Post by Delashano on Aug 4, 2014 9:19:36 GMT -5
when we last left Jenn she was engaged in a battle for control of her own body, her opponent an aspect of her own mind and personality that has split off from her who has been preparing for this battle for an unknown amount of time. Ill prepared for the coming battle Jenn pressed forward regardless to face the other aspect of her mind now known as Della. Jenn and Della's fight has only just begun and now we will see who will take control.
Jenn grit her teeth and dashed forward with all the speed she could muster, she knew not how long she and Della had simply watched each other’s movements as they both carefully circled one another waiting and watching for the other to many anything even vaguely resembling a mistake in movement any sort of opening that they could exploit to bring this battle a bit closer to its ultimate end, it had been Jenn that broke the statement over the normally more impatient Della, the amount of time she had watched Della had revealed something small to her about the woman that differed from herself, something that under ordinary circumstances she would have never even gotten a chance to note as no battle normally maintained this amount of inaction. Della's movements were slightly faster than her own, without Jenn having really realized it Della had been setting the pace of the circling her footwork just a touch faster requiring Jenn to speed herself up some to compensate.
Watching Della for as long as this had been going on gave her the time necessary to understand at what point Della was most open to attack, she could tell by the look in her other halves eyes that she too was beginning to see what she had already seen, slowly Jenn had returned to her normal pace and once Jenn spotted 'the look' in Della's eyes, the sign that Della now FULLY understood what Jenn was doing Jenn sprung forward energy flowing into her legs to provide a sudden boost of speed allowing Jenn to go from a few feet across from Della to immediately behind her with sword raised high and shield arm cocked back in almost slow motion Jenn watched Della's body begin to move to face Jenn just as Jenn brought her sword down and her shield forward, the sword coming down in a clean arc aimed directly for the other woman’s back and the shield aimed to deliver a blow to the middle of Della's back just shortly after the sword would bite into her flesh.
Jenn gave herself a mental pat on the back for all the work she had put into this plan and was quite grateful that she had been correct in her hopes of how the technique she had just used would function, it had of course been a rather significant gamble to assume that a mostly untested technique would work but this WAS her mind, if ever there was a place for her to press the limits of what she could accomplish then this would be the place, the new technique was in the general vein of her other enhancement techniques the ones that improved the power of her blades, shields, and bows however rather than simply enhancing an item it was an application of enhancement magic applied to her own body, most specifically her legs though it did of course involve a fair amount of enhancement to the body as a whole. The technique as it stood was one designed to provide a sudden and significant burst of speed something to give her the ability to catch an opponent off guard the energy enhanced the muscles in her legs and allowed them to work far beyond their normal limits. A certain amount of enhancement was as well applied to the body as a whole in order to not have any negative effects for moving that fast with no physical protection against it.
As Jenn was congratulating herself however throughout the room rang a sound reminiscent of steel against rock as her sword tore through the steel armor Della had clad herself in and found far more resistance beneath it in the form of a thick hide of scales, Jenn still however brought her shield to bare against Della slamming the heavy steel defensive tool against her other half's back and sending the woman tumbling forward, Della however having all the acrobatic talents of Jenn rolled with the blow and sprung back to her feet a few feet away from Jenn with a cocky grin on her face as she twirled her spear in her hands as she took up a defensive stance, the now severely damaged armor suddenly falling apart very much appearing to turn to ash though it would quickly be caught up in Della's aura and be returned energy for her revealing what Della had hidden beneath the armor. The majority of her body except for the upper part of her neck, head, and hands were coated in a thick layer of blue scales similar to what Tiamat normally appeared to have and what Jenn had used against Anri and the Amethyst Dragon. Jenn scowled slightly as she realized that this was why Della had chosen the bulkier armor, while it provided no more protection in a battle such as this than her leather armor did it DID very cleverly disguise the shift to one of her newer shape shifting techniques. She'd discovered shortly after that battle that if she shifted the blue scales of a dragon onto herself then it provided a marked increase in physical defense even against attacks on par with what she was capable of belting out.
And of course the extensive amount of time they had spent simply watching one another had given Della ample time to shift her form so that it only displayed the scales wherever Jenn could not actually see them, it of course left her face and hands unprotected during that time but already the scales were beginning to spread overtaking Della’s face and hands to complete the change and almost immediately after the scales shifted from their normal vibrant shade of blue to a deep red that matched Della's aura and hair "I really do hope Abednego is still alive out there somewhere, I'd love to have a chance at thanking him for these improvements once I'm in control" Della said with a smirk before dashing forward striking at Jenn with her spear and forcing Jenn back onto defense under the weight of and the rapid pace of Della's attacks with the weapon, the shield in its enhanced state was thankfully enough to resist the power of Della's attacks however it was at a cost, already Jenn could feel the spear was doing quite a number on the shield as each blow impacted it solidly even as she tried her best to maneuver to force some of the strikes to glance off the shield rather than impacting it solidly. Jenn gritted her teeth as the impacts continued and then rather abruptly it all stopped and with a glance over the shield Jenn saw why as Della had brought the spear back in preparation for a more powerful attack, so much so that the spear was practically radiating energy the sight of which brought a scowl to her face, she'd foolishly let herself play into what was certainly Della's plan, she'd given her the opportunity to attack the shield and weaken it's overall structure, it could certainly take a few more decent 'normal' hits but the power Della was putting out for this one was far too much to just tank as she had been.
