Colosseum - Round 1, Group A - Okor vs Weiss Schnee

[Storyteller]

Okor, standing before an unfurled Kingdom flag, glared across a rolling battlefield at Weiss Schnee, who herself stood before a small armory and the rebel colors of the Deserters. Up above them, a packed crowd cheered, waiting for the signal that would commence the 'festivities.'

Someone gestured for silence, and just like that, there wasn't a sound in the building as Victor von Magnus walked onto the small platform near the center of the massive structure. With a smile, he picked up the padded hammer and smashed it into the gong, signalling the fights to commence.

Judge – Gildarts/Caira

Okor posts first, and he may do so anytime after 6 pm CDT/7 PM EDT.

Description of fight area and other information can be found here - <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://omniverse-rpg.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&p=44961#p44950">viewtopic.php?f=28&p=44961#p44950</a><!-- l -->

Please refer any questions to that thread.

Word Limit: 750
Posts: 3
Time Limit: 48 hours
SP use is enabled. SP does not regenerate between rounds. Injuries may occur. Neither injuries nor SP use are factored into judgment, only the quality of writing.

[Okor]

The cheers and jeers of the crowd filled the air, the ringing of the gong fading into the background as the unwashed masses of humanity overcame the former order and ceremony that had existed. He grinned beneath his ancient helm, blackened fangs spreading wide in a terrifying parody of a smile. His lone eye gazed up at the crowds, seeking the pale, glowing eyes of Rebbecca. He had almost believed he had spotted her, through his infected eye, when he saw a blur of motion at the edge of his vision, a white ghost disappearing behind his titanic mass. He stumbled to face his assailant, a jaundiced claw touching his bare abdomen, as his gauntlet drew his rusted blade. As his steel greaves summoned dust from the floor with every sluggish step, he confirmed his suspicions. Clear blood leaked from a long gash on his abdomen, the precise blow struck by his foe carving a furrow across his flesh. Already, thin tendrils of corruption squirmed within the wound, wrapping around each other and knitting his flesh back together. He failed to suppress laughter as he sighted his opponent, a young woman, her skin as white as that of Mortation before his Embrace, clad in garments as pure as snow, yet unbloodied by battle. Cold blue eyes sized up the Plague Marine, her strange sliver of a sword slick with Okor's pale blood, its augmented and altered makeup already turning the viscous liquid into a hardened mass. Were there any Primes that had survived adolescence? Or was he fated to face children for the rest of his miserable existence in this accursed realm?

The gangrenous giant laughed as he approached, his arms held wide open, as if about to embrace a long-lost friend. This appearance of kindness was rapidly dispelled by the long, verdigris-afflicted blade held tightly in his ceramite-coated hand. No sense in despairing over it. "Well struck... youngling!" He chuckled, gasping for breath that rarely came. "But to end me, you will first have to... find something my Patron has not yet inured me to!" He began to bring his blade up, his ranged weaponry hanging unused at his side. Sometimes, the simplest methods were superior. Too late, he recognized the familiar stance of his foe, her tensed muscles, her intense concentration. A brief moment of calm before she unleashed the storm. She bounded forward, nimbly covering the distance between the two combatants, as the Plague Marine swung his rusted blade through the air, its pitted surface cleaving through nothingness as it sped towards the seemingly fragile form of Weiss.

The youth's slippered foot touched off of Okor's blade, her nimble agility triumphing over the giant's raw might, propelling her over his towering height. Chuckling once more as he turned, the necrotic knight looked down at the slight frame of Schnee, her body huddled around a reddened blade, its surface blazing with a red light. What did she possibly think it could do to hi- His thoughts were interrupted as the youth impaled him, the rapier embedding itself in his abdomen. Within a split second, her strange weapon detonated, staggering the giant, forcing him backwards into the wooden standard, the banner pole splintering beneath his weight. The flesh around his stomach was scorched and ragged, papery skin hanging from the wound in strips, the yellowed, twisted bones of his stomach seeming to gnash as the battle stirred his hunger. As the dust from the blow began to settle, the marine chuckled, a hand going to the pistol at his hip, his lone eye gazing balefully at his target. "Might I know your name, young... Lady?" He gurgled, hoping to distract his for foe for long enough to expose her to the wonders of ever-burning alchemy.

