[BATT] Caffeinated Clash (Tamiya + Ephias)

[Sypon]

beautiful tam

vs

scholarly ephias

Two trolls hopped up on Bloodfest vibes cause friction in the festivities!

 

[Sypon]

Tamiya had too much energy to keep rolling around Bloodfest. She'd nearly worked herself into a sweat just breathing heavy, hot breaths on the back of the device, and her power was becoming too great for her to stay put. There were rebels nearby - she was sure of it - amongst the unwashed masses. These low, naive fools had no idea they were hidden among them at this very minute. The cretinous audience of the event was likely peppered with them. They could all be rebels. They could all be...! If they were not, but were not so astute, they were aiding and abetting the crimes of the rebellion.

The clown's teeth were practically sparking with how much they were grinding and chattering. She drew her club from her hip, hopped off of her segway and decided to take matters into her own hands. Beating at a nearby post (and loosing some snow from the flags that hung from it), Tamiya began to rant.

"INFIDELS! DARK SAINTS OF THE NIGHT ARE HERE TO PROTECT YOUR VILE SOULS. ******** SIBLINGS HONK WITH ME! WHOOP WHOOP!"

There was barely a response, though a distant lone whoop could be heard. Thankfully the crowds were too thick and boisterous for the purpleblood's raving to carry too far. Unfortunately, this simply encouraged her to continue. Tamiya shuddered and raised her stick.

"GIVE UP YOUR DAMNED TO ME AND YOU WILL BE CONSIDERED FOR THE JIGGLINGEST TIME FROM YOUR FILTHY PUPATION TO YOUR WRETCHED, WRINKLY DEMISE. THE PLANET DRAWS NEAR THIS VERY NIGHT!! THE PARADISE PLANET!!"  

[Green Minuet]

☯ Degras Tysson

To Ephias' great relief, so far Bloodfest had passed uneventfully—at least in the sense that there had been no gunfire, no arrests, and no executions. Admittedly a few fights had broken out here and there, but that was nothing out of the norm. The competitive spirit of the festival drew out violence... and unfortunately prejudice too. Perhaps he had become too accustomed to life back in the swamp. While the Initiative still had a long ways to go in terms of washing away several millennia of casteism, they were leagues ahead of the rest of the world, so much so that even the slightest injustice raised an alarm for him.

Putting all that aside,* as well as his exaggerated sleep-deprived performance two nights earlier, Bloodfest was almost enjoyable. No one had been compromised to his knowledge, and despite a few hiccups between booths, the games had been fun and surprisingly tame. Not to mention his time with Etsali had been well spent, low key and... well, normal. He could not imagine many other trolls utilising most their time together to discuss heists and attack strikes. It made for a nice change of pace. All in all, Bloodfest had been a pleasant memory to revisit. Not almost. Actually pleasant.

Somewhat reluctantly Ephias struck a line through the last sentence in his notebook, and made his revision below. He felt guilty admitting his enjoyment when there was still so much clearly wrong around him, but if he did not allow himself to relax then he risked exhaustion via overwork. And no matter how well intentioned that never went well. Chewing his thumbnail, Ephias tapped the pen against the paper. After a moment he set it down against the crease in the notebook, and reached beside him to take a swig from his coffee. No sooner had he taken a sip than he nearly spit it out. He pried open the lid. Cream with sprinkles. Again. Really?

Returning it to the bench, Ephias forced the sugary mouthful down and picked up his pen to scratch out a quick note in his journal. Maybe he was being petty, but that made the third time. Next time he would have to complain. He had just put his pen to the paper, when he encountered his second rude surprise for the evening.

The harsh ringing of metal and the subsequent screaming jarred him. Ephias stared blankly at the thick, fresh streak of ink across the page. No big deal. He did not record anything so delicate that a smudge would do it damage. His handwriting was pretty bad regardless. As the juggalo continued however, he realised his moment of brief respite had come to an end. He would either need to find some place else, or...

Clapping the notebook shut, Ephias tucked it into his jacket. Then, grabbing his coffee, he rose to his feet. Wordlessly, he went to where the juggalo ranted to a deaf crowd. Mostly deaf anyway. A distant whoop let him know that others were nearby. Really now.