A small smirk found its way onto Della's face as she dove forward thrusting the spear at the shield, the spear tore through the energy enhanced metal with relative ease, so many impacts on it had left it vulnerable however much to Della's surprise there was only a momentary resistance against her thrust and then suddenly a whole lot of nothing, her eyes narrowed in annoyance immediately as she released her spear and in a flash of flame manifested a pair of daggers, her movements were quick, just quick enough that she twisted her body to deflect an attack she had not even truly seen coming merely banking on how well she knew her other half that she could predict the angle of attack Jenn would take given a brief few moments to make a choice. Accounting for Jenn's new technique was proving far more difficult than she had expected her other half already having taken her off guard twice. Perhaps though this one should have been more expected, Jenn had taken no overt action despite having obviously noticed the incoming attack, Della knew her attack had come quickly but there had still been enough time to formulate SOME response especially as Jenn would know full well that a response was necessary. Allowing the attack to go through in the manner she had however was interesting she had remained in her stance up until the very moment Della made impact with the shield the last few moments that the shield managed to hold up against the spear had been all Jenn had needed to let the shield go and make her attack.
The blades sparked with energy as the two woman pushed against one another Jenn's jaw clenched in frustration as she tried to pour more strength into her attack to drive past Della's daggers and strike her however her efforts proved fruitless as for every ounce of energy she called upon to empower her attack Della was able to do just the same to hold her back, in an instant however Della suddenly lurched forward as without any notice she was no longer fighting back to hold Jenn off "Damn" Della swore as she launched into the air narrowly avoiding the steel of Jenn's blade by a few second as the blue djinn appeared seemingly out of thin air "You are really quite fond of your new trick aren't you?" Della said through gritted teeth as she pushed higher into the air, she needed to see the extent of the technique was it merely incredibly fast land based movement or did it also include flight? These were important things to know when it came to dealing with a new technique; as well it would give her a better chance of knowing how Jenn would proceed. Much as she hated to admit it there was still a strong similarity between how they fought, perhaps because Della had not had any real opportunities to pursue a fight outside of the brief moments where she merged with Jenn during a transformation but even then she had no real ability to develop a more unique style.
“Can’t blame me for using something when it works” Jenn’s voice called out from behind Della as all of a sudden the blue djinn was gone and for the first time Della got a clear look at Jenn using the technique and she had even managed to follow Jenn’s movements to an extent as Jenn inadvertently revealed aspects of the technique that Della had not known of, at first Jenn had simply been standing below Della she’d taken a moment to locate her but once she spotted exactly where Della had flown to she’d disappeared again revealing to Della the visual cues of the technique in action they were small but to the trained eye visible enough the sight of rushing air and a bit of kicked up dust created by the high speed movement. Instead of simply darting upwards Jenn appeared to take a sort of running start and though Della could not keep track of her movement DURING the use of the technique there was a brief moment where she was able to perceive Jenn again while her other half was in midair, in order to adjust herself in the air Jenn needed to manifest a small slab of metal and kick off of it and in doing so she managed to push herself back into the high speed movement. That brief moment had been what Della needed to mount a defense and was all the indication she needed for how the technique functioned.
It had been obvious enough that the technique was an extension of the enhancement magic’s that they had been using since UNITY had captured them, it was easy enough to detect that familiar power, and by extension it was simple to understand that it was an enhancement that Jenn was applying to her own body rather than to a particular item, understanding HOW she did it was easy understanding what the technique really DID however had taken a bit of work, she’d needed to see it in action a few times and this last usage had given her the necessary knowledge, it pushed Jenn beyond her normal limits in terms of how fast her legs could push her but because of that it meant that the technique relied upon actually using her feet and legs, it would not improve actual flight in any way and almost certainly attempting to directly use flight with the technique would hold no benefit as the power was in the physical effort moving of pushing her body forward as fast as possible, in order to actually get up to Della Jenn had needed the slab of metal to kick off of again to give her the force necessary to fire herself at Della.
Once she understood the way the technique functioned it became much easier to grasp it and with that to know how Jenn would use it, Della raised her arms in defense as she manifested a shield enhancing it with her energy just in time to absorb the impact of Jenn’s attack, a heavy slash that would have almost certainly cut her in half, the shield cracked under the force of the attack though ultimately held firm as Jenn swore in annoyance pulling away from Della and keeping herself aloft with the use of her flight “It’s a clever technique, I’ll give you that, though it does have a few holes that will need patching up.” Della said with a smirk as a flash of fire erupted at her feet as she created a small metal platform, one that would only remain stationary for just a moment before gravity decided to pull it back to the ground but that moment was all Della needed as her shield turned to ash and the familiar shape of the Staff of One appeared in Della’s hands, she kicked off of the platform as the staff drew Jenn’s attention, her other half obviously not having expected that Della had access to the weapon.
