Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas (Dreams and Yaksha)

Tick. Tock.

The fight was like many others, in that the victor was decided within about thirty seconds at most. Things moved quickly in fights, far more quickly than anyone could ever really consider. It was often too fast to even really make sense of what was going on until it had already ended: You'd be mouthing off to someone with your friends by your shoulder, and then you'd be on the ground, choking on one of your own teeth, sore and aching. And that was with normal humans, and normal forces at work. A bar fight rarely went past twenty seconds unless a lot of people got dragged in, and even then if you broke it down into a series of smaller fights? There was effectively no fight that lasted that long. It was just the nature of the beast: Fights were over in a heartbeat.

Wars, on the other hand. Yaksha had watched enough wars over the years and gathered the gist of it: The victors were often as clearly determined in any given skirmish within a relatively equivalent timeframe. The stories of old, of knights sieging towers for days without rest, before they finally managed to break down the walls? Utter nonsense. Fights and conflicts weren't long-lived things. People didn't have the capacity to hold those kinds of forces within themselves for very long. Even a normal person risked tearing muscles and dislocating joints if they fought for especially long. For a creature such as him? A minute was the longest he really ever needed to exert himself. And it was also about the longest he reasonably could.

Tick. Tock.

The fight moved exponentially fast to the perspective of any human. Both parties were a blur of movement and colors and sensory noise that would've put the most impressive fireworks show of the 21st century to shame. Sand rose in tiny rushes with each passing motion, tiny contrails of light followed nearly every motion, and it was just downright painfully hectic to be an onlooker. Every second crammed in far too much: Even a normal man could react to things in a third of a second, and this had been thirty of those. How much faster did you need to move before someone couldn't ever hope to explain what they were watching to someone else? Trying to put into words what you were looking at when two supernatural beings fought was an exercise in futility.

Things only got muddier once Ebyssa's second poison flower bloomed, on Crow's own blade. She began to blink and struggle with every movement, eyes dilating and narrowing wildly, with no real stimulus to reflect them. It would've been easy for her to have trouble telling fact from fiction when she started swinging. There could've been a dozen arrancar right near her at that very moment, ready to strike her down, and she never would've known. The fight took a turn from chaos into absolute anarchy the moment that Crow could no longer trust her own senses. Anything could've happened, and she wouldn't have been able to trust it.

A hollow could've even stepped out from thin air behind her, and she wouldn't have known.

The poison gas crowded visibility for a few moments, making it difficult to see what was going on inside: The inevitable downside of anything dense enough to have that unpleasant a reaction in someone's lungs when inhaled is that it was also too dense to meaningfully let light through. It was possible for a few seconds to confuse the silence for defeat, for Ebyssa to sheath her weapon or begin relaxing. Time moved quickly in a fight after all, and if you chose to spend more than two or three seconds out of sight, in a cloud of poison? You were probably dead.

The creature Crow thought she saw twitched one shoulder, ever so slightly. It was a negligent gesture, no different from a person trying to get a crick out of their neck, or a man cracking their fingers. He moved in absolute silence, with atavistic grace and style, as it passed directly by her, as if she weren't even there. It continued to move along for a few more steps, before it stood at the very edge of the cloud. It inhaled, muscles tensing in one big bunch...and a pair of wings burst from its back, easily twenty five feet across. It was large enough to be seen from the city proper, let alone a few dozen yards away. Each and every joint of the wing had a tiny red rune on it, that swirled into life, as someone spoke for the first time.

"The difference between a city and a state is violence. A city is a collection of people and organizations, living together. A city can be as small or as big as you like. Las Vegas was a city up until about a year ago. Then it became a state. The difference is..."

Before the words had even died down, there was a horrible crackling sound, like radio static turned up loud enough to be felt in the bones, and a hand was resting on Ebyssa's shoulder. All at once, the air around her had taken on the consistency of soup, every breath a struggle. It was like her own body had been cocooned in something solid, as the speaker leaned down, revealing a mask that was completely devoid of features. As soon as this registered, the horrible crushing pain did: The sense of the sheer, inexorable will of someone who was probably strong enough to kill her without even -trying-.

"States have a monopoly on violence. You...don't work for me. And she definitely doesn't work for me. Which means you're edging in on my market. You know what happens when someone who can't compete tries to nip at the heels of a giant, don't you?"

He rose his head once more, looking at the sky, and then shouting, in that same rich, mellifluous voice, speaking to nothing at all visible.

"Fight's over! Pack it up! The game is called on account of rain! Pool's closed! From this moment forward, anyone who bares their fangs gets to see how sharp mine are! Now come over here, and tell me your names."


Tick. Tock.

Thirty seconds. On the dot.