626 words according to wordcounter.net. I hope you enjoyed it, I feel a little rusty for some reason.

[Weiss Schnee]

Weiss realized a second after Okor finished speaking that her eyes were wide with shock. "He didn't feel that. Did he even notice?"
Then, in the next second, Weiss's features returned to an unflinching stare, as her own training kicked in. No matter the odds, betraying weakness or shock was amateur. She'd made a terrible mistake.

Weiss saw Okor bring up the pistol with an awkward, jerking, altogether inhuman jolt of movement, and she realized her confidence may already have cost her the fight, bringing Myrtenaster up to stop the bullet in it's path

Weiss heard, then felt, the explosion. The bullet, fired in a nearly perfect trail to her center mass, burned her ears with overpowering noise and her stomach with burning phosphex, the bullet activating on her blade. Weiss fell to her knees in shock, her voice losing the breath she desperately needed to scream as the flames licked at her stomach, burning through part of her clothing and her flesh. Weiss had been struck by grimm, smacked by bullets, and exploded! None of it compared to the agony she felt now.

From the corner of her dimming vision, she saw Okor fire again robotically, and she reacted as best as she could, clumsily pushing off one foot to push her body out of the way just in time to avoid a second shot to the head, as her body awkwardly sailed like a flopping fish behind a stone wall. She felt her body ricochet off the ground as she bounced and rolled behind the protective cover. Under ordinary circumstances she might have grunted at the pain of it, but compared to the agony that left her in hurried gasps of pain too weak to be called screams she didn't notice.

Suddenly, the searing agony that left Weiss's mind blank in pain finally stopped, the fire snuffing out and leaving only a patch of burnt skin resembling charcoal in it's wake.

She didn't know why, but she moved her legs back underneath her, first shakily, then with firm determination.

She couldn't remember why, right now, but she couldn't lose.

A sound akin to a spinning bicycle wheel was the only warning Okor would get before Weiss appeared in a blur of motion straight in front of him, wincing in pain, as her scarlet-colored blade stabbed deep into the earth in front of him. A carpet of flames erupted towards Okor with the speed and intensity of a flamethrower, and the plaguebearer only barely managed to push most of his body out of the way, smoke billowing from his armored boot.

Weiss's body shivered against her will, as she forced it to lunge forward, her silver blade reaching Okor's Body in an instant. The death guard brought his blade up to block at the last moment, and Weiss's blade carved a silver trail across the surface of his chestplate as Okor's heavy blade guided the weapon up and away from his heart.

The space marine's counter was immediate, and Weiss back-stepped an inch to avoid a brutal slash from the curved blade. her abdomen groaned in protest at the extra pressure, and Weiss had to focus to keep her eyes on her opponent instead of rolling up in their sockets. Myrtenaster struck the blade at it's center with a quick slash, pushing the weapon into Okors center to break his guard, and Weiss stepped in on Okors right side just in time to avoid a deadly pistol shot to the head.

Weiss slashed for Okor's shoulder in a silver blur of motion.. The giant rolled his shoulder into the strike, and the screeching sound of metal scraping against metal echoed as Myrtenaster glanced off the armor plating, unable to find purchase at this angle. The plague marine followed through with a vicious shoulder check of the same arm, and Weiss felt her shoulder go numb as she was sent flipping back. Somehow, she managed to stop the world from spinning just in time to land on her feet, as the Death guard followed up the charge with a vicious overhand chop of his pitted blade at her open guard.

Weiss couldn't dodge, and couldn't block. So she jumped, flipping her body into the air above Okor. The heiress glared straight down at the space marine as she dove, her Rapier poised to strike. "Weiss Schnee." She replied, as she descended like a cannonball at the chaos worshiper, a vicious two-handed stab aimed right at Okor's head.