Before Jenn had any more time to contemplate Della being in possession of the staff the red djinn was suddenly gone, replaced by a gust of air and in that brief moment Jenn was overwhelmed by the horrible realization of what just occurred before then being met with the sharp pain of the staff making impact with her gut sending her flying backward flying clear across the room until she impacted the far wall making a Jenn shaped impact mark in the thick stone walls, Jenn gasped for air as she faded between consciousness, the attack had managed to take her completely off guard she’d never expected Della to be able to mimic her new technique so quickly she’d thought that maybe just maybe if the battle dragged on for too long then perhaps her other half would figure out how it worked but to get it after Jenn herself had only used it four times was completely unexpected. Jenn groaned as she picked her head up to see out of the hole in the wall her impact had made, still lingering half way across the room was Della, evidently waiting for her to drag herself out of the wall rather than coming in after her, thankfully it seemed that she could rely on the idea that Della would have a similar battle attitude to her own, and it also spoke well of perhaps how Della really thought of her, for all the anger and hate Della’s tone held when she spoke to Jenn the fact that she was waiting meant one thing. On some level Della didn’t REALLY see Jenn as a true ‘enemy’ in a real fight such as this Jenn knew she would not give an actual enemy such leeway unless they were so incredibly far below her that it was irrelevant to attack them, there was perhaps a chance that Della felt that way but it was obvious that they were for the most part evenly matched and Della was clearly no fool.
Unfortunately ‘enemy’ status or not this would do very little for her overall, it simply meant that once something like this happened she would have a moment to breath, to pull herself back up and stand to fight Della again rather than simply having her other half crash in and pummel her before she could even catch a breath. At least though it meant that if Della landed another solid hit like that then it would give her a few moments to come up with a plan of action, already the first step of her new plan was being enacted as her skin slowly began to shift her normal soft blue skin growing tough as it slowly transitioned into hard blue scales, some of the scales were hidden beneath her currently quite damaged armor but unlike how Della had disguised her transformation Jenn was making no such efforts to hide it, at this point attempting to do so would be foolish her current armor covered a lot but not nearly enough to hide a full shift to ‘scaled mode’ no she needed her arms and face protected now just as Della had her own, a ripple washed over Jenn’s form as the transformation was completed, much faster than Della’s had been as Jenn had no need to hide the change, with the first step complete Jenn reached out and grabbed the edge of the small Jenn-shaped crater she had made upon impact and using her grip to leverage herself she pulled out of the hole and shot forward at an incredible speed using her new technique to give herself an additional push.
As Jenn darted forward moving through the air far faster than most could even perceive she spotted something, a flash of motion and in an instant Della was upon her striking at her with the Staff of one and giving jenn only a moment to unleash a surge of energy causing her body to shift once again, the scales grew stronger and her hands morphed becoming a sort of humanoid-reptilian hybrid style of hand armed with powerful claws, Jenn would make use of her scales and claws immediately by bringing her arm up to absorb the first staff strike gritting her teeth as the weapon impacted her arm, even with the additional protection provided by the scales the power behind the staff was quite significant . Despite this Jenn muscled through the pain and dove forward using the fact that Della was so focused on attacking that her only real defense was her scales, Jenn shoved past Della’s arms and slashed at the other woman’s chest dragging her claws along the scales, at first the claws simply made a horrid screech against Della’s scales but the screech was quickly followed by scream from Della as Jenn managed to dig past the scales and cut a sharp wound into her other halves chest.
As Della let loose her scream she shoved Jenn back following it up with a powerful kick to the abdomen that Jenn was almost utterly incapable of avoiding because of her position, the kick sent Jenn tumbling through the air briefly ending once she caught and righted herself with her flight technique, once righted Jenn could see the full extent of her attack, a long gash cut across Della’s chest that was openly bleeding though unfortunately it appeared that the wound was really only serving to egg the other woman on as her grip tightened on the staff, her eyes narrowed, and her teeth gritted as they stared each other down. That particular attack was perhaps the most impactful so far and Jenn was quite happy it had been she who had delivered it, at present the only other lasting wound that had been inflicted was in fact that first one that Della had landed and it was only through sheer luck that it had not been as bad as the wound Jenn had inflicted, if the knife wound had been much deeper there was a good chance that this fight would have been long over by now. “Do we really have to keep at this? Can’t we just talk or something? I’m sure we could work together help the peo-“ Jenn began speaking hoping to perhaps reason with Della now that things had progressed to this extent, it was clear enough that this fight was just going to keep escalating until one of them was incapable of continuing.
What Jenn wanted was to figure out WHY Della was doing this, in hindsight it would have been best to try this from the start but with Tiamat making it seem that a fight was inevitable and Della starting things up quickly she’d lost sight of that goal in favor of defending herself, now though the thought was back, unfortunately before Jenn could get a full statement out Della stopped her snarling and unleashing a bolt of lightning on Jenn that very nearly hit her in the dead center of her chest, quick reflexes from Jenn however allowed her to simply take the bolt as a glancing blow over the right shoulder the electricity surged over the limb causing it to twitch in pain for a few moments but the resistance provided by her scales kept it from doing any lasting harm. “I had hoped that since you didn’t bother to start with that shit that you would be smart enough to know that talking this out is no option, I guess I was wrong.” Della spat her tone filled with venom as she made a sweeping gesture and what followed both confused and alarmed Jenn felt a surge of energy from Della akin to her other half unleashing an attack.. but nothing came of it… until she rather suddenly felt a blast of energy impact her back sending Jenn flying to the ground below her impact being somewhat weakened by her attempts to keep airborne.
