Kaze! Misunderstanding the Red-Haired Ma

Kaze! Misunderstanding the Red-Haired Ma
Date of Scene:	03 November 2012
Location:	Golmore Jungle
Synopsis:	Due to manipulation of Skoll by the Lords of Lords of Gaudium, a chance encounter in the Golmore Jungle pits the huntress Avira against the mysterious Kaze.
Cast of Characters:	Kaze, Avira

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Avira has posed:
It's daylight out.

In the Golmore Jungle, it's nigh impossible to tell. The foliage grows so thickly that the roughly-hewn pathways through it exist in perpetual gloom and twilight. Only the occasional peek of sunlight makes it through the canopy and each bit is jealously coveted by smaller seedlings struggling to grow. Within, many dangerous beasts lurk, from the couerls to the plant-like marboros. Travellers should be prepared to fend for themselves out here or join the shambling undead inhabiting the deepest part.

A hunter unfamiliar with forest stalking, Avira has hesitated to travel too deeply into the forest, electing to keep the lighter bits of the wood closer by in case she had to flee to safety. Today's mark was fairly simple-a client was asking for couerl pelts. So far, Avira had managed to pick off one with some well-placed ice magic from afar. Since then, it had been a waiting game, sitting up a tree, hoping that another one of the catlike creatures would wander away from the large packs they usually gathered in.

One such large pack is within sight, congregating on the forest path.

Kaze has posed:
The pack doesn't seem to have noticed her. The tree is a good place to wait; they'll eventually seperate, with one left by its lonesome just long enough that a quick kill is all that will keep a would-be hunter from being mobbed by the rest of them. One starts to move, slowly picking its way off the path and into sight and range. Patience...

Suddenly, the cat-like things perk up. Their 'ears' twitch; the long tentacle-like whiskers whip in the air in agitation and perhaps worry. The great beasts tense -- and then they scatter, rushing away from the rough path through the jungle. All of her possible marks disappear into the overgrown jungle, moving with the swiftness and surety that only a creature native to this place has.

The source of the agitation quickly becomes obvious. A figure steps into sight out of the deep shadows of the canopy, striding down the path. His footing is sure, steps muffled by the earth beneath his feet. Nothing about him seems like enough to make the couerls suddenly scatter like that. His eyes are downcast, focused on the path, concealed behind a mop of red hair; one, beneath a pair of sunglasses with only a single lens, is invisible altogether. Neither of his hands are visible, but the glint of gold at his right side mean only one thing:

The Black Wind blows in Golmore tonight.

Avira has posed:
A lone hunter such as Avira wisely does not go wading into a pack of couerl such as the one nearby. Maybe if she had two or three other people with her, backing her up, then that would be an acceptable course of action. For now...waiting.

She quickly takes notice of one starting to break away and slowly begins to adjust her position. She doesn't summon any sort of magic just yet, having already learned that altering the flow of mist could alert the creatures of the forest to her presence. But suddenly, all of the couerl scatter, leaping off the path and rustling off into the bushes.

Avira swears under her breath. Couerl were predators. The only thing that could scare of predators, especially in superior numbers like that, was an even greater predator. Panic starts to settle in and she looks towards her exit route, then back to the path to find...

...a man? A lone man scared off all of these...wait.

Avira narrows her eyes. Red hair...'half' of a pair of sunglasses. Him! The man Skoll had spoke of! The man that was at the beach! A chill overcomes the huntress for a few moments. She did see this man fight and Skoll had puported that he could destroy entire worlds-but something hadn't added up about that.

The mysterious man will get some warning. Despite all of Avira's efforts to be silent, he will no doubt hear the rustle of metal sliding against leather. The small crackle of branches as he walks by-well, that could just be an animal, right? But it isn't an animal that leaps down from the tree at him. It's an oddly silent woman brandishing a strange serrated sword that resembles a spinal column.

Kaze has posed:
There are warning sounds. The hints that he spotted them are tiny; a brief shift of how he's standing, a slight raising of his chin as a wary eye scans the jungle around him. He's aware that he heard something, but places this dense and old are filled with sounds in the night. He keeps walking, having not slowed a bit. The path begins to turn near the tree that Avira waits in, and he follows it onwards, a slow and steady pace in the dark of the night.

Then, she's on him. She hits him in the back from above, slamming into him and bringing the strange sword down. She catches him on the right side, the blade glancing off something heavy and metallic and slicing a series of narrow gashes in his odd poncho. He twists, grunting from the impact, reaching up with his left to grab at her and throw her off of him. He's strong.