I got 750 words, 4221 characters from wordcounter.net

[Okor]

Okor struggled to follow the graceful acrobatics of this Weiss Schnee, her slim frame vaulting over his towering figure, disappearing from his limited vision as he began to respond, courtesy and decorum triumphing over immediate concerns. "Okor-" He was quickly reminded of her presence by the glimmer of quickly reddening steel at the edge of his vision, her blade embedded dangerously close to his gorget. Gods damn her spee- A burst of fire and heat interrupted his thoughts, searing away at his body, cracking the corrupted ceramite of his armour and scorching the diseased flesh beneath. The Plague Marine stumbled backwards, the force of his opponent's blow staggering the mighty giant. He began to rise once more when he glimpsed the shard of steel protruding from his throat.

Gods damn her speed.

He rotated quickly, the rapier tearing apart his throat, severing arteries and veins that already began to clot and slowly repair themselves. His pistol fell to the ground, its mastery over fire and pain forgotten in favour of more simpler methods. His rotten claw reached out, closing around the shocked Schnee's throat, obviously caught somewhat be surprise that her death blow had not felled the plague marine. Harshly rasping through a ruined respiratory system, Okor spoke to his captive. "C'mere... Princess." The girl's eyes widened in fear, or perhaps in recognition of some previous memory. He rose his victim into the air, attempting to achieve the height needed to inflict damage with the impending slam. With a grunt of exertion, the child was crushed into the ground, accompanied by a cloud of disturbed sand. Chuckling, the dread sound seemingly independent from his obliterated esophagus, he plunged his rusted blade down towards his foe, piercing the dust. "And so our game... ends, Weiss." He rasped, his speech warped by his corrupted helm. The dust parted around his sword, its antique tip embedded in the coliseum floor, rather than the warrior's heart, as he intended. Fire licked at his back, the heat evident even from within his armoured shell. He began to rotate his mass, a movement now familiar to his foe, as evidenced by the reappearance of her blade, as she struck out in a controlled fury, slashing and slicing Okor's mass as he attempted to find his bearings. Cursing, he struck out blindly, feeling steel cut through his bare fingers, and their subsequent absence. Sighting an opening as she severed his fingers, he pulled his bolter free, its sudden appearance seeming to slow down time itself.

It was an ugly weapon. There was no sense in denying it. Its purpose had been plain from its conception: Death. A boxy magazine held its rocket-propelled shells, the long-ignored warning emblem still displayed on their exterior, reminding all of the isotopes it had been exposed to. A dead finger clad in a hell-bathed mixture of steel and stone pulled the worn trigger, expelling a shell, the noise of its launch almost deafening at this range. Weiss had already seen it. She twisted and turned, silk spiraling around her figure as she dodged it, unaware of how many malevolent madmen had been involved in the weapon's inception. The shell, dripping with various fluids that have preferably unknown origins, barely missed her pale face, grazing her white cheek.

Then, it exploded.

Radioactive shrapnel dug into the youth's face, and to her credit, she did not scream. Reacting with discipline and intelligence, she chose to fall back and regroup, sprinting behind a piece of masonry provided by the coliseum before the empty bolt casing even fell to the ground. Laughing, the marine advanced, keeping his weapon trained on the youth's cover. "I must say, I am... Impressed, Schnee. Would it be too... presumptous of me to ask who trained you?" He asked. For once, a youth who displayed common sense and skill! She reminded him somewhat of himself in his younger years. That is, what he could remember of his younger years. They faded into a blur, a dim memory of existing in some form different from his current state.

[Weiss Schnee]

Weiss resisted the urge to clutch at her face, to push the firmly embedded metal shards any further into her bleeding head.
She knew just what was dripping down her head though. Win or lose, Weiss's chance of surviving past this battle were less than good.
Somehow, she managed to hear Okors voice through the constant ringing running through her head. "I... Went through military training. No one person trained me." Weiss responded, wondering why she felt the need to respond to this undead juggernaut.

Instead of worrying about that, she raised Myrtenaster with a shaking hand, trying to figure out what she had left she could even do to this "Okor". Vital points were useless. His armor was so thick she used more energy piercing it than the marine used to ignore the damage. And he was too canny for her speed to save her alone.

The edges of her vision had started to fade, and Weiss could feel bits of her body going very, very cold.
She realized she was close to dying... and for some reason, the thought didn't fill her with fear.