“W..what the hell was that..” Jenn muttered to herself as she struggled to get back up to her feet as Della touched down a few feet away, her shoulder was throbbing with pain from whatever had hit her though thankfully it seemed that whatever it had been was only damaging and possessed no additional powers. “I’ll be nice and let you know now since you won’t have the time to puzzle out the exact mechanics of the technique before this is over and even if you did it won’t REALLY matter and we can even call it a trade considering you so graciously provided me with another new trick” Della said with a smirk referencing their new and presently unnamed physical speed technique. “It’s a technique of my own design created shortly after you were brought into out mindscape, it uses a few old runic magic concepts that we are aware of but in the heat of battle will be far more difficult to bring up unless I let you get a good look at one of the blasts. I use a surge of energy to manifest the runic pattern and the pattern delivers a blast of energy from a distance, the energy all comes from me so detecting it is difficult and the only downside is that I can’t form the patterns at a point blank range they need a bit of build up space to do their thing.” Della said giving a shrug over the unfortunate defect of the technique as Jenn listened and watched on in a mix of confusion and interest, confused because she had no idea why Della was so willingly giving her all of this information on the new technique and of course interest because this was a new technique that she clearly had the capacity to replicate.
“Why are you telling me all of this? You do not exactly strike me as the sharing sort considering this very fight is based on that very issue.” Jenn questioned and much to her discomfort Della just smirked at the question “I am telling you because like I said it does not matter if you know how the technique functions, you DO have the capacity to figure it out but not the time, I put the finishing touches on it while you were wandering around with the dragon and exploring out memories, even if we did another gods know how long standoff like earlier it would still not be long enough to both protect yourself from my attacks AND puzzle out the correct patterns involved in the rune array, you remember how that magic works if you do it wrong it’ll drain you twice as much AND explode on you. It’s not in your best interests to even TRY mimicking the technique for this fight.” Della said with a shrug as her grin grew slightly more vicious. “But that’s not even the whole reason, the REAL reason I’m bothering to talk to you as much as I am… is because it’s given me all the time I need to build this up!” Della said with a smirk and then in a flash she was gone, her form reappearing MUCH further away than Jenn anticipated and with a surge of energy something appeared above Della. It was massive in proportion a sleek metallic behemoth clearly designed for optimal aerodynamics, it took Jenn a moment to realize exactly what it was that Della had created and her blood ran cold as realization dawned on her.
“THIS” Della shouted her arm raised high to keep her palm in contact with the massive metallic death weapon “THIS is what they have done in the time we have been gone Jenn, they didn’t follow Sei’s path, they ignored everything he, Astos, Vitam, and Hazezon strived for it did not even take them long to fall EVEN FURTHER than when we were in the lamp. They can NEVER be fixed, Sei and the others did their best, WE did our best, and it was all a waste. It all just falls apart the moment someone takes their eyes off of them as a whole. Now I’ll take the front seat to this show for a while, we do thing MY way now and we’re done with helping them.” The metallic weapon glowed a faint red as Della gave it an almost gentle push with her palm, despite the lack of effort placed into actually unleashing it the metallic weapon fired off with tremendous speed it’s finned back erupting in flame as it tore through the air directly for an utterly stunned Jenn.
From her position quite a ways away Della could barely even see Jenn, all she could really see was the weapon and feel Jenn’s presence, her voice would carry to Jenn with ease of course, this was their mind after all and all the talking was just thoughts being transmitted between them. A few moments passed and then the weapon made its impact, she could feel it hit Jenn with little to no resistance from her other half and when it hit the weapon erupted in a terrible show of explosive force kicking up dust and destroying everything in its wake and leaving nothing save for the image of a vaguely mushroom like cloud of horror. It was the worst weapon ‘they’ had seen while exploring the ‘new world’ described in how it had been used in historical accounts it had been perhaps the greatest blow to Jenn’s faith in humanity and the final one for Della.
Della let out a heavy breath as she felt Jenn’s energy signature fade to a level that indicated unconsciousness quickly followed by her mental projection being swept away to where Della had prepared for her to be contained for the immediate future, once she knew she could really keep command even while Jenn was ‘conscious’ she’d allow her other half the same level of freedom she’d possessed, Jenn would even receive all the same benefits while confined that Della had, knowledge of what Della was doing and shared knowledge on how to apply new skills, she’d even receive the information on how to perform the runic blast as they would become far less divided once one of them was ‘at the helm’ so to speak. “I won...” Della said as she removed the now utterly destroyed room from existence reappearing in her ‘room’ so long had she been planning this and for it to have finally come to pass and ass a resounding success… it was like some sort of dream. For so long she’d prepared for this day and now really she was left with only a question ‘what now?’ she’d never really prepared for ‘life’ after this moment, she had vague ideas on what she intended to accomplish once in control but nothing concrete. Letting out a breath Della shook her head, she would figure things out soon. What she needed to do now was take the first step forward, take control. Della closed her eyes and let out a surge of energy, her mental ‘form’ slowly dispersing as she pushed her mind to the forefront, out of the mindscape and into the body into the real world.
Jenn grit her teeth and dashed forward with all the speed she could muster, she knew not how long she and Della had simply watched each other’s movements as they both carefully circled one another waiting and watching for the other to many anything even vaguely resembling a mistake in movement any sort of opening that they could exploit to bring this battle a bit closer to its ultimate end, it had been Jenn that broke the statement over the normally more impatient Della, the amount of time she had watched Della had revealed something small to her about the woman that differed from herself, something that under ordinary circumstances she would have never even gotten a chance to note as no battle normally maintained this amount of inaction. Della's movements were slightly faster than her own, without Jenn having really realized it Della had been setting the pace of the circling her footwork just a touch faster requiring Jenn to speed herself up some to compensate.