He lets her go either way in less than a second. His left hand drops to his side, fingers coiling around the grip of a strange red weapon beneath the covering cloth. Down, grab, up, forward, fire -- all actions that happen in the span of a breath, a quick shot followed by something with an instant's longer aim. The odd sound of the gunshots send birds to wing above, a fluttering of wings accompanying the echo through the vast jungle as he faces down his assailant.

If he's surprised, or angered, or anything at all, it doesn't show on his face. His expression is flat, focused. He doesn't say a word -- he just shoots.

Avira has posed:
She can tell her hit landed, though at the same time, it struck something hard beneath that poncho of his. Avira's easily able to recall the odd golden cylinder he had attached to his arm from that fight against the Kraken. Obviously that must've been it-or he's more fully armored than she assumes under that poncho.

She clearly hadn't expected him to grab ahold of her so quickly-and he does, by the collar of her breastplate-and fling her off. Due to his strength, he actually sends her bouncing away quite a good distance. Once she hits the ground, she quickly rolls herself up into a three-pointed crouch, the Spine held above and behind her. "You-" she starts to say before she is shot right in the collarbone.

Bad move. She knew she should have gotten in closer before trying to say anything. Gritting her teeth, she lunges inward, leading with a shoulder to knock him down. She'll follow him down to the ground shortly after, trying to pin him there with a knee pressed down into his chest. "You!" Avira growls, "Do you destroy worlds?!"

...this marks the first time Avira's tried to interrogate anyone.

Kaze has posed:
We could tell.

Whatever Avira's armor is made out of, it keeps her alive through the first volley -- though with the amount of fire he can put out, as evidenced by the battle against the Kraken, it had better be solid enough to take more than one. He stands his ground against her rush, gun at his hip, finger beginning to tighten around the trigger --

WHAM.

As it turns out, he's actually pretty light. He pitches backwards, shoulder-tackled down to the dirt path. He lands on his back, his right arm falling heavily and gouging the path when it hits. His gun goes wide, the readied shot blasting right over her shoulder and narrowly missing taking off an ear. He's laid out flat on his back with her kneeling on his chest, poncho spread beneath him and reddish gun barely at his left hand's fingertips.

The man is tall and thin, maybe even scrawny, with the weird golden cylinder covering his right arm up to the elbow fully revealed. If he has a hand under there, he certainly can't use it. Above it, though, his shirt is cut right through near the shoulder, presumably by the spine-sword she's wielding. It looks wet with blood, the stain spreading down from a ragged cut plainly visible on his bare arm above the contraption. She must've landed it with the first jump.

Kaze's reply is exactly what one might expect from him, should they know him well: a stare, and a silent, perhaps emphatic, "..." He isn't certain what to say to a question like that, though he feels like he has to say something. Right now, though, he's tongue-tied. He can't sort out the words, and no sound comes from him.

Then, slowly, he moves. His right arm shifts slightly, dragging across the ground, muscles tensed and visible. Something is very strange, though.

The bloody wound is gone.

Avira has posed:
In short order, Avira decides that she very much dislikes facing off against someone with a gun. Especially since she doesn't have one herself-there was just something disquieting about a possible headshot ending the fight right there. Well..extremely disquieting maybe.

One hand of hers reaches out to steady herself and press against his neck. It's actually pretty gentle since Avira is smart enough to know that he sure as hell can't talk if she's cutting off his air supply. The other remains holding up her weapon, keeping it at the ready, in case she needs to strike. Those brown eyes of her flick over to the likely bleeding wound and she seems to...hesitate?

Intentionally making a human bleed. Well, if this guy was human- "Are you human? Or some kind of demon?" she continues to demand in the face of his silence. It only slightly occurs to her that her questions have been so bizzare that it's caught him completely off guard.

He starts to move and Avira quickly tenses. Her weight shifts suddenly, knee moving to rest on the bicept she thinks belongs to his gun arm, trying to pin it. "Don't move." she warns, gritting her teeth, "And explain yourself! I know you're not with the Heartless, but you're something!" Looking him over again, she notices that the wound seems to be missing.

Sucking in a breath, she sticks the point of the spine into the ground near his neck and keeps it inverted with one hand. That other hand...

...snakes its way into one of the leather pouches she has around her waist. Carefully, she pulls out a...cell phone? Well, it's a 'Ma Belle' to be precise. Seems she's trying to call someone-yes, right now.

Kaze has posed:
He doesn't react to any of it. It's like he's in shock, or maybe made of stone. His eyes stay focused on hers, his gaze unblinking as she gently tries to prevent him from doing anything funny by readying a strangle-hold, and then ungently tries to pin him down so he can't shoot her. It kind of works; he doesn't shoot her at least, which means she's partially successful.

