content to have Ziah Darksong not as a rival, but as an enemy.

"You were warned."

The concept of mere underlings not being worth the time it would take to tell them had always been something quite lost on the Lorian Mutant -- after all, when one could dispose of such wretched creatures in less than a second, time became so much more manageable of a resource. It was such a philosophy that the prehistoric tyrant followed when she casually lifted one gauntleted hand, a brief shimmer -- as that of a heat wave -- encasing it for only a moment before Ziah tore the sky down upon the scarlet-cloaked woman who now walked away from her. It screamed from the sky, thunderous and immutable in its single-minded purpose, directed towards a single target.

Of course, the Lorian had already made it clear that her knowledge of vibranium's function was limited, and as such she didn't know that the Shogun's dark shroud of armor would absorb nearly all of the energy strike's impact.

@the_shogun:

@the_shogun:

@the_shogun:

@aphasic: @_vex_: @the_shogun: @temporal_hound: @_animus_: @ren_:

Distant sounds from beyond the walls, of toppling trees and fists and weaponry whistling through the air alerted the violet vixen of the central game. Perhaps all the opposition of the mutant capital were told to gather there. However at least one such foe was in the city. Quick and bloody work was made of some of the more immediate guards. Proximity to damn close to evade the gruesome fatality. More were coming however which suggested that this foe was not prepared for the distant sound ninja.

Three arrow tips were plucked from the satchel at her side. Standard steel they probably couldn't dent most body on their own let alone properly pierce said armor. But then again Vocal didn't fight like humans she was inhuman. A violet glittering light fabricated a luminous arrow it's tip a polished steel blade. Concealed in the condensed sound given form that made up the glowing staff were the other two tips hard to spot: with the arrow crafted she drew the string back, let her grand echolocation work as her eyes and then took the shot relinquishing the hold and sending the arrow flying. An arrow that made no sound, but moved at the speed of sound. It should have sounded like the crack of lightning instead a faint violet trail through the air and a breeze was all there was.

It's heading was the back of the Orrochi killing assailant. The original arrow sought the heart, to pierce the spine and impale the central organ. The other two arrow tips however when near the target branched out. Seeking to deliver a second arrow to the back of the head and a third sought the femoral artery of the left leg. Course while she wanted the swift arrows to hit their mark they didn't necessarily have to for the next play to work. Hit or miss she still had all that sound to use from the construct part of the arrows.

Be their landin in flesh or just concrete and asphalt the arrows would dispense a duo of sounds one arrow after the other. It'd start with a loud frequency one that was louder then the ears could tolerate. Enough to shater eardrums that'd vibrate the fluid in the eyes enough to potentially be temporarily blinding. Enough to leave some blind deaf and disoriented. The second frequency was low hard to hear with the human ear. It could lead a individual to be nauseous and feal like their limbs were heavy and the body tired. Sound had an interesting effect on the body, Cadence used a sound that focused on fealing ill and tired. As each arrow dispensed their cacophony it'd increase the likelyhood of a disoriented and weary opposition.

Sadly she had no experience in an honest battle field. This was her first conflict outside of the Gauntlet where Inhuman's trained. As such she could do nothing to try and help the Orrochi endure her own attack. An area effect would remain an area effect. Still being over a hundred yards from the opposition of choice she conjured a new arrow preparing should her previous move not being enough.

(Don't think I've ever really fought Surkit so I targeted him ^.^ sorry for delay)

Aint we on the same team

@_animus_:

<.< this I figured comes before Strike formation.

And if you mean hear alone then nope lol, voc has nothing to do with Aphasic Ren etc she came to help muties for the sake of easing tension hopefully between Inhumans and Mutanta

@lioness_: Either way he's not on STRIKE so it's cool.

Aight I'll reply when I can, I'm already behind on some other stuff though.

@_animus_: no rush I'm behind on some shit to lol

Yes, just yes.

@aphasic: @temporal_hound: @_vex_:

Her enemies surrounded her and her closest allies were incapacitated.

Impossibly the Black Baron survived a technique that had slain a thousand masters at the peak of their power. Inside her black armor the Shogun's blind eyes blinked in surprise. That's impossible. He can't be human.

Then, in a swarm of coordinated martial and technological mastery her foes attacked.

Vex was young; he was not burdened with the lifetime of injuries and age that slowed many warriors (including Ivana herself). His agility and coordination were on full display as he returned, unleashing a two part assault as smoothly as any of the greatest Orochi.

The Shogun felt his hand fly outward and unleash a projectile a moment before he actually moved. Grenade? Adhesive bomb? Sonic weapon?

It was then that the Grandmaster knew that this wasn't the Dark Vengeance she had known. He had speed, power and skill but this was something.. different.

This was fluidity. This was grace.