Watching Della for as long as this had been going on gave her the time necessary to understand at what point Della was most open to attack, she could tell by the look in her other halves eyes that she too was beginning to see what she had already seen, slowly Jenn had returned to her normal pace and once Jenn spotted 'the look' in Della's eyes, the sign that Della now FULLY understood what Jenn was doing Jenn sprung forward energy flowing into her legs to provide a sudden boost of speed allowing Jenn to go from a few feet across from Della to immediately behind her with sword raised high and shield arm cocked back in almost slow motion Jenn watched Della's body begin to move to face Jenn just as Jenn brought her sword down and her shield forward, the sword coming down in a clean arc aimed directly for the other woman’s back and the shield aimed to deliver a blow to the middle of Della's back just shortly after the sword would bite into her flesh.
Jenn gave herself a mental pat on the back for all the work she had put into this plan and was quite grateful that she had been correct in her hopes of how the technique she had just used would function, it had of course been a rather significant gamble to assume that a mostly untested technique would work but this WAS her mind, if ever there was a place for her to press the limits of what she could accomplish then this would be the place, the new technique was in the general vein of her other enhancement techniques the ones that improved the power of her blades, shields, and bows however rather than simply enhancing an item it was an application of enhancement magic applied to her own body, most specifically her legs though it did of course involve a fair amount of enhancement to the body as a whole. The technique as it stood was one designed to provide a sudden and significant burst of speed something to give her the ability to catch an opponent off guard the energy enhanced the muscles in her legs and allowed them to work far beyond their normal limits. A certain amount of enhancement was as well applied to the body as a whole in order to not have any negative effects for moving that fast with no physical protection against it.
As Jenn was congratulating herself however throughout the room rang a sound reminiscent of steel against rock as her sword tore through the steel armor Della had clad herself in and found far more resistance beneath it in the form of a thick hide of scales, Jenn still however brought her shield to bare against Della slamming the heavy steel defensive tool against her other half's back and sending the woman tumbling forward, Della however having all the acrobatic talents of Jenn rolled with the blow and sprung back to her feet a few feet away from Jenn with a cocky grin on her face as she twirled her spear in her hands as she took up a defensive stance, the now severely damaged armor suddenly falling apart very much appearing to turn to ash though it would quickly be caught up in Della's aura and be returned energy for her revealing what Della had hidden beneath the armor. The majority of her body except for the upper part of her neck, head, and hands were coated in a thick layer of blue scales similar to what Tiamat normally appeared to have and what Jenn had used against Anri and the Amethyst Dragon. Jenn scowled slightly as she realized that this was why Della had chosen the bulkier armor, while it provided no more protection in a battle such as this than her leather armor did it DID very cleverly disguise the shift to one of her newer shape shifting techniques. She'd discovered shortly after that battle that if she shifted the blue scales of a dragon onto herself then it provided a marked increase in physical defense even against attacks on par with what she was capable of belting out.
And of course the extensive amount of time they had spent simply watching one another had given Della ample time to shift her form so that it only displayed the scales wherever Jenn could not actually see them, it of course left her face and hands unprotected during that time but already the scales were beginning to spread overtaking Della’s face and hands to complete the change and almost immediately after the scales shifted from their normal vibrant shade of blue to a deep red that matched Della's aura and hair "I really do hope Abednego is still alive out there somewhere, I'd love to have a chance at thanking him for these improvements once I'm in control" Della said with a smirk before dashing forward striking at Jenn with her spear and forcing Jenn back onto defense under the weight of and the rapid pace of Della's attacks with the weapon, the shield in its enhanced state was thankfully enough to resist the power of Della's attacks however it was at a cost, already Jenn could feel the spear was doing quite a number on the shield as each blow impacted it solidly even as she tried her best to maneuver to force some of the strikes to glance off the shield rather than impacting it solidly. Jenn gritted her teeth as the impacts continued and then rather abruptly it all stopped and with a glance over the shield Jenn saw why as Della had brought the spear back in preparation for a more powerful attack, so much so that the spear was practically radiating energy the sight of which brought a scowl to her face, she'd foolishly let herself play into what was certainly Della's plan, she'd given her the opportunity to attack the shield and weaken it's overall structure, it could certainly take a few more decent 'normal' hits but the power Della was putting out for this one was far too much to just tank as she had been.
A small smirk found its way onto Della's face as she dove forward thrusting the spear at the shield, the spear tore through the energy enhanced metal with relative ease, so many impacts on it had left it vulnerable however much to Della's surprise there was only a momentary resistance against her thrust and then suddenly a whole lot of nothing, her eyes narrowed in annoyance immediately as she released her spear and in a flash of flame manifested a pair of daggers, her movements were quick, just quick enough that she twisted her body to deflect an attack she had not even truly seen coming merely banking on how well she knew her other half that she could predict the angle of attack Jenn would take given a brief few moments to make a choice. Accounting for Jenn's new technique was proving far more difficult than she had expected her other half already having taken her off guard twice. Perhaps though this one should have been more expected, Jenn had taken no overt action despite having obviously noticed the incoming attack, Della knew her attack had come quickly but there had still been enough time to formulate SOME response especially as Jenn would know full well that a response was necessary. Allowing the attack to go through in the manner she had however was interesting she had remained in her stance up until the very moment Della made impact with the shield the last few moments that the shield managed to hold up against the spear had been all Jenn had needed to let the shield go and make her attack.
