Winds of War [AfriCatastrophe Act IV]

Yeah, she swore she remembered it talking last time - that vile cackling voice gave a clear answer as to how intact it's mind still was and it's ability to understand her; Just a big destructive asshole. The light from the blast was blinding, but she was fine, still laying on a structure of Reishi until she righted herself, only to hear the thing "praising" her. Her lip crooked as her weapon appeared to be momentarily lowered, "Maybe you shouldn't compliment somebody you're boutta eat, yknow? Not to mention..."

With a twist and coil of form that sword of ribbon and bone converted into another shape - a readied longbow with only it's grip consisting of that ashen shape coming into being, "I'm no Quincy."

That swarm of Calliope's incoming attack gave her the perfect opportunity to catch this dragon in a bad position, aiming upward with a sure hand - if she could just force this thing to the ground, preferably into the bed of traps hidden below, they couldn't let it have even a moment to breathe.

"Regen!" The arrow loosed from that taut string, the throb of energy as it flew caused the arrow to split, and split, and split..

Until it rained from the sky upon the swath of land the dragon occupied just above, a confusing and seemingly neverending rain of arrows.

"Shinigami, Quincy... Food is food. You're all the same to me." But even as Liltotto announced she was no quincy, and then proceeded to launch an arrow, the Dragon simply didn't fucking know anymore. If it shot arrows but wasn't a quincy then what was it? This question would distract the arrogant dragon long enough for Calliope's initial attack to hit. The bullet or bullets or whatever that hit her- The Dragon didn't see until the last moment- struck her and damn near toppled her out of the sky. Her lizardlike body twisted in agony for a moment, a horrendous roar loosing from her maw as the pain wracked her, but she quickly got ahold of herself and twisted upright just in time to bolt away from Liltotto's barrage of arrows.

Away and around, up and down the Dragon flew, tilting her wings to readjust her flight path so that she could avoid any further incoming attacks. She wasn't unscathed, but she was a durable beast. Whatever broken ribs she had suffered simply went ignored. The adrenaline was enough to let her do that for now.

"You insolent wretches!" She howled through the air in the general direction of her opponents. "I'll slaughter you all!"

As generic as it was a threat, she meant it. And the way she'd go about that was to rain acid effluvia over the terrain. Everywhere she flew, a cloud of acidic gas would emerge from her mouth, her wings, her scales, every inch of her body. It would seep from her very being and fall upon the landscape. Over Liltotto, over the buildings, the ground, anything that was around. The only thing that wouldn't get hit immediately was Calliope, but the Dragon would catch the very next glimpse of the woman's coiling energy and would dart in the direction of it, her massive body barreling through the air in an attempt to follow them and locate the bastard that had the audacity to strike her.

The battlefield was a swirl of confusion, attacks and dangers left and right between the three's combined assault... That cloud obscured the surroundings beneath the beast, including the blonde. The least observant would have thought her to have helplessly fallen to the effluvia, the lingering duration of her raining arrows suddenly evaporating as if she had been struck down, granting the hollow one less obstacle in her mad charge toward Calliope. In this enraged movement, a slight tug at the beast's back likely went unnoticed, little evidence of danger accompanying it; may as well have been debris or a strange bout of air resistance against her body.

"I gotta make you suffer, after all." A sudden reappearance of Liltotto's spiritual energy flourished and expanded - she was on the creature's shoulderblades, nothing but her natural durability and spiritual immunity fending off the plague that sought to rot her from the outside in, her weapon having transformed into a spear as she held herself steady and readied her strike, a dissipating chain loosening from where she hooked.

"Pierce." Her tone was far more tired and uninterested than previously, as if she was slowly detaching from the situation at hand, the flow of battle being nothing more than an autonomous movement. With raised arms and her spear burning strongly with energy, she would lay an explosive blow directly where the creature's wing met her body, the penetrative blow surely injuring it greatly enough to cause a imbalance to wrench one of her advantages from her talons, or even sever the wing outright.

