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arrow Middle of the ********' Ocean

"Hard to starboard, prep missile batteries 1-4 with Harpoons." Jason barked, holding the arm of his chair as the massive ship started it's turn, the tri-hulls preventing the ship from listing too badly and smoothly slicing through the water. Through the reinforced windows ahead of him, the covers on the Missile tubes opened up, showing the tips of the live practice ammo.

"Give me a lock with the Two-Fifty, load with Heeap." He ordered, The crew around him inwardly smiling at the way he pronounced 'HE-AP.' The gun turned to face the empty Corvette 7000m off the port bow, being towed by a 2km line hooked to a tugboat.

"Targeting solution on Sierra-1." his weapon's officer alerted him, and he smiled. This was always fun.

"Fire!" He said, the Weapons officer taking no time to press the missile firing button, while somone else got that cannon firing. Four streaks of white smoke led off the deck, right ahead of the bridge, angled over and fired their main engines, racing off towards the poor target. The 250mm gun started pushing out rounds at two per second, all centered on the middle of the target.

Though the harpoons were fast, the rounds beat them, punching through the hull and exploding inside, buckling the hull and deck of the ship. Then the missiles hit, the first blowing a massive gash in the side, the others doing the same along the side of the ship, causing it to take on water and start to list.

"Solid Hits, prep missile batteries 5 and 6." He looked around, making sure everyone still looked busy.

"She's going down." Someone informed him as the target ship capsized, the stern taking on water at a faster rate and going down first.

"Well that's no fun." He remarked with a grin on his face, drawing looks from around the bridge. "Well I guess they wanted an artificial reef that was in less than a million pieces."

arrow Unknown Tower, thana_boss

Kain stepped through the breach made by his grenade launcher's last demolition round. Behind him, through the smoke... the floors were slick with blood and ichor, completely obscuring the ancient tiling beneath. From the walls of corpses he was leaving behind, it seemed that Kain had charged up the entire tower with every guardian following him behind... until this last point.

Detale had been dismissed back to its cavernous abode after Myuutsu had extracted a portion of the monster's essence for later recall if necessary. Hunter/Gatherer drones scurried around behind the two, Kain and Myuutsu, collecting what appeared to be gemstones and odd arcane relics the creatures appeared to be bound to...

"Take three of each sort of creature back to the lab, kill the rest. See? My plans always work out rather well, eh?" Kain sported many minor burn marks across his bare torso, accompanied with the occasional gash - these were already apparently starting to slowly heal.

=Only when I am here to look out for you, Dracon= Myuutsu's telepathic voice seemed unusually ruffled, but Kain understood why... this place would do that to any living creature. With as much death Kain has perpetuated over the years, there was nothing like actually stepping into Death's realm to shock the nerves.

=Silence, a foe has appeared... I had not noticed it before!= Myuutsu's eyes awoke in blinding blue psychic light, throwing rubble and dust clear... and that's when they noticed it, they were on the top level of the tower, and it was a looong way down.

The foe was not easy to spot at first, it didn't stand out... but there, in front of the mausoleum, a festering darkness waited that Kain could feel before he could see.

"I have a bead on it now. Let's move in." He slung the grenade launcher away and spun the MP7s out of their wrist-holsters. Kain angled his body slightly to the left and stalked forward, keeping an eye on the personified darkness and permeating the area with his extrasensory perception... and he still didn't notice when they arrived, all the same.

"What the hell? More of them?!" He wasted no time as figures rose up from the ground... Maero, Odium, Dolor, and Despero, swarming. Kain promptly aimed for their masks and depressed the triggers of the miniature SMGs, cutting a swath through the thick air that decimated his targets with professional alacrity. With three down, more came, and Kain began to retreat several steps... they were pressing in too fast, continually appearing too near. He needed room to work his -

There was no precedent, no warning. Two massive blasts tore across the tower - spilling over the side as they ripped apart the many creatures before the draconic military commander, who likewise found himself on his a** from the sheer shockwave. He shook his head, looking sidelong to clear his vision, only to find Myuutsu actually standing on the ground rather than levitating.

"... What?" It wasn't the most intelligent question he'd asked, but now wasn't the time.

=Dual Hyper Beam. A little stressful, but nothing I am not capable of handling. Give me but a moment= Vapors rose from Myuutsu's ovoid-bearing palms, his tail twitching irritably, and the look in his eyes was murder...

"Sit this one out, I think I've got it." Kain exchanged clips in his MP7s and walked forward, passing his comrade without looking at him. As he approached, Kain grinned oddly. "I ATTACK THE DARKNESS!" He lit up the tower's upper reaches with gunfire, peppering the shadow with rounds that ate up trauma plate like wet tissue - and each bullet dropped directly in front of the shadow, stunted and bent... having bounced back off.

Pathetic. You are my challenger? Make this quick, I have an eternity of suffering to get back to, and I am loathe to share any fraction of it with you.

Kain stiffened at the voice... it was cold, it felt like his entire body was freezing from the voice. And as a dragon hybrid, that generally wasn't a good thing.

"So you say. You know what I'm here for, and if you are its final guardian, then I will kill you, too." Kain moved in, firing off bursts from his weapons.

