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evil {Fierce vs. Viper} burning_eyes

Before you is a door. The door looks familiar because it is the front door of your first real home. Look at the door and recognize it--the color, the material, the knocker, maybe the number?

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. You are moving into a land of the unlikely, of things and ideas best left unthought. Of chance encounters and freak occurrences. Of an infinity chain.

The infinity chain represents a sequence of increasingly unlikely events occurring separately in parallel dimensions, linked together into an existence that never should have could have would have been. Still, it is connected to the whole by the chain of probability and while never realized, remains infinitesimally possible.

Statistics tell us that if a probability exists, no matter how minute, that given an infinite number of trials that probability will happen in at least one eventuality. However, forces beyond mortal control are contribute to the non-happening of that eventuality. These forces, often the constraints of time and space but at times influenced by others, are what give us the term statistical improbability.

But sometimes... things fall through the cracks.

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The scene opens on the Pearl Oyster House in Manhattan. A relatively well to do cafe serving excellent seafood to the concerned citizenry of New York. Inside, it was business as usual with one small exception. At the bar, a man in extremely strange attire for this day and age sat.

The man himself is tall and well built, with striking looks and a proud stature that have female patrons and employees alike taking second and third looks. However, it was his hair that caused the most initial attention. It was ash white, flowing in waves down his back to the base of his shoulder blades. His clothing is all dark grays and ash in varying shades. Despite the waining summer heat, he wears a heavy gray jacket made of what looks like thick leather over a fine silk shirt in varied tones of lighter gray.

Numerous thin chains connect his belt loops in long ropes that fall to his thighs, making a stark relief against the dark ash colored and well worn pants. On his feet are a pair of traditional geta, also looking well worn and oft used, beneath which they are wrapped in ancient looking bandages instead of socks. Something shadowy clings to his neck and collarbone, but disappears beneath the shirt before it becomes clear exactly what it is. At first look this dark accessory seems to be a silk scar of some sort, but any who stare at it for too long become disturbed at what could be the hint of movement.

Speaking of disturbed, the waitress behind the counter is sweating bullets. She doesn't know why, but something about this man has her extremely unsettled. Perhaps it was because she could see him more clearly than the others. Note the almost alien qualities of his looks and the distinctly foreign cut and composition of his clothing. Perhaps she had stared into his eyes for too long when he ordered their Manhattan Clam Chowder. Eyes that she would assure herself later were dark brown that sparkled in bright cafe, but could not shake the little voice inside that said they were the color of dried blood and that the sparks within them had not been tricks of the light. Perhaps it was his hands...

Next to the man's late were a pair of almost black gauntlets. Heavy affairs made of an odd leathery material and dark metal plates. They rested atop a neatly folded pile of bandages that had been wrapped around the man's hands not five minutes earlier. None of this was as strange as the hands themselves. They were delicate, slim and beautiful, completely at odds with the rest of the man. One rests calmly on the counter-top, while the other seems to drift through the air as he dips a finger into the steaming bowl of soup. The spoon lies forgotten or unnoticed between bowl and plate as he raises the digit to his mouth and licks the red broth off it with the barest flick of his pink tongue, a gesture that makes several ladies nearby take simultaneous gasps of breath. He contemplates the taste for a moment before reaching for a packet of oyster crackers to crumble into the soup.

It seemed everyone in the cafe had their eyes on the man by this point, even the now quivering violently waitress. He notices them not, continuing to eat in his strangely detached way. Only one person there knows what is about to happen to the Pearl Oyster House, Manhattan, likely the world in general, and he isn't about to be telling.

As the smoke clears around what had been the Pearl Oyster House, an abstract of of normal life is presented. A pefectly circular section of café and countertop, wall and kitchen beyond, has survived the explosion. A sink back in the kitchen splashes water onto the floor from where it sat perfectly cut in half, making a minature waterfall off the side of the foundation and down into the blast crater. The cook begins to wail pitifully, his cries rising to fill the empty space. The first of many, as he laments the lose of a chunk of his left leg.

