Val retrieves the blade from his pocket. His eyes whirl energetically, like powered dynamos. Red lightning bent into half-circles emblazon these eyes, flash and deaden them. In his hand, the blade glows. This light amplifies until he's no longer holding steel and fiber but instead white, white light. The light expands forward in three curved feet, backwards in a single straight foot and the pulsating sounds of handled energies persist between them. With the blade shaped the process concludes with a sharp, harrowing sound that feels like a high-frequency shriek. And then steam, billowing, rocketing steam from the blade-of-light, as if it had been taken from tempering flames and washed in cooling water. Now perfect steel lays curled in his fingers, a sword like any-other. He steps forward and little threads of smoke peel from the glimmering, manifested weapon.
His steps are dramatic. His opponent's are not. The cloaked figure, who had been intently and crookedly admiring Val's technique, leaps ahead, pulls back his arm and slings it forward. Val's body contorts back and away to avoid the fist. What Val hadn't seen now stands evident. When the creature swung, the fist pulled ahead of the fabric of its sleeve and exposed its weapon; a metal talon. Not nearly as large as Martyrs, but it bore an uncomfortable semblance. Val, now in a low and prowling pose, lifts his body and twists the blade, aiming a fierce slash at the beast's chest, a blow that would rightfully halve him should it land uncontested. The cloaked stranger opens the talon and meets the blade and the horrible outburst of metal-opposing-metal shocks the air with piercing hallows and bursting sparks.
Silent and helpless, Martyr can only watch as the two go at it. Her lip trembled, her back straightened, and her fist came up to her mouth allowing her teeth to sink in and abuse the flesh of her knuckles. Violet orbs expanded, and soon became surrounded with the whites of eyes as she noted that very familiar arm. ?Is that m-my?? The girl?s broken lyrics trailed off into her saliva-moistened fist as she took a step backwards. She?really liked this dress. When Val took her shopping for it last week, she thought to herself, how careful she?d be with it. Now? Now it seemed as helpless a cause as she, and her eyes tucked for only a moment behind lid and lash as the doe-eyed damsel tried to think of a solution.
Martyr could blast him with her soul, it was true. A clear shot might easily take the creature, man, whatever he was, out. Unfortunately a blast like that was hard to concentrate, and risked Val?s body in the process? Not to mention it felt like giving birth all over again. With one more step back, she began to weigh her options.
Val's blade remains locked with the apparition's steel fingers. Because he'd stepped into it, the hilt rattles strenuously inside his white-knuckled grasp and a face just as stressed contorts furiously as it recognizes the stern calm emanating from his becloaked opponent. Val draws his foot behind the right, lessens the applied force and replies with a three-point maneuver; one, he rips his blade away from their contact and forces the being to fall victim to his own inertia; two, he angles the blade so that it's nose faces down and away and concludes with the third; a fearsome strike that appears in the air as naught but a sickle of light, like a fall star's tail, a laser rounding a bend.
The beast in white sinks on his springy knees and comfortably evades the wildly swift attack. Val, mindful of his unkempt application of force, steps back and warily eyes the fickle phantom. It hops back on its feet precisely but stands with no pose, no techinique or stance. Its arms hang and rock with the wind.
Val sighs and frustratingly eyes the newly dimmed sky. When he sigh concludes a concert of disdaining motions leave him slumped and defeated and above all else, bored. The specter finds opportunity in this and lunges once more.
Three yards lay measured in tarmac between the pair. One long stride from the white-cloaked being brings him between one and a half and it's here that he rifles his sharp hand at Val; Val, who stands, admiring sky and the one bedamned star that is fussy and spoiled enough to glimmer in a polluted city sky. Between the men, an explosion. It's not mighty, merely a tussle of dust and dirty fragments. When the dust clears the specter's hand is strangely mired in a tall formation of sand. Before his arm escapes the fickle particles, Val snaps a small, small eye on it and the mound flashes white with a light that had likened the shaping of his blade. More smoke, but it clears quickly and his opponent's arm was no longer buried in a wall of stand but instead stone.
"Okay... Now," he perks his brow exasperatedly and lumbers over halfhearted to the beast that didn't bother to struggle. "We get some answers."
There wasn?t much weight in her stare to the ground as her lover and the creature battled. She had faith in Valcroix?s ability, this much was true, but feeling helpless? Unable to do anything but hope for either a woundless battle, or a chance to heal him? It was torture of the worst kind. Martyr wasn?t a fighter, that was for sure?but she had boundaries, and Val, save for Max, was her biggest one. He was one of the few little tripwires to cross and make the immortal insane with rage. Now? What could she do? Bat at him with that rangy, wet noodle of an arm? As the explosions of dust and sand erupted from their settled place on the ground, Martyr would gasp each and every time; her eyes dared the fray for only seconds at a time before she moved back to stare at the space between her separated Mary Janes.
A heart would pound in her chest, to the point where she felt as if her ribs were going to bruise from the inside out with the kicking of the muscle that screamed and writhed for her lover to be safe. The beating in her ears told stories of him not coming home, of him abandoning her with Max? Tales of explaining to her too-young daughter, that daddy wouldn?t be coming home today. His voice alone could pull her from this reverie, and calm that rampant organ which resided in the safety of the bony cage that was her chest. ?O-oh, V-val?? Martyr rushed over to him, wanting to stay by his side for three eternities; ready and willing to block any incoming attacks with her body.
Val boasts to his young lover with brows that waggle and a smile that could rightfully challenge the sharpness of his sword. His opponent's hand and forearm were borne in stone now, the stone that Val had cleverly transmuted from the sand. It was a sharp move, and he wouldn't hesitate to show.
"It's alright, Martyr. This one isn't going anywhere." He pats the rock formation warmly, like he would upon the back of his best friend; and given his reputation, Martyr could rightfully inform him that it was his best and only friend.
Wasting no more time, Val snags the specter's hood and draws it back. What now stands exposed is a young and formally handsome face of defined cheekbones and tanned, sunwarmed skin. His nose his pronounced and pointy, and his mouth is long, but detached and mindless and uncaring. Though these definitions of flesh now stand, the right of both Val and Martyr's attentions would be starkly paid to his eyes where two carved-out cavities hollowly stare. And in these holes, two brilliant, though crudely cut, amethysts.
"What..." With an open mouth, Val turns to the young Martyr. "The hell is this?"