The blades sparked with energy as the two woman pushed against one another Jenn's jaw clenched in frustration as she tried to pour more strength into her attack to drive past Della's daggers and strike her however her efforts proved fruitless as for every ounce of energy she called upon to empower her attack Della was able to do just the same to hold her back, in an instant however Della suddenly lurched forward as without any notice she was no longer fighting back to hold Jenn off "Damn" Della swore as she launched into the air narrowly avoiding the steel of Jenn's blade by a few second as the blue djinn appeared seemingly out of thin air "You are really quite fond of your new trick aren't you?" Della said through gritted teeth as she pushed higher into the air, she needed to see the extent of the technique was it merely incredibly fast land based movement or did it also include flight? These were important things to know when it came to dealing with a new technique; as well it would give her a better chance of knowing how Jenn would proceed. Much as she hated to admit it there was still a strong similarity between how they fought, perhaps because Della had not had any real opportunities to pursue a fight outside of the brief moments where she merged with Jenn during a transformation but even then she had no real ability to develop a more unique style.
“Can’t blame me for using something when it works” Jenn’s voice called out from behind Della as all of a sudden the blue djinn was gone and for the first time Della got a clear look at Jenn using the technique and she had even managed to follow Jenn’s movements to an extent as Jenn inadvertently revealed aspects of the technique that Della had not known of, at first Jenn had simply been standing below Della she’d taken a moment to locate her but once she spotted exactly where Della had flown to she’d disappeared again revealing to Della the visual cues of the technique in action they were small but to the trained eye visible enough the sight of rushing air and a bit of kicked up dust created by the high speed movement. Instead of simply darting upwards Jenn appeared to take a sort of running start and though Della could not keep track of her movement DURING the use of the technique there was a brief moment where she was able to perceive Jenn again while her other half was in midair, in order to adjust herself in the air Jenn needed to manifest a small slab of metal and kick off of it and in doing so she managed to push herself back into the high speed movement. That brief moment had been what Della needed to mount a defense and was all the indication she needed for how the technique functioned.
It had been obvious enough that the technique was an extension of the enhancement magic’s that they had been using since UNITY had captured them, it was easy enough to detect that familiar power, and by extension it was simple to understand that it was an enhancement that Jenn was applying to her own body rather than to a particular item, understanding HOW she did it was easy understanding what the technique really DID however had taken a bit of work, she’d needed to see it in action a few times and this last usage had given her the necessary knowledge, it pushed Jenn beyond her normal limits in terms of how fast her legs could push her but because of that it meant that the technique relied upon actually using her feet and legs, it would not improve actual flight in any way and almost certainly attempting to directly use flight with the technique would hold no benefit as the power was in the physical effort moving of pushing her body forward as fast as possible, in order to actually get up to Della Jenn had needed the slab of metal to kick off of again to give her the force necessary to fire herself at Della.
Once she understood the way the technique functioned it became much easier to grasp it and with that to know how Jenn would use it, Della raised her arms in defense as she manifested a shield enhancing it with her energy just in time to absorb the impact of Jenn’s attack, a heavy slash that would have almost certainly cut her in half, the shield cracked under the force of the attack though ultimately held firm as Jenn swore in annoyance pulling away from Della and keeping herself aloft with the use of her flight “It’s a clever technique, I’ll give you that, though it does have a few holes that will need patching up.” Della said with a smirk as a flash of fire erupted at her feet as she created a small metal platform, one that would only remain stationary for just a moment before gravity decided to pull it back to the ground but that moment was all Della needed as her shield turned to ash and the familiar shape of the Staff of One appeared in Della’s hands, she kicked off of the platform as the staff drew Jenn’s attention, her other half obviously not having expected that Della had access to the weapon.
Before Jenn had any more time to contemplate Della being in possession of the staff the red djinn was suddenly gone, replaced by a gust of air and in that brief moment Jenn was overwhelmed by the horrible realization of what just occurred before then being met with the sharp pain of the staff making impact with her gut sending her flying backward flying clear across the room until she impacted the far wall making a Jenn shaped impact mark in the thick stone walls, Jenn gasped for air as she faded between consciousness, the attack had managed to take her completely off guard she’d never expected Della to be able to mimic her new technique so quickly she’d thought that maybe just maybe if the battle dragged on for too long then perhaps her other half would figure out how it worked but to get it after Jenn herself had only used it four times was completely unexpected. Jenn groaned as she picked her head up to see out of the hole in the wall her impact had made, still lingering half way across the room was Della, evidently waiting for her to drag herself out of the wall rather than coming in after her, thankfully it seemed that she could rely on the idea that Della would have a similar battle attitude to her own, and it also spoke well of perhaps how Della really thought of her, for all the anger and hate Della’s tone held when she spoke to Jenn the fact that she was waiting meant one thing. On some level Della didn’t REALLY see Jenn as a true ‘enemy’ in a real fight such as this Jenn knew she would not give an actual enemy such leeway unless they were so incredibly far below her that it was irrelevant to attack them, there was perhaps a chance that Della felt that way but it was obvious that they were for the most part evenly matched and Della was clearly no fool.