The Dragon was furious. She had genuinely been struck, and it even hurt, too. Deep in her body, she could feel her bones ache and the threat of internal bleeding looming over her head. Yet she persevered as she always had. She'd have been dead a long time ago if she hadn't the strength to push through a little pain. Even if that pain wracked through her body and left her mind a little numb. That let her rage start to slowly blind her to all but the woman that had hit her. It didn't matter if Calliope hid, the Dragon could smell the woman's fear, practically taste the blood on her tongue already-

"What?!" The Dragon screeched out as Liltotto made her appearance once more. The Dragon was mid flight, speeding towards the building she had last seen the redhead at when suddenly the other nuisance was on top of her. And without the range of arm movement to immediately retaliate, she took that explosive blow straight to the base of her wing. Her scales were resilient to trauma, but at such point blank ranges like this they could only take so much. The scales were blown off, flesh was exposed, and the bone broken, leaving the Dragon suddenly spiraling out of control. From a straight beeline towards Calliope, to suddenly trying to keep afloat in the air to no avail.

In just a few moments she would crash into the city ruins, most of which were just dust in the wind. The impact of her landing would resound heavily throughout the stale, rotten air, and her screeches of humiliating pain would follow soon after. She wasn't down for the count, but it took her a bit of writhing before she scrambled back to her feet and screamed at the top of her lungs. No words, just violent, frustrated, vicious screams, followed by a desperate, spiteful move.

Any effluvia that covered the local area would soon arise into the air as the rotted dragon summoned it back to her. Gray mist flowing in streams through the air back to her scaly figure, reiatsu blossoming forth in an explosion of even more gray, until it all stopped. Like the calm in the middle of a storm, there was no sound, no feeling, until sudden there was, all at once.

The Dragon's figure was obscured by a sudden explosion of effluvia that would spiral and stretch upwards in a violent cacophony of rotten, digestive rage. The grey mist would stretch twist and churn until its shape could only be compared to that of a rapidly expanding tornado of death. More dense than ever before, filled to the brim with nothing but rotting hate and all encompassing decay. There was no Dragon in sight anymore, just a natural disaster that grew and grew and grew, stretching high into the sky and spiraling fast enough to disrupt the wind, until it truly was just a hurricane of even denser, gaseous stomach acid that expanded outwards in an attempt to swallow her adversaries whole.

That piercing blade hungrily lapped at the blood and viscera of the beast as the two descended, her grip and the chains wrapping tightly around her arm being her only anchor as the violent fall commenced; she succeeded in grounding the horrific creature. Rotting fumes lapped her flesh as her resilient body was put to the test against the fall, her weapon dislodging somewhere on the way down as she took a harsh tumble to the dusty earth, the ring of force and gravity creaking her bones but failing to break what would otherwise render the human body a pile of broken bones and torn meat. Her senses were rattled, reshaping quickly as she realized where she was; beneath the creature she'd felled, that screech of pained fury vibrating through her skull and chest.

The soft satisfaction and reach for her weapon were interrupted with the sensation of a spiking in reiatsu, her grip on the weapon tightening as what unfolded became clear: she was at the epicenter of a catastrophe lying in wait.

And then it exploded.

Held to the ground by merely her weapon's grip, she was mere feet away from a torrent of wind that wished to devour her, devour any that questioned or opposed it. Senses burned, even her durable skin beginning to peel away every half second, some sections having made it to muscle despite her body's best efforts of fending off the foreign substances. Diseased air ate at her lungs and bit her eyes, but still she lied there, watching the formulating storm of decay for moments, time felt like it slowed.

If she ran, she could survive this just fine, at worst she'd just be in the hospital for a few days. However, there was a host of people nearby, people who would melt into a pile of decaying pus with mere contact, not to mention it's likely this storm would go onto the battlefield and cause even more trouble. It'd be a danger to most combatants, most who came into contact with this hollow would die unquestionably, their forces would deplete considerably, pushing the organization closer to the oblivion it stubbornly tore it's body from time and time again.

But there wasn't any way she could do anything about this creature. There was no way she'd be able to tear into or kill it fast enough before it deteriorated her body to ill-function, or managed to take out the station.

...

No. There has to be a way, there is a way. She knew, she still had some fear of it, but if she did nothing, if she preserved herself, the consequences would be dire for all else.

