Fort Enbrasse (Moved to Earth)

[Ky Die Verrater]

A large Gothic-looking fortress that branches out from Jes' Dark Court, Created through alchemy by Ky's own hands. The fortress is as tall and as big as most of the towers found within Las Noches' premises, although one of the things that separates it from the rest of Las Noches' infrastructure aside from its design was the large emblem of the Organization, with the quote: "strength through unity" written around it, that hung in front of the fortress.

Fort Enbrasse is composed of five different areas that were named after important dates in Ky's life: February 14, April 1, March 23, November 1, and December 25. February 14 is the research and development area; April 1 is the training area; March 23 is the laboratory area; November 1 is the living quarters; and December 25 is the storage and power room.

As with any normal fortress, it is heavily guarded. Highly trained arrancar guards patrol every square inch of the fortress 24 hours a day in cyclical patterns which meant a security net with little room for any would-be trespassers to slip through. Always one to be prepared though, Ky rigged the entire fortress with hidden traps and secret passages, useful in dealing with unwanted guests and for inducing psychological torture with the latter being one of the Bount leader's favorite hobbies.  

[bengervasquez]

[Enters from Earth]

How many days had it been since he had become this way? The feeling of having no conscience to hold you back, no morality to uphold, no limits to follow -- the feeling was very familiar to him, but it had been so long since he last became this way that he nearly forgot how to properly act. Of course, there was that one possibility that the accursed thing etched on his left wrist, covered only by that leather wristband he had made with Cosmic Energy just days before was doing something to him, but that was just an ungrounded assumption on his part.

After that little even, Exia wondered about the place he once used as his playground, searching for any remnants that he had been here just the year before, but he found nothing. The Dark Tower, the Soul Tunnel, the Heaven's Gate -- they were all gone, vanished; it was as if the ones who were there after that one Halloween night had erased any trace of him ever existing. Not that it bothered him though, he just found it strange, but keeping one element of the body he possessed, he always remained optimistic. Xeion, for this day, was 'sleeping' for all intents and purposes. Right now, it was Exia's time to play.

From a dimensional rift created through the use of Cosmic Energy, Exia's figure stepped out. As usual, he had a bored expression on his face and his actions seemed to indicate that, for the past few days, he found nothing interesting to do. He was too lazy to recreate the Dark Tower, the Soul Tunnel, or anything else he had created in the past, so he just decided to find something else to do with his one day of freedom, although, as we can see from his current state, that was largely unsuccessful.

In Exia's mind, he was slightly disappointed, like a child who had his toys taken away. Last year was better, but this year, for some strange reason, he found destroying the world to create a clean slate for humanity as something illogical. It was as if Exia started to develop his own common sense now unlike the previous year where he just acted like a child who played with everything as if they were toys in his little game. It was impossible though -- Exia was not human, but the personification of the Angra Mainyu through Xeion. The Angra Mainyu doesn't have any conscience as it was, for the most part, made up of all the collective negative energies of mankind; all Revenants knew that. Still, was that even possible? Maybe it was some kind of twisted puberty stage, but no clear explanation rises up as of yet. Right now, for better or for worse, it was just there.

"So, why did you call me out, Santa?" Exia called out, using his nickname for Ky he had used last Halloween. He knew just how much Ky hated that nickname, but Exia really didn't care if he would exacerbate the situation since he was the type of being who would do things for his own pleasure regardless if those actions were to become detrimental to those around him which was unlike the usual Xeion at all and served only to highlight the disparity between the two; although they may have the same body, Xeion and Exia were very different people.

While waiting for Ky's answer, Exia smirked. "If you had reason to call me out, I sure hope you have a gift for me. After all, it's Halloween -- trick or treat and all," he said in a mischievous tone, "so you better give me something good or I'm afraid that I'm going to have to play a trick on you, Santa."  

[bengervasquez]

"You're fast!" Exia exclaimed before most of his attention shifted to defending against the immensely powerful attack that Ky had just performed. He expected just as much, though he would have preferred things to have started out a lot more smoothly. Still, a fight was a fight and Exia couldn't resist answering Ky's hostility with a hostile action of his own. By his actions, Ky seemed to have been holding a desire to fight him and that was made clear with his opening attack. It wasn't like any ordinary attack like a sword thrust or a punch to the face, it was well-planned and well-executed. If Exia would have been just a second slower in deciding as to whether he should attack or defend, it would have been too late and the attack would have connected with him and did major damage without him making a decision, which was quite a troublesome situation indeed if such a scenario were to happen.

It did, unfortunately, because Exia was still preoccupied in coming up with a reason as to why he was acting this way this year to properly think up of a way to defend against such an attack. He was in such a quandary that he wasn't able to put all of his focus on the attack, hence the consequence of his laid-back attitude would now painfully manifest itself.

With a deafening roar similar to a sonic boom breaking, Ky's attack hit Exia's ribs and was enough to jounce his head forward and spurt out a spray of blood. If it wasn't for the Cosmic Energy which was coating his entire body as an effect of the Angra Mainyu's power being so active inside Xeion's body at that moment, Ky would have easily done serious damage and would have easily put Xeion in the hospital, not that it didn't do serious damage to him right now seeing the amount of blood that came out from his mouth because of such an attack.

The shard pain on his side gave rise to Exia's basic instinct and immediately responded with an attack of his own. He charged his right fist with Cosmic Energy mixed with reiatsu and, with his desire to reciprocate the pain Ky's attack had put on him flowing to his fist, performed a High Impact (1/5) in the hopes of hitting Ky's face since, after his attack, the both of them were just inches away from each other thus increasing the rate at which his High Impact would hit its intended target. Exia wasn't able to exert much effort into it though since he had performed it right after a devastating attack had hit him, but Exia was confident that it was still a counter-attack strong enough to have a significant effect on Ky.  

