11-24-2009, 08:31 AM
<Initializing Protocol DA-2242.s “Happy Cocktail”... Commencing procedure.>
Sage leaned back in her chair and exhaled through pursed lips, her eyes closed. She had still been picking over the things Belle had said to her, and the things she had learned in her fight with him. The blue haired doctor was still having trouble with the preposterous moral qualms she refused to let go of, but at least it was becoming more and more clear that the entire tournament was not, in fact, real.
In truth, she was almost giddy. She hadn’t tested the full depth of her abilities in seven years, excluding the fight she just had with Belle. And she had completely lost her mind. She couldn’t imagine how much better she could fight if she had been lucid. The prospect that she could find out with no real consequence, thanks to the nature of Dante’s Abyss, seemed... appealing.
“No, that’s a weird thing to say,” she declared, furrowing her eyebrows. She was participating in an elaborate murder simulator. Even if it wasn’t real, it was still wrong. Wasn’t it? She sighed. It wasn’t hurting anyone. The hybrid began to wonder if she was over-thinking the situation; she was bad for that. Her sister said so all the time.
As much as Sage wanted to feel bad for the things she had done, as much as she expected to, she really didn’t. In fact, as she felt herself beginning to melt in her seat, she realized she felt more relaxed - more serene - now than she had in...
Actually, she couldn’t remember feeling so good.
It was a feeling of immense satisfaction, like she had finally pieced together the puzzle and she got to see what the picture was. If Sage had ever had a social life of any kind, perhaps she would have realized how incredibly lame the analogy was. But it worked. For her, anyway.
Of course, Damon chose exactly that moment to pluck her out of the amazingly comfortable chair she was in and hurl her halfway across the frozen wasteland, and onto her ass in the snow. She might have been immune to the cold, but her clothes still got wet, dammit!
Still, the goodness of her mood was unprecedented. She had no problem picking herself up and brushing herself off. Whatever, right? It was just snow; she could just will it off of her if she felt like it. She didn’t.
Standing a fair distance from her, she suddenly noticed, was a man dressed in orange. Orange. In a frozen arctic white nothing. He looked very, very sinister, but at the same time, Sage couldn’t help but think he looked kind of like a construction worker stuck doing a horrible job in February.
His appearance was unsettling, though. The hybrid could feel the prickles rising on her flesh. The man stood, deadfast, despite the bracing cold, casting a sinister glare at her. By all rights, she should have been terrorized. But, somehow, she wasn’t. Or, she was. Sort of. But not enough to revert to the shivering lump of frightful, self-loathing impotence that she usually became. In fact, she almost felt angry at him for disturbing her good spirits.
Didn’t stop the lump from forming in her throat, though. No, it’s good, she reassured herself. If it turned out he was as sinister as he looked, at least she wouldn’t feel very bad about harming him. She watched the steam form in front of her as she exhaled with a shaky breath. Why was this so hard?
“S-So we’re supposed to, um, ...fight each other, right?” Sage winced at her overture. Just abysmal.
The man didn’t seem to respond. At all. He didn’t even acknowledge she had been speaking to him. Something else was off, too. With a bit of concentration, Sage convinced the snowstorm to die down, removing the filter of obscurity from overtop her new opponent. It also, she noted with a twinge of regret, revealed the stasis field in all of its oppressive wonder.
The man was green. A namek, she quickly decided. She hadn’t seen a namek in years. And the ones she had seen never gave off a vibe like this one did. Sage frowned. That revelation only served to dampen her spirits.
Suddenly, and without warning, an immense rush of wind ripped at her, blowing her hair back and threatening to carry her off in the sky. Throwing up an arm to shield herself, Sage could hardly keep her eyes open as the high winds forced tears out of them. She gritted and bared her teeth as she struggled against the sudden whirlwind, and finally, a slick, black sheet of ice erupted up from the ground, shielding the girl from the fury of the namek’s element.
The girl hesitantly stepped out from behind her shield, and immediately realized that the alien was gone. Immediately panicking, Sage spun around, then back the other way, then around the first way again. He was nowhere!
How do you hide out here?! the girl projected her thoughts. There’s nothing here!!
Fearful eyes darted up, down, left, right. Sage’s head jerked to and fro, like a sparrow; timid. Fettered. Skittish.
Where is he?! Where did he go?! it wasn’t about wether he would hurt her or not. It was about being killed by a sucker punch. She couldn’t let go of this opportunity. Not now that she was coming to terms with it. Not now when she had been reminded of Sol’s cruelty. Just calm down. It’s okay, it’s oka-where is he?!
Suddenly, the girl spun on her heel. Nothing. She narrowed her eyes. She could have sworn she heard-
Sage whirled back around, this time feeling almost sick from fear. She worried she might just throw up. He was saying something. Just... quiet. Far away. She wasn’t going crazy, was she?