Hearing the crackle of the radio and Calliope's voice leap from the communication, she'd tune in, "Hold fire. It won't do anything but waste resources. I've got something; let your soldier do her job, and fall back."

Pulling herself to her feet, her spear was yanked from the earth, hair whipping in the wind as she held the comms to her ear for one final message, "I am serious when I say this: you will die if you are in the way. Over."

The radio cast aside, she'd take a hesitant breath as she lifted the spear. Rather than readying her stance, she'd calmly lift her head back slightly, a calming breath in her aching chest as the blade of the weapon pressed against her belly. This was terrifyingly familiar to her, but a ghost's touch and a comforting sensation calmed her heart; she was ready - she wasn't sure if she'd come out of it the same, but she'd do anything for them.

Eyes shut as she pulled the spear back with tensed muscles, calling to life that memory's name.



A chill hit her veins as an icy sharpness pierced her skin to meet the nothingness below, appearing as a suicidal measure amidst a tempest of despair...

The spear twisted and mangled into naught but a shape of dark water as her reiatsu rushed forth, as if an unforgiving sea had been released from it's taut confines. The flow of darkness pushed out with an oppressive might, reaching out as if to fill every space of reality with it's dense presence, pushing and rendering loose efflusiva particles nothing but part of the sea. Though it's invasive nature, the presence at it's center was calm, peaceful, possessing no malice or bloodthirst.

An impermeable darkness shrouded the form of it's source, cut through with only a duo of lights - a lesser and brilliant star appearing to gaze upon a soul twisted by torment and sin with only the intention to relieve it. The shape of interest was clear to it's senses, a mere moment between it's breach of consciousness, and it's first move.

Movements nonsensical to any strategist occurred, a flash of white branching out from the darkness and toward the Dragon, tearing through the storm with the ease of batting at mist. The incomprehensible entity would have thrown it's lithe body toward the hollow, ribbon-like structures coming off of it's form to come down onto the Dragon to sever and envelop it's body in their embrace, surely rendering anything within it's tender grasp to nothing more than a new addition to this dark sea.

The Dragon was a walking natural disaster, to say the least. War was her specialty just as much as catastrophe might as well have been her name. She had fought thousands of battles. Hollows, Shinigami, Quincies, if it exist, she had been in a fight with it. But this... This was beyond even her. To have some kind of aerial payload blast away half of her tornado in a matter of moments caught her sincerely off guard. For a single moment, she faltered. And in that moment, she would start the proper spiral into defeat.

What was it? The Dragon's head snapped towards the sound of talking, completely surprised that Liltotto hadn't been totally melted by her attack. The girl was durable, but that didn't matter now. What mattered was fucking moving. Anywhere else, her muscles screamed for her to move, but for a moment she was paralyzed. It wasn't until the absolute last second, when whatever being of light or white or whatever started to actually move towards her. Did it move even? The Dragon's senses were unfocused, and so she couldn't tell. All she knew was that she needed to get the fuck out. It was time for her one true trump card, something that had indeed won her many a fight to the point of being utterly countless in number.

The Dragon did not need her wings to fly.

With a blur of motion, the towering beast crouched and propelled herself into the air, her effluvia starting to regather around her to form a sphere of swirling disaster ready to strike. But could she even harm whatever this thing was? It had simply parted her effluvia like it was nothing. Perhaps it wasn't a strong enough concentration, but the exhaustion was starting to slowly set in and that meant she had to be mindful of her next few actions. One wing flapped instinctively as if to propel her into the air, but right now she wasn't really flying so much as jumping really fucking far, really fucking fast.

Her muscles had launched her clean off of the ground and up several dozen stories fast enough to form an air barrier around her. Much like a speeding jet about to break the sound barrier, she soared high into the sky to get as far away from this dark, dense thing as she could. And that was when her eyes caught Calliope again. Whether the building had melted or if she had gotten a better angle on the woman's position after crashing into the ground with Liltotto, the Dragon didn't know. What she did know was that at the very least, she could hurt that one.