Unfortunately ‘enemy’ status or not this would do very little for her overall, it simply meant that once something like this happened she would have a moment to breath, to pull herself back up and stand to fight Della again rather than simply having her other half crash in and pummel her before she could even catch a breath. At least though it meant that if Della landed another solid hit like that then it would give her a few moments to come up with a plan of action, already the first step of her new plan was being enacted as her skin slowly began to shift her normal soft blue skin growing tough as it slowly transitioned into hard blue scales, some of the scales were hidden beneath her currently quite damaged armor but unlike how Della had disguised her transformation Jenn was making no such efforts to hide it, at this point attempting to do so would be foolish her current armor covered a lot but not nearly enough to hide a full shift to ‘scaled mode’ no she needed her arms and face protected now just as Della had her own, a ripple washed over Jenn’s form as the transformation was completed, much faster than Della’s had been as Jenn had no need to hide the change, with the first step complete Jenn reached out and grabbed the edge of the small Jenn-shaped crater she had made upon impact and using her grip to leverage herself she pulled out of the hole and shot forward at an incredible speed using her new technique to give herself an additional push.
As Jenn darted forward moving through the air far faster than most could even perceive she spotted something, a flash of motion and in an instant Della was upon her striking at her with the Staff of one and giving jenn only a moment to unleash a surge of energy causing her body to shift once again, the scales grew stronger and her hands morphed becoming a sort of humanoid-reptilian hybrid style of hand armed with powerful claws, Jenn would make use of her scales and claws immediately by bringing her arm up to absorb the first staff strike gritting her teeth as the weapon impacted her arm, even with the additional protection provided by the scales the power behind the staff was quite significant . Despite this Jenn muscled through the pain and dove forward using the fact that Della was so focused on attacking that her only real defense was her scales, Jenn shoved past Della’s arms and slashed at the other woman’s chest dragging her claws along the scales, at first the claws simply made a horrid screech against Della’s scales but the screech was quickly followed by scream from Della as Jenn managed to dig past the scales and cut a sharp wound into her other halves chest.
As Della let loose her scream she shoved Jenn back following it up with a powerful kick to the abdomen that Jenn was almost utterly incapable of avoiding because of her position, the kick sent Jenn tumbling through the air briefly ending once she caught and righted herself with her flight technique, once righted Jenn could see the full extent of her attack, a long gash cut across Della’s chest that was openly bleeding though unfortunately it appeared that the wound was really only serving to egg the other woman on as her grip tightened on the staff, her eyes narrowed, and her teeth gritted as they stared each other down. That particular attack was perhaps the most impactful so far and Jenn was quite happy it had been she who had delivered it, at present the only other lasting wound that had been inflicted was in fact that first one that Della had landed and it was only through sheer luck that it had not been as bad as the wound Jenn had inflicted, if the knife wound had been much deeper there was a good chance that this fight would have been long over by now. “Do we really have to keep at this? Can’t we just talk or something? I’m sure we could work together help the peo-“ Jenn began speaking hoping to perhaps reason with Della now that things had progressed to this extent, it was clear enough that this fight was just going to keep escalating until one of them was incapable of continuing.
What Jenn wanted was to figure out WHY Della was doing this, in hindsight it would have been best to try this from the start but with Tiamat making it seem that a fight was inevitable and Della starting things up quickly she’d lost sight of that goal in favor of defending herself, now though the thought was back, unfortunately before Jenn could get a full statement out Della stopped her snarling and unleashing a bolt of lightning on Jenn that very nearly hit her in the dead center of her chest, quick reflexes from Jenn however allowed her to simply take the bolt as a glancing blow over the right shoulder the electricity surged over the limb causing it to twitch in pain for a few moments but the resistance provided by her scales kept it from doing any lasting harm. “I had hoped that since you didn’t bother to start with that shit that you would be smart enough to know that talking this out is no option, I guess I was wrong.” Della spat her tone filled with venom as she made a sweeping gesture and what followed both confused and alarmed Jenn felt a surge of energy from Della akin to her other half unleashing an attack.. but nothing came of it… until she rather suddenly felt a blast of energy impact her back sending Jenn flying to the ground below her impact being somewhat weakened by her attempts to keep airborne.
“W..what the hell was that..” Jenn muttered to herself as she struggled to get back up to her feet as Della touched down a few feet away, her shoulder was throbbing with pain from whatever had hit her though thankfully it seemed that whatever it had been was only damaging and possessed no additional powers. “I’ll be nice and let you know now since you won’t have the time to puzzle out the exact mechanics of the technique before this is over and even if you did it won’t REALLY matter and we can even call it a trade considering you so graciously provided me with another new trick” Della said with a smirk referencing their new and presently unnamed physical speed technique. “It’s a technique of my own design created shortly after you were brought into out mindscape, it uses a few old runic magic concepts that we are aware of but in the heat of battle will be far more difficult to bring up unless I let you get a good look at one of the blasts. I use a surge of energy to manifest the runic pattern and the pattern delivers a blast of energy from a distance, the energy all comes from me so detecting it is difficult and the only downside is that I can’t form the patterns at a point blank range they need a bit of build up space to do their thing.” Della said giving a shrug over the unfortunate defect of the technique as Jenn listened and watched on in a mix of confusion and interest, confused because she had no idea why Della was so willingly giving her all of this information on the new technique and of course interest because this was a new technique that she clearly had the capacity to replicate.