This time, her head jerked to the side. No, that wasn’t her imagination. Whispering. It was almost silent, but it was someone whispering. Then she heard it from her other side. A different voice. Sage scanned the wastes again, but stopped as the whispers approached in intensifying cadence. Quickly, the collection of voices and whispers overwhelmed intelligibility and became nothing more than unyielding noise.
The quarter saiyan took several steps back, sweeping her head back and forth. There was noone out there. Finally, she grasped at her head with her one good hand and squeezed her eyes shut. “St-stop it!! Stop it!!”
The namek didn’t listen. Instead, he made the voices louder. Sage began to shake, regretting that she hadn’t felt more terrified earlier, as if it would have made her less frightened now. “Please!! J-just-” she caught her voice in her throat, and then, in a whisper. “...Stop.”
And then, as if to make things even worse, the jade man appeared out of nowhere in front of her, and threw a punch to the temple of the wide-eyed girl, shattering one of the layers of Hoarfrost she had unconsciously sheathed herself in. She was sent hurtling through the air, but at least those whispers stopped.
Smacking into the snow didn’t hurt. Not like crashing onto the harsh dirt of the forest sector. How she had been unfortunate enough to fight there twice, she didn’t know. Though dazed, Sage picked herself up off the ground, and faced her aggressor.
This was her realm, and this game wasn’t real. She couldn’t let- whatever he was doing - change that. She couldn’t let herself be taken in. She had to be strong. She blinked away her dizziness, and, for the third time in the contest, she encased her hands in the huge, menacing claws of ice that had come to define her fighting style - or lack thereof.
Taking Sage’s claws as a challenge, the namek kicked off of the ice and launched himself forward - or he intended to. Looking down, he found his feet encased in ice. He looked up at the girl, his face devoid of the confusion she had been expecting.
He struggled against his frozen shackles, but Sage wouldn’t let the opportunity to end the fight quickly slip by. From the frozen ground emerged frozen, spear-like tendrils that snaked up from the snow, before lancing at the immobilized son of Retane.
With surprising flexibility, Sage’s victim twisted and bent around the deadly Frostroots, and finally broke free of his restraints. He leapt from the trap the girl had sprung upon him, and bounded down the tundra toward her.
The hapless healer froze as he closed the distance.
That was what the murderous alien thought, anyway. Sage, however, had tricked him. The snow he was running on had become the slickest ice beneath his feet, and he found himself crashing on his chin instead of putting his fist to the girl’s jaw.
Instead of climbing back to his feet, the namek hurled himself up into the air, and stayed there. “You can fly, too?!” the girl nearly protested. A series of frozen javelins manifested in the air around her, and rocketed up at Maleficus like SAMs after a fighter pilot.
Because it was the pilot you wanted. Planes could be replaced. Experience couldn’t.
Her adversary, however, had turned out to be an ace, as if in defiance of the color of his skin. He either dodged or cut down the vicious projectiles with a remarkable grace. His fighting was so smooth. So... careful.
She almost didn’t realize he was diving down at her, and threw up a Frostbite storm to deter him, but Maleficus simply shielded his face and blasted through it, slamming his knee into Sage’s gut, before throwing a backhand to the side of her face. She was sent skipping across the ice like a rock over a lake.
The namek was hardly stupid, however, and chased after her, punting her up into the air like a football. He thundered upward after her, but Sage, in desperation, encased herself in a chunk of ice and from it burst frozen spikes in all directions.
Maleficus broke away, narrowly evading one of the frosty skewers, just as the protective Glacier around Sage shattered. The blue haired girl fell through the air above the namek and raked one of her grotesque claws over his back.
The two of them fell from the sky, hitting the ground with a staccato pair of thumps. Sage found herself face-first in the snow, and in a great deal of pain. It was a long drop; she was actually a little surprised she hadn’t broken anything.
Still, it hurt to move. She had to fight to get to her feet, and even then, she took a knee. She just needed a breather, she reasoned. Just a minute to rest.
To Sage’s surprise, she was up first. It was then that she saw the blood pooling beneath her namekian opponent. Maybe he was dying. Maybe he was already dead. The thoughts played out in her mind, differently than they had in the changeling’s case. The nagging moral questions were still there, but somehow muted.
The girl knew she would take no solace in the death of this namek, but he stood between her and her goal. And, she reminded herself for the millionth time, it wasn’t real.
“I j-just want you to know... I am sorry,” she explained, thinking she was talking to a corpse. “I had t-” she cut herself off as Maleficus lifted himself up onto his elbows. Sage gritted her teeth and flexed her claws. So be it.