Someone’s sandwich is on fire, sitting in the service window between kitchen and what was a café. It was a Reuben, grilled on rye and piled high with corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing.On the side is some potato salad, currently not on fire. It sits a few inches from the edge of the destruction and is otherwise unharmed, besides having caught alight. One would suspect it had been delicious, but alas, we shall never know. Farewell valiant sandwich.

In front of the sandwich stands the waitress, now shaking like a leaf in the wind and crying silently from wide open eyes. With a loud sob, her bladder lets go and she falls to the ground, staring blankly into the back of the counter as warm liquid pools around her legs. Her mind has checked out for the moment, completely unable to comprehend what had happened. Later there would be tears of sorrow, rage, or fear. Now there was only emotional overload.

The counter itself was relatively stable, only a few broken dishes and charred edges. A single half eaten bowl of Manhattan Clam Chowder remained, sitting next to a pair of heavy gauntlets. The man held the bandages tightly as he slowly wrapped them around his hands. A few seconds would pass in silence, save the wailing of the cook, the sniffling of the waitress, and the scuff of an approaching devil’s feet on the blasted ground.

Those in tune with the metaphysical world would feel the massive power signature that had been stamped across downtown Manhattan and centered on the Pearl Oyster Hose compact. It wasn’t lessening, it was sharpening, becoming more focused and intense. The perfectly circular shield that had protected the man and inadvertently the waitress and (part) of the cook shimmers into view, like heat drifting off blacktop. If anything, the sense of power becomes palpable, it can be tasted, smelled, heard, felt, and seen on the air. The man finishes wrapping his hands and stands.

“What do you want, boy? I’m busy.”

Finally, the man reaches down and grasp the gauntlets, slipping them over his hands, and the waitress begins to scream.

Passively, Viper raises his right hand to Fierce. The blast hadn’t effected him in the slightest, his clothing wasn't even stained or scuffled. The Pearl Oyster House however, was gone, not a scrap remained. Even the section the man had been standing on was wiped away in the blast. Undisturbed, he floats in the exact same spot he had been moments before.

“I wonder.”

Viper’s voice was similar to the rest of him. Silky and deep, not a rumble but a murmur of bass. Even quiet, it carried, rolling up from the chest to wash across the tongue and flow into the ether. He sounded introspective, more speaking to himself than the devil in front of him. Sparks and cinders begin to dance in his eyes, popping and whirling madly like a stoked fire.

“Would you have done that, if you knew how much I was going to hurt you for it?”

There is no change in his voice, but flames roar their triumphant birth from the embers in his eyes. Energy crackles around the raised hand, condensing into a sphere of red light about the size of a fist. It doesn't grow any larger, but continues to grow more powerful as Viper feeds energy into it. The ball was rapidly becoming a weapon of mass destruction, easily the peer of Fierce's own initial impact and growing more powerful by the second.

"Goodbye."

As red herrings went, it was a pretty good one.

The fingers of Viper's left hand flick at Fierce from his waist, and the world becomes an inferno. A quick application of power and a nine by nine foot cube around Fierce was heated to approximately 16 MK. The air literally bursts into flame as gases superheat. Fire roars across Fierce, down his throat and into every orifice. The greedy blaze only lasts an instant, but in that instant hell made a brief visit to Earth. If Fierce survived, he wasn't in the clear yet. In a display of deft application of power and iron control, the immense heat and excited gaseous molecules are contained in that same 9x9 cube. The result was titanically crushing pressure, all the ******** at once. Enough to compact an aircraft carrier into a Volkswagen.

Viper whips his left hand upwards, index middle and thumb pointing to the sky. The teleport was simple and straight-forward, it would only take Fierce with it on its happy trip out past the moon if the other man was completely defenseless against such things.

Or dead, then it would clean up the greasy smears.