Ephias disliked conflict. Despite his part in the Phoenix Initiative, he preferred not to initiate without good reason. Ordinarily, he would move on without making a fuss. The cult of the Mirthful Messiahs however were an exception. They embodied the worst aspects of Alternian society: enforcing highblood privilege, contaminating the legal system, and discouraging technological advancement. In essence, though perhaps put somewhat melodramatically, they represented everything he fought against.

He sized the juggalo up. She had an usual appearance, one that did not match the typical visual associated with the Dark Carnival. If not for her shouting and her fearsome face paint, he would not have placed as a member of the cult. Even if her attire was strange however, that was no reason to underestimate her. She was—unsurprisingly—a purpleblood, and that spoke enough.

Ephias tapped his pen against his chin, thoughtful. For now he would be patient. In all likelihood, he stood little chance to reason with her, but there was no reason not to try. “Which planet?” he asked, interrupting her in the middle of another exorbitant pitch.

*One had to pick their fights carefully, and risking his identity over biased service did not serve the initiative well.

Sypon

screams at internal dialogue forever next post will be better sorry

 

[Sypon]

Tamiya blinked at the redblood before her. He’d apparently come out of nowhere, being invisible as he was. The dour looking troll asked a simple question. With his writing utensils he reminded her immediately of Psykgi. Curious trolls concerning the occult and the Messiahs were not always welcome friends. However, Tamiya would impart her wisdom onto him regardless of his affiliations. She was incredibly giving that way.

“The Paradise Planet, of course.” Tamiya spat. “The most holy of vessels that will rise one day in the Vast Honk! My siblings and I shall ascend, and the damned shall likely evaporate in their wicked sins.”

Green Minuet

 

[Green Minuet]

☯ Degras Tysson

Oh boy. Ephias slipped a hand under his shades to rub at his eyes. Really this was something left better off alone, but sometimes he could not help himself. Maybe a third cup of coffee had been a bad decision after all. He would take the sprinkles as an omen.

“Okay,” Ephias said, taking a deep breath. “I'm not sure if you're... speaking in metaphor, but planets don't 'rise'. As for what you said before, about it 'drawing near'... well, it's easier if I just show you.” Squatting, Ephias placed his coffee on the ground. He pulled out his notebook again, and flipped to a blank page. He began to draw.

“So, this here is Alternia and its orbit. Our neighbouring planets, the... the ones that would be most feasible for your proposition, are here...” He drew a long elliptical. “And here. As you can see, this one has a tight orbit that is more circular. It comes no where close to our planet. On the other hand, this one...” Ephias gave the notebook a tap with the back of his pen. “Has a much more stretched orbit, so there are certainly periods in which it is much closer to us than than others.

“Due to the differences in our orb-orbital speeds, we reach the minimum distance between planets about once every sweep, which is... hardly ground-breaking. Not to mention, thanks to some complicated properties of inertia, the gravitational fields of our sun and the outer planets, our specimen is actually getting further from us with every passing sweep by a small amount. It will take several million sweeps, but eventually it stands to-to eject itself from our solar system. Anyway, the distance between our planets is already so great that without a psionically powered vessel that kind of travel is unthinkable. I won't say impossible, but it is highly unlikely.

“With that, what you're probably thinking of is a comet. That would hardly be considered a p-paradise however. Due to the extreme variation in temperature as it travels from outside our solar system to around the sun, it would be far from inhabitable. Not to mention there's few large enough to support any kind of population. Were one of those to approach that close to Alternia however, we would have other problems. In that case, evaporation is—as you said—very likely.”

&Sypon

Ephias likes space. Also we need planet names, oops. She can cut him off at any time.

 

[Sypon]

Kill the Science Man, thought Tamiya immediately. It was one of those silly, invasive thoughts that trolls always have. She was frozen in place, staring at him as he went on and on. The words – the sheer nonsense – that he was spouting was incredible. It rose up her body like the miracle of heat, reaching its limit in the very forefront of her thinkpan. She began to feel the pressure behind her sightstalks.

Destroy the corrupting logic, for it mystifies, mists and ******** the unenlightened. The miraculous source of trolls, their place on the planet, and most importantly their mission as a species, could not simply be explained away by science. There was no relevance other than contention and manipulation for this twiggy ******** to attempt to convert Tamiya to the Heathenous Sty of Scientific Reasoning. She was above it all in every way. Tamiya immediately forgot about her tirade against the rebellion. The only reason this troll had become a hostile target was his own vile assault on her beliefs. And she told him just as much.