“Why are you telling me all of this? You do not exactly strike me as the sharing sort considering this very fight is based on that very issue.” Jenn questioned and much to her discomfort Della just smirked at the question “I am telling you because like I said it does not matter if you know how the technique functions, you DO have the capacity to figure it out but not the time, I put the finishing touches on it while you were wandering around with the dragon and exploring out memories, even if we did another gods know how long standoff like earlier it would still not be long enough to both protect yourself from my attacks AND puzzle out the correct patterns involved in the rune array, you remember how that magic works if you do it wrong it’ll drain you twice as much AND explode on you. It’s not in your best interests to even TRY mimicking the technique for this fight.” Della said with a shrug as her grin grew slightly more vicious. “But that’s not even the whole reason, the REAL reason I’m bothering to talk to you as much as I am… is because it’s given me all the time I need to build this up!” Della said with a smirk and then in a flash she was gone, her form reappearing MUCH further away than Jenn anticipated and with a surge of energy something appeared above Della. It was massive in proportion a sleek metallic behemoth clearly designed for optimal aerodynamics, it took Jenn a moment to realize exactly what it was that Della had created and her blood ran cold as realization dawned on her.
“THIS” Della shouted her arm raised high to keep her palm in contact with the massive metallic death weapon “THIS is what they have done in the time we have been gone Jenn, they didn’t follow Sei’s path, they ignored everything he, Astos, Vitam, and Hazezon strived for it did not even take them long to fall EVEN FURTHER than when we were in the lamp. They can NEVER be fixed, Sei and the others did their best, WE did our best, and it was all a waste. It all just falls apart the moment someone takes their eyes off of them as a whole. Now I’ll take the front seat to this show for a while, we do thing MY way now and we’re done with helping them.” The metallic weapon glowed a faint red as Della gave it an almost gentle push with her palm, despite the lack of effort placed into actually unleashing it the metallic weapon fired off with tremendous speed it’s finned back erupting in flame as it tore through the air directly for an utterly stunned Jenn.
From her position quite a ways away Della could barely even see Jenn, all she could really see was the weapon and feel Jenn’s presence, her voice would carry to Jenn with ease of course, this was their mind after all and all the talking was just thoughts being transmitted between them. A few moments passed and then the weapon made its impact, she could feel it hit Jenn with little to no resistance from her other half and when it hit the weapon erupted in a terrible show of explosive force kicking up dust and destroying everything in its wake and leaving nothing save for the image of a vaguely mushroom like cloud of horror. It was the worst weapon ‘they’ had seen while exploring the ‘new world’ described in how it had been used in historical accounts it had been perhaps the greatest blow to Jenn’s faith in humanity and the final one for Della.
Della let out a heavy breath as she felt Jenn’s energy signature fade to a level that indicated unconsciousness quickly followed by her mental projection being swept away to where Della had prepared for her to be contained for the immediate future, once she knew she could really keep command even while Jenn was ‘conscious’ she’d allow her other half the same level of freedom she’d possessed, Jenn would even receive all the same benefits while confined that Della had, knowledge of what Della was doing and shared knowledge on how to apply new skills, she’d even receive the information on how to perform the runic blast as they would become far less divided once one of them was ‘at the helm’ so to speak. “I won...” Della said as she removed the now utterly destroyed room from existence reappearing in her ‘room’ so long had she been planning this and for it to have finally come to pass and ass a resounding success… it was like some sort of dream. For so long she’d prepared for this day and now really she was left with only a question ‘what now?’ she’d never really prepared for ‘life’ after this moment, she had vague ideas on what she intended to accomplish once in control but nothing concrete. Letting out a breath Della shook her head, she would figure things out soon. What she needed to do now was take the first step forward, take control. Della closed her eyes and let out a surge of energy, her mental ‘form’ slowly dispersing as she pushed her mind to the forefront, out of the mindscape and into the body into the real world.
New Technique-
Shunpo: A technique in the same vein as the Zanzoken however where the Zanzoken provides incredible speed that generates a distracting after image the Shunpo instead allows the user to deliver two physical attacks at the blinding speed of the technique, the limitation on the technique however is that it requires the user to be able to actually take at least one step forward in order to gain the speed, mid-air usage is possible if there is something to 'kick off' of such as summoned/falling objects or people but only allows for movement in a single direction per post.
Runic Blast: Manifesting a circle of composed of many mystical runes set into a specific array Della is able to unleash a blast of energy anywhere within her visual perception, the blast is emitted from the 'face' of the circle which glows bright red, the primary benefits of this technique are that it can allow Della to fire off attacks from unexpected angles and that the actual energy of the technique all comes from Della herself and thus the runes themselves do not give off energy allowing the technique a great measure of 'stealth' unless the opponent is aware that Della is capable of such a technique and knows to keep a lookout when Jenn makes the attack gesture.
The defects of the Runic Blast are that it cannot be done at a 'point blank' range due to a conflict between Della's energy manifesting the runes and the ambient energy put off by even fairly weak opponents(anyone with less than 1000PL however does not have 'enough' ambient energy and thus the Runic Blast could be done at point blank. Mostly this is for blasting unnamed NPC's) the Runic Blast requires at least a distance of three feet from a target of 1000+ PL, on top of this the actual bast is only fired once Della makes the specific gesture for it to fire, a wave of the hand(visually like the 'jedi mind trick') allowing an opponent that is aware of how the technique functions to be aware that a blast is coming and take a chance to defend themselves against what is likely a blast to there back or side.