[bengervasquez]

Just as Exia felt Ky's hand oull away from his ribs, he, too, jumped back and prepared for the worst. The face that was once so full of childish boredom now changed into that of a person who held a deep hatred for the person who had done such a thing to him. His brows furrowed and his eyes gazed intensely at Ky's figure. His anger rose as well when Ky mocked him and made Exia clench his fists and grit his teeth out of sheer agitation for the man in front of him. The murderous intent that run through his body became more and more powerful, filling his veins with the sweet poison of vengeance. Exia wanted to pay Ky back for what he had done ten-fold, but not just once, but again, and again, and again, and again until there was nothing left of Ky's existence. He was just that much pissed at him.

When the bullets came, he didn't even try to dodge them, unlike Xeion whose first instinct in this kind of battle was to dodge and defend. Exia, however, had a much more different method; Exia distorted the dimension in front of him and manipulated the dimensional layers into a compacted spacial and temporal loop that would act somewhat like a force field, but instead of deflecting the projectiles, the dimensional distortion would take in the bullets and trap them in a Bounded field of their own just as if they were in suspended animation. This was the first part of the trick up Exia's sleeve; the second part would come as soon as Ky's weapon exhausted all of its ammunition or at least let up on his covering fire to give Exia a chance to execute his second plan.

When the time was right, he charged his left fist with reiatsu and punched the ground with his signature move, the Forged Iron Needle, which broke the floor and scattered dust into the air, covering his entire person so that Ky would not see whatever it is that he was going to do. In the cover of the dust, Ky would only have a clue as to what Exia planned on doing, but it would still require him to wait for the dust to settle before he would really see just what it is that he was doing, although by that time, it would have been too late already.

With Ky still preoccupied with the dust in front of him, a Dark Mirror opened up several feet behind him as numerous bullets shot out from the void within the dimensional rift as they spread out and covered a wide area in an outgoing spray, similar to that of a shotgun blast. The bullets traveled much faster this time, being the effect of the Dark Mirror's Wrath Dark Gift, which meant less time for Ky to react while at the same time more damage from the bullets as they traveled with more momentum than they had when they were fired from Ky's gattling gun. Surely Ky's attention would shift from the cloud of dust to the bullets behind him; this was the opportunity Exia was waiting for.

The dust parted to the side when Exia pushed his body forward with his right leg into a shunpo, reappearing in front of Ky while he was busy dealing with the bullets. Exia smiled as he performed a series of heavy attacks, starting off with a reiatsu-enforced right hook to Ky's rib, sort of like returning the favor; then followed by a reiatsu-enforced left hook to Ky's spine; a right knee to his stomach; a left slide kick to the back of Ky's knee; a reiatsu-enforced turning side-kick, made even more powerful with Exia exerting effort and putting his weight at the ball of his right leg and turning his hips to support the momentum; and finally ending with a follow-up flurry of fast jabs with an upper-cut to end the combo.  

[bengervasquez]

The blade writhed about the ground as if it had a life of its own. Its form, its speed, its sheer tenacity as it went about its way like a snake -- everything about it was deadly. Exia didn't have enough time to smile at something like this, or rather, he couldn't afford to. For such an unpredictable attack that could easily be manipulated by the hands of its wielder, who is with all certainty capable of doing such a feat with minimal effort, he needed to be careful. Although his style was more comparable to that of a berserker rather than a technical trickster, highlighting more the difference between Xeion and Exia, in this situation, Exia was forced to fight in a way he had never done so before. "Tch, this is too much," he grumbled, opening both of his hands and ran headlong into the writhing sword's path.

As taught in simple geometry, the most effective route from point A to point B is a straight line. Applied and interpreted into the real world, it simply means that no matter what road a person was taking, the road with the less obstacles and less winding paths was the optimal route in any situation. As such, the theory was now incorporated by Exia in his somewhat sudden and seemingly uncontrollable movement; by running headlong into the fray, Exia eliminated any probability that Ky's blade would hit him from the sides or change course to surprise him via a counter-cross when Exia decided to attack from the side. A linear attack path was something unexpected and would most likely surprise Ky, giving Exia the leverage he needed to execute his plan.

Jumping over one of the blades as it writhed about in front of him, Exia extended his left hand and plucked something from the blade's writhing body, though he suffered a cut from it as a result of his bare index finger's head touching the sharp blade, but it was a small price to pay for what he had obtained from doing such an act as he landed back to the ground, bending on one knee, and smirked while his head was still down. "Shatter," Exia murmured and swiftly moved his left hand forward, his fingers positioned in such a way as if he were holding something, seemingly a "thread" of some sort, and pulled. It only took a split-second before the effect of what Exia had done to take effect.

The way the blade moved only hastened its destruction. It started from a crack at first before it expanded more and more, spider webbing into countless other cracks that spread all throughout the sword's frame before it finally collapsed and shattered into millions of tiny pieces that flew in every direction as razor-sharp shrapnel. The Cosmic Energy coating he had on his body protected Exia from the shrapnel, so he had nothing to worry about; his action had already served its purpose and the shrapnel was only an externality caused by performing such an action. Exia's main objective was to intimidate Ky with a show of power which would affect his overall morale. The lower morale he had, the lower his battle performance would be, hence giving Exia more of an advantage.

"No matter how tough something seems to be, if you exert effort on its Achilles' Heel, it will break; it's just the way things are. The world is such a fragile place, don't you think so, Santa?"