“Silence your stilted chuteworm, you load gaper of cosmic spew! You disgust my senses. You are a joke – disgusting, nonsensical. Do you intend these words to cause me harm? The Messiahs will smite you where you stand upon the Vast Honk, leaving your shriveled bonebulge in the pile of magical sparkling stardust you call science as recompense for my holy word against your crimes towards my people and a parting leaving for your unprepossessing, meek ******** lusus to regard you by.” She reached for the club at her hip and scowled. “You smug dickslime. We are not yet spacebound, and do you consider yourself so flipnasty pissgiggling high to take flight yourself? Perhaps your ******** would be better spent towards driving our glorious race towards our collective destiny rather than worming about like the pathetic pustulous piece of pretentious drone spit you are.”

Tamiya’s lip twitched. She herself had spat on Ephias incidentally during her tirade, and her whole face was still quivering from the rage she felt building up inside of her… As well as the beverages that unsuspectingly were causing her vision to blur and sparkle slightly.

Green Minuet

 

[Green Minuet]

☯ Degras Tysson

Funny. Ephias thought clowns liked jokes. And yet here he was, a blot against Alternia's favourite religion. It was both flattering and a little sad that she seemed to take his argument so personally.

Ephias tucked away his pen and notebook and rose to his feet. He knew a lost cause when he saw one. Taking a long sip from his coffee, he watched impassive as Tamiya launched into a full tirade. His nose wrinkled when he got a mouthful of whipped cream, but otherwise he remained stone-faced. At least up until she brought his lusus into it. Ephias felt his eyebrows go up and his jaw drop.

Honestly he was more in awe of her colourful language than insulted by it.

“I'm working on it,” Ephias replied when she had finished. Alternia's collective destiny involved putting the Dark Carnival far behind it as far as he was concerned. He rested his free hand on the hilt of his shears—a precaution rather than a threat. “But where are the Messiahs' contributions?”

Sypon

 

[Sypon]

20
3
n/a
n/a
n/a


2


“Wh—“ Tamiya sputtered. Where are the Messiah’s contributions? She opened her mouth and closed it again, at a loss for words. Such gall. Such disrespect. Tamiya grinned shakily, her quaking fingers reaching down to the redblood’s scarf and wrapped around it in a vice. She pulled him close to her. Coffee-tainted breath spiked her grease paint scent.

“You are looking at a product of the Messiahs. Here’s my <******** contribution.” Tamiya whipped her head into Ephias' with a crack. She pushed him away forcefully, punctuating her action with a thick throaty spit at his feet.

Green Minuet

 

[Green Minuet]

☯ Degras Tysson

Health: 17
Defensive B Trinket: 1/1
Support A Artefact: 1/1

Tamiya's formidable skull collided with Ephias' own with a sharp snap. As stars burst in his vision, he did not even register the loss of his visor. The two halves clattered to the pavement without his even noticing.

Reeling from the blow, Ephias tried to differentiate the stars generated from the juggalo's headbutt from those dangling in the night sky. They danced around him, blinking across space like electrons in an electron cloud. He could not seem to focus on any particular one long enough to tell. One thing was clear though*: the painted face of the doomsday prophet.

As Tamiya's form wavered in front of him, Ephias contemplated his options. The wise—the logical—thing to do would be to apologise and make tracks while he still could. After all, he had already tormented the woman enough. She had done nothing to deserve such treatment. She had only enacted her right to preach. Arguing with her changed nothing.

... Oh, who was he kidding? She and her religion poisoned progress, and besides he was sick and tired of being walked on. Without thinking, Ephias uncapped the lid to his cup and dumped the contents** into the clown's face.

“Sorry, I didn't have a pie,” he lamented.

*Relatively speaking at least.
**It was all whipped cream. Thanks Nucleo.

[ Ephias does 0 damage. ]

Sypon

One million years later.

 

[Sypon]

20
2
n/a
n/a
n/a



A typical rigid slave to the sciences might treat Tamiya this way (with such disdain, pretentious unfunny snobbery). But they would certainly. Never. Act this way. The cream from Ephias' cup rushed suddenly up at Tamiya's face, covering her chin, lose and cheeks in the frothy liquid. She shrieked. Her make-up was endangered, and so too was this horrendous redblood who was about to suffer the wrath of all of her weight. Tamiya lunged forward the short distance between herself and Ephias, pressing her nails and claws into his shoulders as she brought him to the ground. Heavy and on top of him in the snow, Tamiya grasped him hard enough to pierce and reared up for another attack.