And so the swirling ball of effluvia that she was encompassed in turned into a spiraling disaster, a sideways tornado if you will, that headed straight for Calliope. If she couldn't hurt Liltotto, or at the very least could outspeed... whatever the fuck that thing down there was, then the Dragon would at least aim for the redhead. So, without hesitation, she would use her spiritual energies to form a platform for her to kick off of, launching herself straight towards Calliope while her effluvia billowed off of her body to give her a more ghastly, demonic look, and then proceeded to form a spiral behind her that followed suit in an attempt to absolutely engulf the redhead in pure rot.

The ribbon's failure to seize the dragon's ascent was nothing more than a means of movement, placing the epicenter of these dark currents where the Dragon once stood. The being within ceased all movement, those starlit forms staring in the general direction of the Dragon's ascent, a dark face expressionless and smooth as it was ominously still and quiet, waiting. One would think from the lacking in clarity of it's movements due to that swirling sea of Reishi around it that it had spent it's power or otherwise was incapable of movement, it's intent unreadable.

Such a thought would be proven incorrect, terribly so, as the dragon descended. For a being that seemed to lack all thought and intent, it had performed an incredibly precise movement - waiting for the hollow to fall into an ideal position to both be attacked, as well as to spare the wick of scent it's path sought to collide with, plunging into that dense cloud with a swirl of ribbons guiding the flight and the technique of those she emulated hastening the progress considerably, boosted with the density of spiritual energy cascading their being.

A chase was futile, after all - awaiting for their paths to line up so that not a moment was wasted, rather than attempt to match the malevolent one's speed, was the ideal. The waking god possessed what the ravenous one no longer could perform, a fact that would grow obvious as the body's smaller mass collided with the creature's, the speed and strength of the sure path taken enough to force the being off course of it's desire to harm, the two falling from the sky once again.

Although, rather than with a weapon in hand, ribbons wove together to form four wing-like constructs, bony digits digging into the rotting flesh of the creature as the two were enveloped in their white embrace, cutting off the effluvia from the world and rendering it naught but a part of this swirling cycle.

Why do you resist?

It wasn't a voice, more a feeling, as if a quaking earth shaking through one's flesh and bones could speak, any in the vicinity would have recieved this feeling, but it was at it's strongest to it's intended recipient - the dragon.

Hurting, aching, your suffering is clear.

Despite it's somewhat invasive presence, it was a calm presence. Pitying.

Allow the end. The pain will cease. Please.

It was less a question and more a calm demand, as ribbons snaked in and sought to begin severing the beast's body by the limbs as they crashed if not otherwise stopped.

The Dragon was fully ready to take her revenge on the filthy little quincy that had struck her earlier, her flight path set to collide straight with where she knew Calliope was, but her plans would fall short as the god's interception was successful. The being's impact against the Dragon's body knocked it clean out of the sky yet again and sent her tumbling down into the earth with a loud crash. Earth and rubble being kicked up as they skid for several dozen meters until finally coming to a stop.

In her dazed state, the Dragon didn't notice those wings until their bony digits were piercing her flesh and ribbons were trying to sever her limbs individually. The beast roared in pain, but there was something that the God couldn't possibly account for, or so she hoped. The effluvia that was sectioned off was separated from the Dragon's body, but the source was her body itself. Beneath the scales that were pierced was a metric fuck ton of rotting acid that would eat at whatever it was that pierced her body, making it so they could only get so deep in her flesh before rotting away. And her scales? They were resistant to severing. The ribbons' attempts at cutting off her limbs would prove incredibly difficult, with only one exception.

Her already partially severed wing wasn't so resistant now that it was already half gone, and the ribbons would find at least that came off quite easily. The Dragon threw her head back and roared out in a mixture of violent pain and miserable grief. One of her precious wings, gone, and she didn't know if she could possibly get that back. In the torrent of violent, negative emotions that followed, she simply stopped holding back. The effluvia in the nearby environment picked up again, and the effluvia beneath her scales blossomed outwards. Whether or not the god could defend against a point blank attack wasn't the Dragon's worry, she was too desperate to think of such things. So, from the outside and the inside of the god's grasp on the beast, whatever effluvia had left burst outwards from her scales and into the being in a desperate attempt to strike it with a two pronged attack. Whether or not it would just siphon away her effluvia again was another issue entirely.