What truly scared her was the idea of losing.

Grunting, she realized her knees were shaking. she'd already taken a lot of damage, and her body was starting to reject the idea of movement.
"Tough."
She had a battle to win.

Weiss flipped over the wall in front of her, quickly scanning with her eyes to see her opponent. She couldn't count on hearing anymore - at least one of her ears had gone totally deaf - so she'd need to work with her failing vision alone.

She saw rather than heard the marine fire his weapon, and managed to push her body into an aerial roll, finding and kicking off the wall towards Okor with her legs. The first bullet exploded behind her, and she knew several more were going to come.

So instead of waiting for them, she exploded into motion as she hit the ground, her body flickering from sight, then reappearing in front of Okor.

Weiss couldn’t really see the exact angle of Okors rifle - her vision was just a little too dim - so she took a lucky guess on what to do next and sprang off her hands to the marines right, her good ear just barely picking up on the now familiar thud of bolter fire.

Weiss struck out, and felt the alien feeling of cutting through Okors bare chest, striking the Plaguebearer’s flesh felt like cutting thickly layered seaweed and glue. She felt something sticky and viscous splatter onto her cheek, and she couldn’t tell if it was blood or rotting meat.

“Fall.”

Weiss’s already dim world shuddered all around her for a second as Okor whipped her across the face with his bolter. Weiss felt her body sliding with the force, but somehow managed to keep her footing as she countered with her own slash.
Myrtenaster struggled to finish the cut, and Weiss backflipped as she disengaged, hoping it would save her from the counter she couldn’t see but fully expected from the figure that just barely stayed visible in her eyes.

Thankfully, it was enough, or so she assumed. She couldn’t hear anything, anymore, but even as Okor fired his bolter, she didn’t feel any new wound open on her body.

A stone wall, just to Okors side, barely entered her vision, and an idea formed.
Springing to the side, Weiss set Myrtenaster’s chambers to spin as the marine continued to fire round after round in an attempt to catch her, each shot missing her by a close enough margin that Weiss could feel the wind from the rounds.

Red filled the blade Weiss swung, and Okor brought his bolter up in a blocking maneuver. Weiss expected this, and aimed, not to strike the Chaos marine, but to smack her blade as squarely against the bolter as she could. The energy exploded, and to Weiss’s satisfaction her hearing started to come back in her other ear well enough to hear the nurglite thud against the wall.

“Fall.”

Weiss capitalized immediately, already lunging before Okors body fell to the ground. Once, twice, three times Weiss stabbed into his rotting flesh, aiming for his abdomen.

Fall!”

Weiss felt a bullet strike her arm, and Myrtenaster nearly fell from her grip as the round exploded in her shoulder.
.
“Please, just fall.”

Weiss didn’t know if those words were for Okor or herself.

[Okor]

The child had taken more punishment than some marines were capable of withstanding. She had been shot, burnt, stabbed, crushed, cut, infected, and bled. Not a child. A warrior. She deserved the honorific, seeing as how she was capable withstanding the onslaught of the Plague Marine, and was still assailing him. Whether out of desperation, a suicidal urge, or a blind frenzy, he was unsure. But yet, she still stood. Lesser men would have fallen already, surrendering to pain and infection. She was something more. Her blade sunk once more into his chest, shattering the fused ribcage, and piercing the heart. Given his somewhat laid-back approach to the necessities of life and anatomy, this was little more than a minor inconvenience. He turned his head to avoid a potentially fatal impalement of his ocular cavity, her once-pristine silver blade now awash with Okor's blood. While watching her sink to the depths of despair was, in a way, a religious experience, she was bound to get a lucky strike in sooner or later. At times, you must lose hope in order to appreciate it. His fingerless hand clubbed the girl in her ruined face, driving her away from her increasingly damaging assault. A splayed gauntlet helped him to his feet, slowly rising from his toppled position. The plague marine spoke, idly wondering if Weiss was even capable of hearing him. "You... Fight well, Schnee. I hope that one day, our paths shall... cross again." A thrust of steel was his answer, the blade burying itself within his gut, before withdrawing, fragments of his withered entrails following it. An armoured fist struck out at her, which was promptly dodged by the agile youth, as she spun around his backside. This game agai-

That was when the steel kissed his spine, and everything went dark.