Sage leaned back in her chair and exhaled through pursed lips, her eyes closed. She had still been picking over the things Belle had said to her, and the things she had learned in her fight with him. The blue haired doctor was still having trouble with the preposterous moral qualms she refused to let go of, but at least it was becoming more and more clear that the entire tournament was not, in fact, real.
In truth, she was almost giddy. She hadn’t tested the full depth of her abilities in seven years, excluding the fight she just had with Belle. And she had completely lost her mind. She couldn’t imagine how much better she could fight if she had been lucid. The prospect that she could find out with no real consequence, thanks to the nature of Dante’s Abyss, seemed... appealing.
“No, that’s a weird thing to say,” she declared, furrowing her eyebrows. She was participating in an elaborate murder simulator. Even if it wasn’t real, it was still wrong. Wasn’t it? She sighed. It wasn’t hurting anyone. The hybrid began to wonder if she was over-thinking the situation; she was bad for that. Her sister said so all the time.
As much as Sage wanted to feel bad for the things she had done, as much as she expected to, she really didn’t. In fact, as she felt herself beginning to melt in her seat, she realized she felt more relaxed - more serene - now than she had in...
Actually, she couldn’t remember feeling so good.
It was a feeling of immense satisfaction, like she had finally pieced together the puzzle and she got to see what the picture was. If Sage had ever had a social life of any kind, perhaps she would have realized how incredibly lame the analogy was. But it worked. For her, anyway.
Of course, Damon chose exactly that moment to pluck her out of the amazingly comfortable chair she was in and hurl her halfway across the frozen wasteland, and onto her ass in the snow. She might have been immune to the cold, but her clothes still got wet, dammit!
Still, the goodness of her mood was unprecedented. She had no problem picking herself up and brushing herself off. Whatever, right? It was just snow; she could just will it off of her if she felt like it. She didn’t.
Standing a fair distance from her, she suddenly noticed, was a man dressed in orange. Orange. In a frozen arctic white nothing. He looked very, very sinister, but at the same time, Sage couldn’t help but think he looked kind of like a construction worker stuck doing a horrible job in February.
His appearance was unsettling, though. The hybrid could feel the prickles rising on her flesh. The man stood, deadfast, despite the bracing cold, casting a sinister glare at her. By all rights, she should have been terrorized. But, somehow, she wasn’t. Or, she was. Sort of. But not enough to revert to the shivering lump of frightful, self-loathing impotence that she usually became. In fact, she almost felt angry at him for disturbing her good spirits.
Didn’t stop the lump from forming in her throat, though. No, it’s good, she reassured herself. If it turned out he was as sinister as he looked, at least she wouldn’t feel very bad about harming him. She watched the steam form in front of her as she exhaled with a shaky breath. Why was this so hard?
“S-So we’re supposed to, um, ...fight each other, right?” Sage winced at her overture. Just abysmal.
The man didn’t seem to respond. At all. He didn’t even acknowledge she had been speaking to him. Something else was off, too. With a bit of concentration, Sage convinced the snowstorm to die down, removing the filter of obscurity from overtop her new opponent. It also, she noted with a twinge of regret, revealed the stasis field in all of its oppressive wonder.
The man was green. A namek, she quickly decided. She hadn’t seen a namek in years. And the ones she had seen never gave off a vibe like this one did. Sage frowned. That revelation only served to dampen her spirits.
Suddenly, and without warning, an immense rush of wind ripped at her, blowing her hair back and threatening to carry her off in the sky. Throwing up an arm to shield herself, Sage could hardly keep her eyes open as the high winds forced tears out of them. She gritted and bared her teeth as she struggled against the sudden whirlwind, and finally, a slick, black sheet of ice erupted up from the ground, shielding the girl from the fury of the namek’s element.
The girl hesitantly stepped out from behind her shield, and immediately realized that the alien was gone. Immediately panicking, Sage spun around, then back the other way, then around the first way again. He was nowhere!
How do you hide out here?! the girl projected her thoughts. There’s nothing here!!
Fearful eyes darted up, down, left, right. Sage’s head jerked to and fro, like a sparrow; timid. Fettered. Skittish.
Where is he?! Where did he go?! it wasn’t about wether he would hurt her or not. It was about being killed by a sucker punch. She couldn’t let go of this opportunity. Not now that she was coming to terms with it. Not now when she had been reminded of Sol’s cruelty. Just calm down. It’s okay, it’s oka-where is he?!
Suddenly, the girl spun on her heel. Nothing. She narrowed her eyes. She could have sworn she heard-
Sage whirled back around, this time feeling almost sick from fear. She worried she might just throw up. He was saying something. Just... quiet. Far away. She wasn’t going crazy, was she?