"Filth! How dare you take such mirth in vain! UNHOLY RED VELVET PUTREFIER, TWIZZLER OF THE DAMNED!"

Green Minuet

Yay!

 

[Green Minuet]

∞ Ephias Sagine

Health: 15
Defensive B Trinket: 1/1
Support A Artefact: 1/1

As Tamiya crashed into him with her full weight and threw him to the ground, Ephias pondered his current dilemma. It was his first real fight since joining up with the Phoenix Initiative—his first real fight period, if he was going by one on one combat—and yet he felt neither upset or nervous. He could not stop thinking about how odd that was. Him, Ephias Sagine, the all-time pacifist, instigating a fight. It was so bizarre he wanted to laugh.

Then he remembered she could kill him. That sobered him up a little.

Thankfully Tamiya pushed him down into the snow rather than the sidewalk, so he was barely winded. She had his fingers around his shoulder like a vice though, and he felt a sharp sting of pain as her metal talons drew blood. First things first, his instincts told him, he needed to get out from underneath the indigoblood and off his back. He felt claustrophobic pinned down as he was.

As Tamiya reared up, he raised his knee to catch her in the gut, then with his hands on her shoulders, attempted to roll her beneath him.

“It's a... medical condition.”

[ Ephias does 2 damage. ]

Sypon

I don't know where this sass is coming from.

 

[Sypon]

18
3
n/a
n/a
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"Oof!" Tamiya's weight (mostly the weight of her garb) was tossed over. She scrambled for purchase at the redblood, scratching and clawing at him with her formidable talons. At this point, her words had dissolved into garbled grunts and frustrated screeches. Her energy was, of course, being used elsewhere. Tamiya was much too close to engage the unrepentant science man with her club without opening herself up for attack. Instead, she went in with her mouth - the perfectly straight razor that made up her teeth bore down on the base of his neck, aiming to unseat him from on top of her.  

[Green Minuet]

∞ Ephias Sagine

Health: 12
Defensive B Trinket: 1/1
Support A Artefact: 1/1

Repulsion registered before the pain did. It was bad enough grappling with the juggalo; having her teeth embedded in his neck was enough to make his digestive cavity squirm.

With a howl Ephias lurched back, away from her fangs and into the snow. He landed in a crouch, barely keeping his feet under him. As he reached up to ascertain the damage, his lips pressed together in a grim line. Fresh, hot blood flowed from the wound. His scarf could only offer so much protection.

Warier than before, Ephias drew his shears, and took a defensive stance.

[ Ephias does 0 damage. ]

Sypon

Short-a** post for long-a** wait.

 

[Sypon]

18/20
Tamiya uses offense A power! (½)
(she does 2 damage lollers)

The juggalo growled. It was deep; filled with a rumble and a belch. She dragged her tongue against the rusty blood, smearing it against the grease paint that coated her lips. Tamiya’s eyes filled in, red and angry.

A weak pulse of her powers escaped before she regained control, like the release of a hiccup from her saccharine state. Woolly visions teased their way towards Ephias as Tamiya slowly stalked around him, waiting for an opening to strike.

Green Minuet

the pattern continues

 

[Green Minuet]

Degras Tysson

Health: 10
Defensive B Trinket: 1/1
Support A Artefact: 1/1

The sight of juggalo licking the blood—his blood—from her lips made Ephias feel faintly nauseated. He grimaced, gripping his shears a little tighter. Cold sweat beaded on the back of his neck, and a chill went down his spine. He could not tell if it was because of the snow melting down his back, or the murderous intent in the air.

As she stalked around him like a circling predator, Ephias followed her with his eyes, still but alert. He adjusted his feet to match her position, when a flicker of darkness came at him from his opposite peripheral. How—?

Ephias whirled, whisking his shears in a broad slash. There was a spray of bright red blood. A melted grey form, arms outstretched, stood before him, a wide laceration rent in its torso. Its eyes wept blood, its sutured mouth begged forgiveness.

“Z...” Ephias reeled. He grit his teeth and took a step back.

[ Ephias does 2 damage. ]