This kid was fast, Viper had to give him that. At any other time, in any other situation, he might have even gotten the drop on the man clad in greys. But he wasn't that fast.

To Fierce, it would probably look like Viper vanishes. Relative speeds were tricky, kinematics only more so. Unless the demonic fighter's brain was already prepared for speeds far in excess of his current he probably wouldn't even register what happened until after the fact.

To Viper, before Fierce even stopped it looked like the other man was moving in slow motion. It was the simplest thing in the world to fool the gray-matter of most sentient beings, you just had to be ready for them. As Fierce's arm lanced out at Viper, he burst into action. The globe of energy in his hand drops, moving to an orbit around his wrist. Calmly he ducks under the offending limb as it crawls through the molasses of linear time, sliding to the demon's right side and bringing up his right hand to push Fierce's extended right wrist to the left. His left hand scythes up, palm and fingers rigid, to stab into the shoulder joint behind Fierce's right shoulder, kidney and gallbladder with pinpoint accuracy before drifting past and beyond the other fighter.

That same series of blows, at the same speed and force, had sundered the Titan Hyperion's arm from his body in the first blow and sent the deity to Hades with the second and third. One would have sufficed, but Viper was nothing if not thorough.

Speaking of thorough, as the grey-haired monster blasted past Fierce he flips around bring the energy sphere back to bare as he soars into the sky. As the sonic booms of both fighers' movements crash over the crater that was downtown Manhattan Viper unleashes the attack. Hundreds of smaller beams erupt from the fist sized sphere, raking the area where Fierce was located in an awesome display of controlled destruction. If a city block had still been there, Viper's attack wouldn't spill over into anything outside of it. Of course, the shockwave moments later would turn crater and shaken city alike into glass and molten metal for a mile and a half.

"Did you think that was for show? Why would you charge the mound when the pitcher still has the ball?"

It was unlikely that Viper thought his opponent had survived the onslaught, gods had fallen to less. Still he voiced it aloud in that same introspective tone.

Well that was different. The kid was fast and pretty good, conscious of his surroundings even. Viper had never had an opponent use a tail that thin to block one of his attacks, let alone being able to shrug off one of his strikes. Almost reminded him of, well, himself. Especially when the other fighter clearly had no problem following his motions. Still, extra limbs were just one more thing getting in the way. His right arm bends at the elbow and raises itself perpendicular to Fierce's own arm, blocking the slash and moving with the rotation to keep himself behind the other fighter. Instead of shrugging the tail off or batting it away, he grabs the apendage firmly in his left hand.

So the boy could move in two dimensions, but could he handle three? Like a rocket's booster igniting, Viper blasts forward, generating a massive amount of force all at once. Fierce's tail gripped firmly in one hand, Viper pulls hard and then stops abruptly to whip the other fighter past him, up, and around with a slight twist for a gut-wrenching vertical spinning throw that would end up with Viper slamming Fierce into the ground skull first. Viper himself never changes orientation, instead turning with the windmilling arm to remain facing his flying opponent at the end of the throw and shoving the energy sphere into the other fighters face as he comes down.

Even if Fierce were to stop at any point along the loop, Viper would follow up with the glowing ball. There would just be less face-slammy involved. Either way, he would use the explosion and his own propulsion to put some distance between himself and Fierce.

Now that was more like it.

Viper was more than happy to let his opponent lead the way in the speed battle. Clearly, the demon was the fastest opponent Viper had faced in a great many years. Not since he cleansed the multiverse of all those that shared his training had any fighter made Viper put these skills through their paces. There was only one soul left that knew the extent of a Trace Hunter's training, and the old man wasn't going to be telling anyone. Time seemed to slow before Viper's eyes as the distinctly not-human anatomy of his body passively utilized those abilities. Speed, like time, space, and all other things, was relative. The Trace Hunter was taught to think in those terms, to assess the liquid flow of existence from an outside standpoint. Only the best cold master even the most rudimentary skills, it took someone with... perspective to truly appreciate the subject matter. Even as the crimson blades screamed through the air, hungry for his blood, a flashback to that last day overtook him.

...As the academy world burned around Him, the Lord of Ashes approached the last bastion of the Trace Hunters. None could match His might, their masters had made a grave error in revealing their secrets to what had seemed the paragon of their art. Never in the history of time itself had one been so uniquely suited to learn. They had taught Him all, and when they were done He had burned away their immortal souls so that no others could be taught. But in those days the Burning had been upon Him mightily, and He had been over-zealous in His ministrations..."

The blades were closer now and Viper eyed them warily. Sharp. Still, it would not do to let them touch him. Better instead to deal with the issue before it became a problem.

Springing into action always felt like it had heroic overtones to Viper, so it amused him whenever the phrase applied to his situation. One moment he had been soaring along merrily, putting some distance between him and the demon, and the next said demon was in front of him and launching an attack.He supposed it was just as well that the red-head was in front of him, because he really didn't feel like stopping. He sped up to Fierce's level (but not beyond) in an instant, meeting the blades head on and smashing his right fist through them with a backhand. None of the cutting edges touched Viper, and the resulting cataclysmic explosion didn't even slow him down and he blasted under the demon. He corkscrews through the air trailing his left hand through the sky in the other fighter's general direct. Threads cast out from that hand glittered through the air in a spider's web that might have been almost pretty under other circumstances.It wasn't instantly apparent why Viper was throwing the strings over Fierce as he passed by, they weren't any more dangerous than a copper wire that had sat in the sun for too long. As the red threads shown of their own violation, more memories of that day crowded into Viper's head.

...The strongest of them stood at the fore, the unique abilities of each only augmented by the speed and vast application they could be put too after the Trace Hunter's training. Even now, they knew they could not stand against the Rose Sovereign. Still they stood, a stalwart bastion against His advance. They would hold Him for as long as they could, while the others fled. On any other world, at any other time, their sacrifice would have been sang for ages to come. As it was, the Dust claimed them as it did everything else...

The kid was fast, Viper had to give him that. Far faster than anyone he had fought in an age untold. He could try to outrun the devil, to avoid his attacks, but why. It accomplished his goals one way or another, and having the other fighter close again was actually beneficial. Even as Fierce's hand closed around his neck, he didn't care. Perhaps the devil would be surprised when he made that hold. His neck was solid, unyeilding and strong. Fierce could have been holding a cylinder of solid steel. (Though true steel would have shattered under that grasp, the metaphor was apt.) The threads brushing against his opponent were all that mattered. A hair's breath was all that was needed for the wires to adhere and sink under the flesh. Of course, all of that mattered a great deal less as Fierce's fist slams into his ribs and sends him flying out of time and space once again.

...The old man wasn't the fastest of the pupils in any way. His age had slowed his reflexes considerably and all the training in the world couldn't bring him up to the level needed to truly take advantage of those teachings. However, what the Crimson Avatar had not considered at the time was that the old man was fast enough. The old man's fist slamming into His sternum had come as a shock, and momentarily shattered the Red Wrath that had consumed Him. Razor thin fibers of glass shot the air full of flickering lights, refracted a thousand times thousand off the flames and and red radiance. The old man had hurt Him! The old man had damaged Him! The grey haired insect had flawed His Perfection! This Would Not Stand! HE Would RIP The MAN To SHREDS! HIS ANGER WOULD SET EXISTENCE ABLAZE THE CYCLE WOULD BE BURNED BEYOND ALL...

The second blow pulls Viper back to the here and now as Fierce's fist snaps his head back and the rebound lashes it forward. The third hit crashed into his shoulder and slammed him to the side, but that was what set them apart. Fierce was not Dirus, and Viper was not the Scarlet Lord. No longer.

At these speeds voice could have no meaning. No matter how close he came to Fierce, the words would not reach the other man's ears. But Viper was not the Red God, he had more up his sleeve than strength alone. Waves carried sound to the inner ear, a vibrational surface that translated those sounds into comprehensible noise. Normally simulating those vibrations would be impossible for Viper, but with the fibers sunken into his opponent far more was possible.

"Did you believe I wove lies before your eyes? Did you think I toyed with a worthy opponent? Did you think at all?"

The voice spoke into the other's ear without words or time, a mocking sneer tainting their inflection as the shadowy material around Viper's neck crashed like a wave across Fierce's hand and wrist. It surged up his arm and swallowed his shoulder, devouring the chest and flowing over the head; inky darkness forcing its way over and through, flooding every orifice and into every pore. Yet strangely there was no pain, no disorientation, no ill effect at all. It was as if the cloth existed not at all.

And at that moment, exist it did not. Gone, as if it had never been at all. Yet Viper was gone as well...

...He had chased the survivors across the stars. Across worlds, through endless galaxies and crushing eternities. He had hunted them down any where and any when they had hid. The infinite verses, the unending nothings, there had been no reprieve. Those who lived the longest had run from the start and never stopped. Never ceasing to flee, never halting to rest. He had chased them to the far bounds of existence and back, but in the end nothing really mattered. The massacre began on the Fields of Blood had was made complete as the last howled on tendrils of flame that ate him alive from the inside out. The smell of burning flesh and muscle, the sizzle of popping fat and the crack of marrow cooking and bones splitting open. Genocide was the result. For knowing but not being, not trying to be...

There was no trick really, Viper had simply moved his existence around the devil. Through, maybe. No one left alive really understood those gifts anymore. What it amounted to was Viper being between Fierce's fingers one moment and ten feet in the air and behind him the next. The dark shroud around his neck shifted as minutely as it ever had, with no clear indication that it had ever been anything but eye-bending. To further confound the image, the threads still held tight to Fierce.

"Now die in agony, as you have never lived before."

Power of a sorts flowed through the threads, sliding into his opponent. Dissolving like acid and devouring like fire, flooding pain and suffering into the core of another being, ice shot through bone and vile sewage pumping into the body. It was all of that and more, the worst tortures and destruction existence could manage shoving itself into a material container. Perhaps it was overkill, but Viper didn't think so. He had never put this much power into a single attack, not when burning worlds to cinder or slaughtering countless numbers. It wasn't that Fierce himself worried Viper, despite the fact that he was faster than anyone Viper had ever fought and almost as strong. It was more... a suspicion. That perhaps an opponent such as this was as far from his boundaries as Viper was his own. He was putting a stop to this foolishness right here and now. Because this wasn't an inconvience any more, it was a full fledged irritation.

Well! How does one respond to an unstoppable wave acoustic force crushing everything in its path into composite atoms? Viper could take it. Pure force of will went a long way, along with his nigh indestrucible body and a heavy application of power he could quite literally bull through the blastwave. But he understood the rammifications of such an action. It wouldn't decrease his reserves noticeably, but he suspected that he would need every last bit of power if this was to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Afterall, the beast had taken a hit that would kill 99% of the enemies he had faced in the past.

And really, that was impressive. He'd have to think outside the box for this one. Besides, he had more things to be concerned about. Deathwave for one thing. But style and poise for another. This had been an outting to discover the merits of such things hadn't it?

Fierce may or may not be surprised to see his scream had in fact made Viper vanish. It might give Viper half a moment to pull off what he was trying to do. That being riding the burst that had leveled New York. However, unlike conventional matter in atmosphere Viper hadn't slowed down. He might even be said to have speeded up. (i.e. I don't know how fast Fierce's blast thingy was going)

The end result was Viper circumnavigating the planet in under a second and coming back around the other way to smash his right fist into Fierce's back (or whatever else was generally in the way at the time) moving around 1/200th the speed of light. About 3 million mph give or take.