More questions. Answers come to mind immediately, and he replies just as quickly. "I'm..." His mind blanks, suddenly. Kaze racks his brain, but all he finds is the mental equivalent of television snow. His expression changes, slowly going from passive and focused to frustrated, gradually changing into something closer to actual anger. Every time he tries to call up the word, he just sees the mists, the shapes and shadows, and --

"White Cloud," he suddenly says, the venomous words hissing out with his breath between his teeth. "White Cloud," he repeats, louder. He clenches his left hand into a fist, the grip of the pistol falling to the ground, slipping out of his grasp. Dirt grinds against the golden cylinder on his other arm as it moves again, very slightly.

And then it moves much more, and much faster. Kaze suddenly whips the object covering his arm upwards off the ground, swinging it like a huge metal club at the side of her head. "WHITE CLOUD!" he yells, infuriated by the thought that won't leave his head. His mind is swimming in the images, the flashbacks to the worst days of his life, the only days he can call to mind. His body surges upwards, jumping to his feet in a one-handed rising handstand, flowing back to a stand in a well-practiced move.

He doesn't stop. He comes in with a left, hand curled into a fist in a brutal gut-shot. His right swings up and then downward, slamming towards the shoulder of her sword-arm and then the side of her knee with the unfortunately solid object.

"WHERE IS WHITE CLOUD?!"

Avira has posed:
"...say something, damnit!!" Avira's quickly starting to get impatient. She may have that gun of his pinned, but she's still pretty on edge about it. Things like this can change in an instant and Avira isn't unaware of the fact that she is on the small side. She felt his strength earlier, he could throw her off again.

He starts to speak and Avira watches on with a grim expression on her face. But he doesn't get further than 'I'm' before he seems to struggle. Frustration follows...then anger. This is, so far, the most emotion she's seen this man elicit.

'White Cloud.'

"Huh..?" Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him drop the gun. Whew. Before she can react, that huge golden cylinder thing he has attached to his arm swings up and smashes the side of her head. Immediately her skull explodes with pain and white spots appear before her eyes. She falls sideways and she barely notices him flipping upwards until he's well onto his feet. Still reeling, she tries to stand-only to crumple forward as she's brutally punched in the stomach.

Compared to that blow to the head, the other hits with the golden cylinder don't seem to be as hard, but it's still bad enough that she drops the Spine when it comes down on her shoulder. Yet somehow, she still seems to be holding onto that phone with her left hand.

Not for long, though, it drops to the ground and Avira clutches her stomach with her right arm. "I dunno what you're talking about!" she grunts, looking up at him, furious.

Her left hand lifts and swings. It looks like he's going to slap him across the face. This is almost the truth-she slaps him with a palm full of ice magic across the face.

Kaze has posed:
Kaze basically goes nucking futs and starts beating the crap out of the poor hunter. Avira decides to reply by slapping him around in such a way that it gives him a killer ice-cream headache.

The hand connects. Frost grows over Kaze's cheek and jaw, and his head snaps back and to the side. He staggers backwards two steps, his skin paling, ice crystals forming on his clothing as the killing cold continues its spread. It gradually weakens from the initial impact point, leaving him chilled and frost-covered... but, perhaps unfortunately, still mobile.

Kaze starts to turn his right arm again, but the sound of straining ice stops him. He looks down at his arm, spotting the sheet of ice that flowed right for the golden object. Spikes of ice cover the articulated elbow joint, freezing it in place. His head snaps back up, and he dives low and forward, rushing at her in a shoulder tackle towards the midsection to carry her right off her feet and fling her into the air. This is with his right arm and shoulder, barely mobile but very solid.

His left picked up the gun. He twists to the side, extending his arm and pointing it into the air. The gun barks, but his hand shakes; the first few shots tear into the canopy and rip down trees as they hammer into the jungle, the fusillade dangerous but not as well-aimed. He grits his teeth and exhales a frustrated sound, forcing his arm steady to fire again, this time far more accurately.

"YOU KNOW WHO I'M LOOKING FOR!" he roars. "He sent you, didn't he?! DIDN'T HE?!" The gun barks again and again. His fury is endless, his ammunition nearly so. "I'LL KILL HIM FOR WHAT HE DID! GET OUT OF MY WAY!"

Avira has posed:
'Stay in close' she had thought, 'If you stay in close he can't use his gun on you!' Yeah well staying in close had its own problems, namely that he was both strong and also had a nice blunt object to smack her around with. So in spite of the inherant dangers involved, she's glad to get some space from him. While he's stepping backwards, Avira quickly crouches, scooping her phone up in one hand, her weapon in the other.