This was something new.

Something dangerous.

Just as she had begun her leap away from from the incoming projectile it detonated. The flash was blinding, but the Shogun was already blind. It was the thunder that caught her.

Within the embrace of her vibranium helm she was staggered but not stopped by the deafening blast. Her ears rang with the piercing scream of permanent ear damage and for the briefest of moments her balance was disrupted.

It was, however, enough-- her left ankle was a fraction of a second too slow; the steel trip cable wrapped around it like a serpent winding about its prey.

Clever, she thought as only her peerless mastery of the Strigidae arts saved her from sprawling face first upon the jungle floor.

Then the young vigilante arrived. His strikes fell like rain, twisting and whipping toward the Shogun like a nest of serpents lashing out one after another.

She twisted, parried, blocked and dodged yet even with her mutant ability to read his moves a few slipped through. Once again solid plates of vibranium saved her from crippling injury but once again the fluidity and precision of the new Dark Vengeance did what force alone could not.

Vibranium was nearly impenetrable because it absorbed incoming kinetic energy. However if a blade cut with the grain (a feat of virtually impossible accuracy) it could penetrate otherwise ubreakable armor. The same was true of a strike. A perfect blow, at the perfect angle could transfer its force through a thick vibranium plate as if that plate were not even there.

Every fortress had its weakness.

One blow penetrated her guard. One blow came at the perfect angle. One vigilantie did what a hundred powerhouses could not.

Ivana's collarbone snapped with a sound like a wet branch popping underfoot.

She stumbled back, her left foot still trapped in the steel cable and her right arm dangling limply at her side.

Then the Black Baron struck and he struck with the stuff of stars.

Plasma boiled the air around her. Heat, heat that was beyond flame, beyond fire, washed over her. Vibranium absorbed and absorbed and absorbed-- but it could only absorb the energy; not the entropy.

Ivana felt shooting pains drive through her joints as she dehydrated at an astounding rate. Her only working arm dropped her priceless bow and snatched a handful of pellets from her utility belt, hurling them at her own feet.

A half a dozen anti-flame foam pellets exploded. Chemical foam billowed out, coating everything in a thick layer of white. Though capable of extinguishing virtually any natural or man-made flame it was no true match for the Black Baron's futuristic technology.

It bought the Shogun the brief respite she needed to hurl herself free of the encircling plasma without being incinerated, but not a moment longer. It blackened and it burned, fouling the air with a sooty smoke and a chemical stench.

Dragging a foot still trapped in a steel cord the injured Shogun threw herself into the shadow of a nearby tree, vanishing as if she had dived through a pool of water rather than a shadow.

Orochi Guardpost

She staggered free in the courtyard of a Orochi guardpost in the capitol.

"Shogun!" Cries of surprise were followed by salutes as smoke rose from Ivana's black armor.

"Orochi, there are two men in the forest to the east. Draw your blades, go forth to battle and return with their heads."

"GO!" The Shogun bellowed and ninety nine Orochi leapt to obey. They streamed forth into the forest like a river of blood, steel and vibranium in their fists, seeking Dark Vengeance and the Black Baron with murder alone upon their minds.

@the_shogun: @aphasic@_vex_

These creatures are fast...It won't take much longer to adapt to their patterns though. For now, I should ensure they are unable to leave the area to give the female the time necessary to fully escape.

Aware now that the Black Barron was protected by an energy shield of unknown strength the Temporal Hound adjusted its tactics. The shield could defend against direct attack, likely up to a certain level of strength and for a certain length of time. He could probably break the barrier down, but there was no need for that. All he needed to do was delay them. Instead of lashing out at the Barron he slammed his massive foot into the ground with the force of a mountain falling from the sky. The resulting tremor was equivalent to a high level earthquake tearing apart the ground. Cracks formed in the dirt and raced outward in a radial pattern and quickly formed into chasms large enough to swallow a man whole. The ground trembled and shook with extreme violence as well, threatening to throw the unwary off their balance and knock them into a chasm or on their back.

The Great Beast did not stop there, but immediately launched an attack on Dark Vengeance. He was slow moving compared to his two foes, but his strikes were immense and his mind greater, it had already calculated the best place to land a strike based on previous experience during this same battle. Rather than aim at Dark Vengeance with his great claw he aimed instead for a location that would force Dark Vengeance to react and move. To the acrobatic warrior it would appear as if he intended to crush him like a grape, but if allowed to go through the strike would hit the ground next to him instead with the very same force that had just split the earth. The idea was to make Dark Vengeance do what came natural to him, dodge and evade. So long as he was evading, he was not pursuing.

@the_shogun:

@temporal_hound:

Damn....

@fraga:

@timesiphon:

@fraga:

@timesiphon: