[Solo PvP] Judas. (Rep)

[Baneful]

Rep hated the island, he really did. It ate at him in a way that was almost painful and he realised that to him, no amount of physical pain was comparable to the distress which boredom caused him. He'd read somewhere that psychopaths felt boredom most acutely of anything they felt and it was this solitary thing which sometimes made him doubt himself, because no matter how he spun it it was ******** unbearable. He needed not to think, he needed to be ******** doing SOMETHING.

That day he strode out to the training fields, but he did not stop in the usual places to train but took one of the dummies and slung it over his shoulder, carrying it outside the hated wards and into the island itself, taking it down to some open beach instead. It would be a tougher workout anyway, he reckoned, having to deal with the way that the soft sand ate up momentum from movements, a fact he'd learned several times in the Sahara. Snow worked in a similar fashion but it wasn't the same, snow he preferred generally, it was more familiar.

In his other hand he'd brought a speaker dock he'd gotten runiced for his ipod and putting some music on and turning it up as loud as he could get it set it down safely out of range of any swings that might well go wide. He didn't even give a s**t if anyone heard him listening to Lady Gaga.


Dummy HP: 50  

[Baneful]

Rep stepped back, closed his eyes and took a few calming breaths, letting the music wash around him, the intro playing out before the song kicked in properly. He fought to it, letting his body react to the tempo, shifting from on foot to the other as it buit up, summoning Tracey to hand, chafing at the bit for the chorus. It was just like when he was on the bar in his own privacy without anyone watching him, without judging him for not being overly masculine, for doing anything that wasn't lumbering and awkward. This was how he felt best, free to fight in whatever way his body felt - and it knew what it wanted to do, both Tracey and his own pared back instincts seemed to make all the sense in the world, a tidal wave of anger and motivation. He smirked, took two hip-swaying steps forward and jumped.

He knew the height he needed as well as he knew the distance from his head to the ground, it was built into his brain by now, after a hundred - a thousand - ******** ups where he'd clipped something or other and careened head first into the ground. It was so easy and even with the sand making the jump tougher he was high enough. He twisted like a falling cat and somersaulted, using the muscle force from his own back and hips to turn Tracey's weight into motion, bringing him down overhead.

As the music swelled properly he collided with the wood and steel with a satisfying thunk that rattled right through his whole body and became nothing but a signal for his adrenaline to ratchet up a notch. He grinned despite himself.

This was the thing he loved about this job. This. Weapons were the ******** greatest.

HP: 60/60
DMG: 17
Charge: 1/3

Dummy HP : 33
 

[Baneful]

He twisted free and spun off in a few sweeping feint strikes, not completely intent on decimating the dummy but instead simply in EXULTING in the sheer feeling of combat. He was a worshipper at the great ******** infinite altar of war and this was his hysteria. It was the only time he felt alive, the only time he could truly chase that high up and up and up.

The song he'd been listening to ended and the next came on, another unmanly song but he didn't care, he could afford to be ******** unmanly when he was nothing but a creature of sweat and blood and steel, when he was so focused on the fine ******** art of combat.

It almost feels like a joke to play out a part
When you are not the starring role in someone else's heart
You know I'd rather walk alone, than play a supporting role
If I can't get the starring role.

He smirked to himself. It was ******** APT. It was ******** correct. And it was where all his ******** problems originated, he would never bow down, never back off, never ******** give up. He was not one of life's secondary figures, what he wanted he would ******** fight for, he would kill for. No regrets, no compromises and no ******** surrenders.

Swing and swing and STRIKE. He even sung along, completely unconcerned and unashamed in his little element. It didn't matter he was tone deaf, it didn't matter, nothing
"Yeah, I wait for you to open up, to give yourself to me. But nothing's ever gonna give, I'll never set you free"

He grinned a little wider.

"Yeah, I'll never set you free"

He brought the enormous blade around and sunk it in , getting a kick of power and an even greater kick of satisfaction as it went good and deep.


HP: 60/60
DMG: 9
Charge: 2/3

Dummy HP : 24  

[Baneful]

The specialisation of his life was ******** up. He was ok with that. ******** up relationships, ******** up anything he tried to do, ******** up the most basic s**t that anyone should by default ******** understand. Hell he ******** bitches too, ******** whores, ******** anything that would hold still or be submissive long enough for him to ******** it. He ******** friends, ******** enemies and it could be literal or metaphorical, it didn't matter.

He was a ********. Natural born ********. Probably from a long ******** line of ******** tried to deny it, so so many times, argue that there was something good in the core of him, something that had honour and something deep and meaningful to offer the world, but he didn't, all he had to offer the world was the ability to ******** things up and ******** them up permanently.

He still had nightmares, nightmares every ******** night about the doomed kids and the doomed adults, of being stuck with the decision of killing them or letting them die and kill others. He'd looked at them and known they'd been brought to the right place, to the ********, the one who had reached a point in their life where they existed only to ******** over other, more important people and survive.

Universal injustice was what it was, and Tracey understood that acutely, it was written into him in words he couldn't read.

But he couldn't think about those people now, all he could think about was keeping the motion going, passing the staff of Tracey's handle from one hand to the other, always millimeters from slitting his own body open with the razor-blade edges of the weapon's cutting sides. Sometimes he did, sometimes he tried and Tracey let him, always superficial kisses of pain that sharpened his mind and his focus and let him thrive.

He broke the steady kata when the next song shuffled on, darker than the others thus far. He liked A Perfect Circle. Teenage angst, sure, but when had he ever ******** grown out of his teenage angst?

It was great to slice to regardless and he chopped at anything, the sand, the overhanging trees, invisible enemies, until the sweat dripped from him and energy sung in his veins.

Wake up, and face me.
Don’t play dead,
Cause maybe,
Someday I’ll walk away and say, “You ******** disappoint me,”
Maybe you’re better off this way

He held off, and held off till the crecendo when he struck, cleaving again and again at the dummy as Tracey lit up like ******** Christmas.

HP: 60/60
DMG: 7
Charge: 3/3

Dummy HP : 18  

[Baneful]

A full charge was better than any ******** drug. He remembered the way the coke had made him feel, like he could tolerate anyone, like he was ******** invincible, his heart hammering in his chest, ready to move, twitchy, restless, alive. He'd been an electric bundle of nerves and it had felt ******** great.

But this was better.

BetterBetterBetterBETTER.

He didn't fight it, just savoured Tracey's breathless desperate pleas the way he might savour the pleas of a lover on the very brink. It was such a wonderful sound from the otherwise sarcastic and cynical weapon and he immersed himself in it every time.

He was a ******** but he was not unkind.

He relaxed, letting his arms fall weak as the next song started, his body the contradiction that his mind was, hammering heart, jangling veins, relaxed exterior. The blade made a sound as it hit the sand, as Tracey pleaded with him to leap, to fly.

<> he said and waited, the music slowly rising, slowly reaching the moment when the true melody would be set free.

He was not perhaps deliberately unkind.

Please. Please. Oh please. Please. It was in time with his heart.

And then the moment.

He tensed his every muscle. a coiled spring made of evolution and magic, brought to this loathesome ******** point, this deplorable wasteful set of teeth and blades at the end of a monster of survival, backstabbing and war.

He leapt and it was with the cracking power of the charge behind him, the runes leaving an afterimage on the world as they defied its rules, defied everything that it was to throw him up into the sunlight, above the treeline, his muscles screaming with the effort and the demand that it put upon him. He did not draw upon the dagger to hold him in its dark powerful caress, to soften the fall and the strain that any human would take suspended between this brutal fear and the world of humanity.

Stretched between he was both and he was neither, two beings, two half beings forged haphazardly into something more and something less.

Tracey could not keep up with his racing, feverish mind, unfamiliar with the effects that music had on the human mind, perturbed and uncomprehending, unsure why music made him almost remember things that were shadows out of reach.

Rep missed a handhold and plummeted, wide of the dummy, wide of his mark.

He hit the trees and the branches sought to impale him, fighting his shield, drawing blood from myriad wounds across his body but surrendering under his momentum and weight until he dropped to the ground, winded and dazed.

It would have killed a human.

But he was not a human any longer. He rose and staggered, dragging the vast axe behind him as though it was his penance and punishment.

It wasn't over.


HP: 35/60 - 25
DMG: MISS
Charge: 3/3 - 99 Problems used - no artifact

Dummy HP : 18
 

[Baneful]

His arms felt like jelly and he felt like he'd been punched by a long ******** line of people, but that was the kind of feeling he liked. Even Tracey was winded but he didn't care, it had been exhilarating and there was no inclination, no ability to stop.

It felt dangerous and off-kilter, and he suspected if someone he didn't like showed up around now he'd attack them with abandon like a wild animal gone mad with bloodlust. It didn't matter it was his own, it didn't matter that in this fight the only adversary was himself, if anything that was the opponent he had been fighting all his life.

Pain was what woke him up from the boredom, from the humdrum, shook him out of the nightmares and the constant doubts. He was weak to think he should ever try and please everyone, weak to ever doubt his own force and power. He'd make the world tolerate him the way he'd always ******** made people tolerate him. He was the festering sore that poured salt on itself and he would never, ever go away.

This time his attack was weaker, arms still nothing but jelly from his fall. He should have taken a break, but breaks were for people who could ******** afford them, who wouldn't find themselves on battlefields where the only option was to push yourself, to push yourself harder and harder even when you should stop.

Around him, the music still played, and it spurred him on.


I'm your truth, telling lies
I'm your reason, alibis
I'm inside, open your eyes
I'm you

Sad but true

A twist and another block of wood, sacking and sawdust came free. Humans were less durable than this. They were so, so fragile.

HP: 35/60
DMG: 5
Charge: 1/3 - 99 Problems used

Dummy HP : 13
 

[Baneful]

The more he struck, the less he could feel the weakness in his limbs, the tiredness in his body. He could overcome it, overtake the ******** wall. He didn't care about his body, it had never really ******** done anything for him, it was all wrong, not manly enough. He had all these ******** whims, all these things he did and that it liked, that it ******** wanted and they were all wrong for what he was supposed to be. He didn't care for its whining or pleading, he didn't care for the signals that said stop, stop we should stop.

All that mattered was climbing to that place where he could not hear the complaints any longer, where he could cash in some ******** energy today in favour of feeling good. Let it tax him later, let his body protest afterwards, he didn't ******** care, he wouldn't be there, he'd be somewhere in post-combat bliss, maybe drunk, maybe just distant but too sore to be bored, too sore to feel.

He let out a sound that was ragged and barely human as he leapt like a tiger to the dummy and laid into it with everything he had.

I want to ******** you like an animal
My whole existence is flawed
You get me closer to god

He wasn't listening to the music any longer with his concious mind, but it thrummed in his subconscious, guiding his rhythm and movements, guiding the ferocity of his blows and letting him tune something else in where the pain should have been. It was uncanny the way his fighting style seemed to twist and change in accordance with the music, one moment short and brisk, the next sweeping and sinuous as the undulating notes. He couldn't sing out loud for s**t, but his body could.

With every swing the dummy disintegrated further, until with one almighty crash it ******** WEAK." he snarled. "Too WEAK."

He wasn't done, it wasn't over, there had to be something else to break, something else to strike, he needed more. Under the surface all his demons (including the one that was also his weapon) cried out in unison.

MORE.

Anything would do and he turned his attention on a very unfortunate log of driftwood, using the hand that wasn't dragging Tracey behind him to wipe blood from the scratches out of his face so he could see.

HP: 35/60
DMG: 14
Charge: 2/3 - 99 Problems used

Dummy HP : Ded as ********
 

[Baneful]

He kicked it into position and found himself wishing it was made of something other than wood. Wood squealed when you twisted a blade out of it. Flesh yielded and submitted in compliance until you found the secret parts, the wiry twisted bones, the core of what a creature was. They didn't squeal, they shattered and broke, they sliced and surrendered.

It was hard to chop a creature up. Really ******** hard.

But when you had a cleaver big enough it got easier.

HP: 35/60
DMG: Miss
Charge: 2/3 - 99 Problems used

Log HP : 20
 

[Baneful]

He cleaved the log hard enough that parts of it splintered off and scattered over the beach, hard enough that he rent open the salt-dried core of the wood, pale and ruined by the sea. It was beautiful in its destruction and that made it all the sweeter, the things you ******** uncovered when you tore off the outer layers, the scurrying bugs that ran to get out of the light, the rot and the lurking seaweed twisted into old knots. Everyone was just a husk crying out to be explored.

Seeing the worst in others made him feel better about the darkness that lay within him.

Once again the runes lit up and Tracey groaned.

"Oh yasss." he said, taking another deep breath of salt-laden air.

HP: 35/60
DMG: 12
Charge: 3/3 - 99 Problems used

Log HP : 8  

[Baneful]

He was hovering on the edge of what he could endure, deliberately pushing himself beyond what was wise to maintain, putting more effort into every swing than he might normally, trying to force all weakness and pent up energy out of him, to sweat out the boredom. He was succeeding by inches and he could feel the charge attack just within reach of his grasping fingers.

He let it come this time, like a tidal wave of darkness that crashed over him. Standing transfixed, he could only look on as their collective fear pooled together and the shadows elongated and twisted, in stark clear defiance of the daylight. It was his turn to gasp as he felt his body turn cold, sapped by the demands the fallen angel set upon it, reaching out with his claws, their too-many digits lashing at the log as if it was nothing at all, shattering it utterly and scattering its fragments into the ocean and across the beach.

As always, he had to cut it off before it drained him dry, and he did, severing the fear and falling to his knees, panting and breathless. He was done. He couldn't handle any more.

He flopped onto his back and stared at the sky, his chest rising and falling heavily, the warmth slowly returning.

It felt good, it felt liberating.

I ain’t no demon, Lord
Oh look to me please
Good men are sufferin’
With the evil at ease
And millions of innocents
Are born to disease
Oh where is our solace, Lord?
Oh Lord answer me

But it hadn't scratched the itch. Not really.

He wanted someone else's pain to complement his. It wasn't satisfying till he found it, till he was back out there hurting the things that could react, that could hate him back.

And that was what always scared him most of all.

HP: 26/60 - 9
DMG: 17
Charge: 0/3 - 99 Problems used - The Cost used

Log HP : ********