Fool. The phantom finally made itself visible, a flash of red cloak, startlingly white armor, and eyes of the Void. The bullets continued to drop away from it, even when Kain shifted focus to the uprotected head of his enemy, which he found to be quite odd.

Leaping back, Kain cast aside the MP7s and drew his customized Raging Bulls. The long, powerful guns were more than a normal man could handle, but Kain himself was by and far no mere normal man. With one quick motion, Kain released the catches on the bayonets of the handguns, springing foot-long blades from beneath, giving him more than two feet extended reach when combined with the actual guns themselves.

He rushed in, directly for the phantom, skidding off to the left as he opened fire from the big pistols, slamming .454 rounds into his opponent. These had a little more effect than the MP7 rounds... it seemed to annoy the spectre if naught else. Kain changed tactics and charged in close-range, bringing the blades of his Raging Bulls up and attempting to stab in through the side of his opponent... but that was a mistake. The moment he made contact, Kain's whole body felt as though he was incased in ice, frozen cold that even an Ice Elemental would find as uncomfortable, for it was less physical chill than it was the frost of the soul.

"What in the hells are you?" Kain barked out as he backed off, lifting his sluggish arms in preparation to retaliate. Sadly, he didn't get a chance... there was a flash of something large and black, and then a great numbness in his arms that allowed the Raging Bulls to clatter to the ancient stonework.

I am the avatar of death eternal. Destruction given form without purpose... the end of things both mortal and immortal, brief or timeless.

The phantom took a step forward, sending pulsewaves rippling through the Astral. Behind Kain, Myuutsu was just barely getting up from his last attack, so little time had passed.

Kain slid an unfeeling hand around the hilt of his sword, and then began to grin... his incisors lengthening. "Then we come to this, avatar. I am the aggregate will of the dragons, and we are the guardians of Life. Awaken!" The seals burst in a scalding aquamarine fire, leaping up from the sheath - it seemed Kain pulled a shard of pure white flames from within, though it quickly solidified into a dragon-scaled longsword. Warmth spread throughout his frigid body, and Kain appeared renewed. The long trek and non-stop fighting had tired him greatly, leaving several miles of bodies was not something one did without breaking a sweat. But now, with the dragon's fang singing across the planes in his hands, that had passed.

The phantom lifted its titanic greatsword and brought it crashing down on top of Kain, whom in turn lifted his blade to intercept, bracing the back of the sword with his palm. The sheer strength of the casual blow drove Kain to one knee, cracking the stonework beneath him, however - unnoticed, his blade's color shifted to the same sort of sable as the phantom's. There were no more words to say, Kain merely threw all of his weight to the side and attempted to cut inwards at his opponent's side.

Blocked, by the flat of the giant two-hander. The blade Kain held seemed to double in width and thickness as it made contact, and he spun to the right, bringing the sword in for a shot to the neck. Parried, again, by the large greatsword and thrust hard against Kain, throwing him back into a pillar of the mausoleum with enough force to actually crack one of Kain's ribs and reopen the wounds of the last few days, spilling blood upon the hallowed ground.

Winded for an instant, he struggled back to his feet as the phantom appeared before him. And this is where you join the souls of the forever departed, so-called guardian of Life. There was no sneer in the phantom's words, just the cold and calm assurance of oblivion.

"S-so you say, but I think it's time you understood what I've been doing..." His hand slid down to the sword, and he lifted it from the shadows... it was an exact copy of the spectre's own blade.

The phantom actually took a step back, eyeing Kain's sword with mistrust. Fool! What are you doing?

"I've taken each of your attacks to map out and absorb your qualities and abilities into my sword... all for this." He brought the blade up as the phantom surged forward, bringing the greatsword down with both hands to cleave Kain down before he could attack in time... but there was only a crack in the tilework where Kain was but a moment again. The draconic appeared behind the phantom with a sound like an inverted, muffled explosion, a painful echo. "EVISCERATE! RYUUTSUMESATSUJIN!"

The metaphysical sword tore through the phantom as it turned... very nearly escaping the touch of the blade had Kain not lunged forward, predicting the move. The makeup of the sword's newfound abilities did something, sparked something odd within the form of his opponent. As Kain watched, his enemy seemed to smoke, vapors trailing away from within the armor as the spectre itself began to lighten, wafting away into dispersal.

With one flourish, Ryuutsumesatsujin returned to its original form just as Kain sheathed it. He gave a thumbs-up to Myuutsu behind him and walked forward quietly, simply ignoring the pain of his injuries for now. With a silent reverence, Kain bowed low to the inner sanctum of the mausoleum, and went forward. "As with your guardian's defeat, I am Kain Ra'shiel. I claim your lands and riches for my own... but for the true prize, I ask for its power." Kain knelt before the stone coffin, carved with intricate patterns that told stories in languages unknown to him. He stood and pushed back the immense stone lid of the burial chamber, and nodded perceptibly towards what he found.

He emerged a moment later, a mammoth black greatsword strapped to his back... but the obsidian of the blade seemed formed of frozen souls in torment. Across his torso and arms, Kain bore the very armor the phantom had worn, which seemed to fit him almost perfectly.

=Dracon, what...?=

Kain smiled and lifted the blade from his back in one hand, showing his companion the short marks carved into a gem at the base of the blade. It was a name, and the gem contained a palpable essence...

=... Thanatos=