Clumsily, she shoves the phone back into a pouch, not even bothering to end the call. Muffled sounds of the fight continue to carry to the unlucky recipient.

Kaze suddenly dives in low at her. Unable to get out of the way, he scoops her up around the waist and throws her into the air. It is by sheer luck that his next barrage of shots all fail to hit her as she sails through the air.

When she lands, she hits the ground rolling and immediately takes cover behind a tree, ducking low. One very loud shot follows and just above her head, the wood splinters into shards and sawdust. Rattled, she ducks down further.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Avira screams back frantically, now officially terrified, "I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!!" Sensing that the tree she selected won't hold his fury for very long, she bolts to take refuge behind another one. "YOU ARE CRAZY! I BET YOU REALLY DID DESTROY A WORLD!"

Kaze has posed:
Kaze keeps advancing, though slowly. His position is incredibly obvious; every time he takes a step, his shirt and his poncho crackle as the frost and thin layer of ice on it cracks and breaks. His breath comes out in clouds of white fog, gradually lessening as he regains feeling in his extremities. His gun-hand isn't shaking anymore, and that is /terrible/.

The tree gradually disintegrates above and around Avira as he plugs shots into it. There aren't bullet-holes left in the makeshift wooden barrier so much as chunks simply being torn away, every cacophonous shot making another piece into a puff of sawdust and splinters. Branches start to fall, scattering huge leaves that don't make it to the ground whole. Things are starting to look grim.

"White Cloud!" he roars. "He did it! Everything, gone!" The gun again. Three more shells slam into the tree trunk. A particularly large piece cracks and falls off, spinning off into the underbrush, splitting into two on the way. He's nailing anything that moves and doing it with astounding accuracy. "No matter the cost, no matter who gets in my way, I will see his end!"

He fires. Again and again and again. There seems to be no end to it. The trees around Avira thin as his ammunition spreads. The power of the gun shatters stones and destroys anything smaller than the ancient monolith she's chosen to duck behind, and even that isn't holding up any longer. The entire jungle sounds like it is coming down around them, the groan of dying greenery falling to the earth echoing as the destruction compounds.

Maybe it's true what they say. Maybe when the Black Wind comes, everything does die.

"TELL ME!" His one visible eye is wide, the muzzle-flash of his weapon gleaming in it and on the single lens opposite. "WHERE IS WHITE CLOUD?!"

Avira has posed:
If this is what that gun was doing to the tree, Avira didn't want to know what it would do to HER. Sure, white magic could heal some pretty serious stuff but could it return a whole missing chunk of flesh? She doesn't want to know. She keeps moving, diving and ducking as the forest comes down around her. "STOP!" she pleads, looking over her shoulder.

White cloud? He did it? White Cloud destroyed the world? Well that helps a little bit.

A spinning...branch? Tree trunk? It could have been either, Avira can't tell at this point. It knocks her off her feet and for a few seconds, she is airborne again. Airborne and defenseless, armoring aside. Kaze's aim is true, shooting her in the back as she twists in the air. There's a yelp of pain and she drops to the ground, flattening against it, shaking. "I DON'T KNOW WHO THAT IS!"

Frantic now, she scrambles through the fallen trees, trying to flank him, trying to get in close. She couldn't stay defensive against his or else he'd completely blow her away. Ice magic flares true again, this time coating the length of her strange weapon. Provided she can get in close enough, she'll strike twice with the freezing blade.

But for the third blow, she steps back and swings at the air. The snarling visage of a beast forms itself from the ice magic enchantment as it leaves the Spine.

Kaze has posed:
Kaze is easy to spot. He isn't going anywhere. He's the centerpoint of this hellstorm of fire, tracking Avira's position by movement even through the collapsing flora all throughout the immediate surroundings in the jungle. He loses her for just an instant, the debris too thick for him to shoot accurately through. It doesn't stop him from shooting through it -- it just stops him from hitting her.

'/There/.' Kaze suddenly pivots on his right foot, pulling a one-eighty and swinging his right arm upwards. The cylinder intercepts the weird mythral blade, the sword clanging off of it without leaving more than a scratch on the surface. He dips low, parrying it a second time, the icy magic spreading up it from the tip towards his arm. He steps back --

The beast lunges. Kaze jumps forward in return. It opens its jaws, and he shoves the golden object directly into it, smashing through the icicle teeth and warping the rest of the head from the impact. It twists and thrashes around it, trying to bite down and not finding any purchase as it gradually dissipates. The frost coating it turns into a solid sheet of ice, thick and heavy, weighing his arm down and wrenching him towards the ground. The sheet that forms crawls up, up, up... and then, suddenly, it stops.