This time, her head jerked to the side. No, that wasn’t her imagination. Whispering. It was almost silent, but it was someone whispering. Then she heard it from her other side. A different voice. Sage scanned the wastes again, but stopped as the whispers approached in intensifying cadence. Quickly, the collection of voices and whispers overwhelmed intelligibility and became nothing more than unyielding noise.
The quarter saiyan took several steps back, sweeping her head back and forth. There was noone out there. Finally, she grasped at her head with her one good hand and squeezed her eyes shut. “St-stop it!! Stop it!!”
The namek didn’t listen. Instead, he made the voices louder. Sage began to shake, regretting that she hadn’t felt more terrified earlier, as if it would have made her less frightened now. “Please!! J-just-” she caught her voice in her throat, and then, in a whisper. “...Stop.”
And then, as if to make things even worse, the jade man appeared out of nowhere in front of her, and threw a punch to the temple of the wide-eyed girl, shattering one of the layers of Hoarfrost she had unconsciously sheathed herself in. She was sent hurtling through the air, but at least those whispers stopped.
Smacking into the snow didn’t hurt. Not like crashing onto the harsh dirt of the forest sector. How she had been unfortunate enough to fight there twice, she didn’t know. Though dazed, Sage picked herself up off the ground, and faced her aggressor.
This was her realm, and this game wasn’t real. She couldn’t let- whatever he was doing - change that. She couldn’t let herself be taken in. She had to be strong. She blinked away her dizziness, and, for the third time in the contest, she encased her hands in the huge, menacing claws of ice that had come to define her fighting style - or lack thereof.
Taking Sage’s claws as a challenge, the namek kicked off of the ice and launched himself forward - or he intended to. Looking down, he found his feet encased in ice. He looked up at the girl, his face devoid of the confusion she had been expecting.
He struggled against his frozen shackles, but Sage wouldn’t let the opportunity to end the fight quickly slip by. From the frozen ground emerged frozen, spear-like tendrils that snaked up from the snow, before lancing at the immobilized son of Retane.
With surprising flexibility, Sage’s victim twisted and bent around the deadly Frostroots, and finally broke free of his restraints. He leapt from the trap the girl had sprung upon him, and bounded down the tundra toward her.
The hapless healer froze as he closed the distance.
That was what the murderous alien thought, anyway. Sage, however, had tricked him. The snow he was running on had become the slickest ice beneath his feet, and he found himself crashing on his chin instead of putting his fist to the girl’s jaw.
Instead of climbing back to his feet, the namek hurled himself up into the air, and stayed there. “You can fly, too?!” the girl nearly protested. A series of frozen javelins manifested in the air around her, and rocketed up at Maleficus like SAMs after a fighter pilot.
Because it was the pilot you wanted. Planes could be replaced. Experience couldn’t.
Her adversary, however, had turned out to be an ace, as if in defiance of the color of his skin. He either dodged or cut down the vicious projectiles with a remarkable grace. His fighting was so smooth. So... careful.
She almost didn’t realize he was diving down at her, and threw up a Frostbite storm to deter him, but Maleficus simply shielded his face and blasted through it, slamming his knee into Sage’s gut, before throwing a backhand to the side of her face. She was sent skipping across the ice like a rock over a lake.
The namek was hardly stupid, however, and chased after her, punting her up into the air like a football. He thundered upward after her, but Sage, in desperation, encased herself in a chunk of ice and from it burst frozen spikes in all directions.
Maleficus broke away, narrowly evading one of the frosty skewers, just as the protective Glacier around Sage shattered. The blue haired girl fell through the air above the namek and raked one of her grotesque claws over his back.
The two of them fell from the sky, hitting the ground with a staccato pair of thumps. Sage found herself face-first in the snow, and in a great deal of pain. It was a long drop; she was actually a little surprised she hadn’t broken anything.
Still, it hurt to move. She had to fight to get to her feet, and even then, she took a knee. She just needed a breather, she reasoned. Just a minute to rest.
To Sage’s surprise, she was up first. It was then that she saw the blood pooling beneath her namekian opponent. Maybe he was dying. Maybe he was already dead. The thoughts played out in her mind, differently than they had in the changeling’s case. The nagging moral questions were still there, but somehow muted.
The girl knew she would take no solace in the death of this namek, but he stood between her and her goal. And, she reminded herself for the millionth time, it wasn’t real.
“I j-just want you to know... I am sorry,” she explained, thinking she was talking to a corpse. “I had t-” she cut herself off as Maleficus lifted himself up onto his elbows. Sage gritted her teeth and flexed her claws. So be it.
![[Image: Sage.jpg]](http://rebecca.florizone.com/sig/miscsig/Sage.jpg)