There is a light. Something like a gemstone -- Materia, maybe? -- is set into an indent on the underside of the object. It is dark, but brightens noticeably when the magically-fueled ice reaches it. A vaguely-visible aura like the Aurora Borealis shines out from the sides maybe a half-inch from the cylinder, rippling like two-dimensional waves formed of light. It flickers a little and then gutters out, darkening again. The ice doesn't advance past that point, stopping just before it can reach his elbow.

Kaze's left hand, meanwhile, is still holding the red gun. It is currently pointed directly at Avira's head, his aim adjusted while he was countering her magic through a means even he didn't really know about. He stares at her with the one uncovered eye, condensation from the frost dripping down the lens on the other side and coming off his long hair. The barrel doesn't waver, and he doesn't hesitate.

*click*

Nothing happens.

For a long moment, there is silence. The jungle is as quiet as a graveyard, and from above, sunlight streams down from on high. The canopy has had a massive hole torn into it, making a clearing in the otherwise densely-packed greenery. The warm light gleams off the object on his arm, and off the still-hot barrel of his gun. The space immediately around Kaze is perfectly clear of any debris, but further out it is another story altogether.

"..."

He's stopped, like she asked.

Avira has posed:
For seconds she saw an opening. Eager to drop this guy before he shot her again and tore the forest drown around her ears, she acted. Fighting an opponent with a gun? No thanks.

The Spine meets the golden cylinder, which must definitely be some kind of shield, she reasons. No matter, the ice magic should slow him, stun him even, right? No time to consider that too deeply-time to unleash the rest of the stored magic...to little effect. She can feel her carefully guided magic-mist she had manipulated and shaped, falling apart back into its disorganized and chaotic state. Something in that golden cylinder stopped it, Avira can tell.

Not much time is spent admiring this very interesting failure of magic. There's a gun pointed at her head now. A gun that, Avira is certain, can blow her head clean off in one shot. She didn't want to know what her back looked like from where she was hit. It wasn't encouraging that she could feel the gaping wetness left behind.

He doesn't shoot.

Shaking, Avira ever so slowly takes her weapon behind her, slipping it into the sheath on the small of her back. Her now empty hands lift.

"I don't know the White Cloud." she says slowly, "All I know is that according to someone who had their world destroyed by /something/, you were there when it happened."

Kaze has posed:
A shield. An interesting theory, given the evidence shown. Nobody is really certain what that is, though; he hasn't done anything with it until just now. Kaze presumably knows, but it does not look like he is willing to tell.

His weapon, even empty, is unwavering. The world comes back into focus, out of the fog of war and the memory-induced fury he suffered. He lost control, almost completely. If he did that anywhere else, or if he had gone a little further, then this whole place would have been...

"..." Words are met with none once again. Moments pass, the heavy silence weighing down on the two of them. Eventually, Kaze lowers the weapon, sliding it into a holster beneath his high-collared poncho. His expression has returned to the unreadable -- or perhaps uncaring -- mask that it has been for who knows how long. His hand moves clear of the weapon, and though the ice-covered golden thing still hangs heavy, it does it at his side instead of readied like a club again.

Kaze turns away, turning his back on Avira apparently deliberately. He starts walking back towards where the path was. The shadows beneath the canopy stretch ever-further with the sharp contrast that comes from the sunlight above. They look like pools of blackness, gathered up to hide the jungle's secrets from the interlopers doing battle within. "It was him," he says, voice low but carrying through the new clearing all the same.

Kaze stops for a second. The red-haired man looks back over his shoulder. "...your friend," he eventually says, staring back at the girl with the strange sword. "If they get in my way... I'll kill them too."

The Black Wind steps into the darkness, and it swallows him whole, without a trace.

Avira has posed:
Though he may deny his involvement in the end of any world, the evidence Avira has seen here shows...he's more than capable of something that horrible. In mere seconds he had obliterated a good chunk of the jungle and now the pair stand in the sunlight in their own small clearing.

In the sunlight, it's far too easy for Kaze to see how scared Avira is, even when it is revealed that the gun has nothing in it. He may not say anything, but to the huntress her heart is beating so loudly that she may as well have missed his words. At least Kaze didn't look enraged now-something that there was apparently a very fine line between. While a presented back is a tempting target, Avira does not act on it.

She nearly jumps when he speaks again, his words so unexpected. "W..wait.." she calls out to him as he steps into the shadows. It's probably too late, but she says it anyway, "-what's your name?"

He's gone. Avira's whole body seems to shudder and she slides down to her knees. A soft groan follows and she rolls over onto her side. She had to move, sure, but she really wanted to just lie down for a while.