Weight. An immense burden. He struggled to breath in his coffin as the familiar hum silenced, leaving him alone and exposed as Weiss hacked at him, tearing apart his exposed flesh. Legs weighed down by the world sluggishly moved, slowly shuffling through the sand. He was almost blind, the familiar autosenses and targeting sprites vanished. Endure. Preserve. Propagate. He swung out with his maimed hand, his nigh-invulnerable arm rendered useless by the weight of its protection, feeling the numb kiss of Schnee's rapier once more. Shouting a wordless cry of frustration, he brought his fingerless fist down once more in a hammer-like blow, knocking his opponent aside. By now, the veneer of civility and bladesmanship had been stripped away. This was a desperate battle for survival. Thinking as quickly as his maggot-ridden brain would allow, he knocked the severed head from his belt, its chemically sealed skin falling to the silicate-based surface of the slaughterhouse. With a monumental effort, he lifted his leg, dimly seeing the speeding figure of Weiss coming to end him, her blade raised and poised to take advantage of his weakness. Several hundred pounds of pressure dropped upon the skull, shattering it, the simple activation mechanisms sadly impossible to use without functioning fingers. A green fog began to rise from its remnants, slowly seeping into the air around Okor.

With a wet snapping sound, bones cracking and rearranging into something terrible, he opened his maw.

What might have once been used as organs, before being deemed largely superfluous, struck out from his now-open gut, gnashing teeth awaiting the arrival of Schnee. A barbed section of intestinal tract was severed as her eyes widened, immediately realizing the precarious nature of the situation. From within his cloud of toxic death, the source of these tendrils spoke, muffled, rather than amplified by his cage of steel. "Come now Weiss, and... have a taste of home."

He was without weapons now, without even fingers to claw at his foe.

All he had left now were the Gods.

[Weiss Schnee]

Weiss was horrified at what she saw. Her opponent’s torso had opened, twisting and changing into something that no longer resembled a human body.
“Was he dying? Had she done it? Was it over?”

The space marines words dashed those hopes in an instant.

Weiss tried to jump, but her legs refused as her muscles finally lost their energy, and she fell to one knee instead. Desperately, she swung Myrtenaster at the tendril, but her arm wasn’t moving where or how she wanted anymore, and her rapier cut air. Tears filled Weiss’s eyes, and now she did scream in pain, as the tendril latched onto her abdomen. Numerous shards of bone entwined themselves into her midsection and pulled. Her boots kicked uselessly at the sand beneath her, as the tendril pulled her in like a patient fisherman.

Her shaking right hand lifted Myrtenaster, her arm trembling to even hold the weapon. If she could at least hold her sword, she could-
Weiss’s body slammed into the Chaos space marines midsection with the wet, squishing noise of a crushed orange, and she could see his ribcage - teeth, she realized, not ribs - surround her as the tendril twisted her body to face the same direction as Okor.

She was standing in a living iron maiden.

Her sword arm raised a trembling Myrtenaster as the cage snapped closed, and Weiss used what was left of her flagging strength to block, the teeth scraping and gnashing as they tried to push her rapier away. Weiss didn’t know how she still had the strength to do even that much. Okors teeth relented after a few seconds, his ribs pulling themselves back like a spider tensing its body to pounce. Weiss knew this was her only opportunity. She pointed her blade straight up, making an educated guess on where Okors head was with a heavy stab. Okors body managed to pull back from her sluggish strike, however, and while Weiss felt the tear of skin, she knew she hadn’t struck a fatal blow.

She felt Okors bone-filled intestine loosen, though, and she took advantage of the fact to roll out of the nurglites grip.
As her body bumped along the ground, Weiss felt… Sick..
She recalled the plague marine throwing a head to the ground, and a thick miasma of green surrounding him… was it toxic?

A sudden pressure in her throat answered her, and she rolled onto her side just as a burning mixture of blood and vomit fought it’s way through her throat and onto the dust where she laid.
Her infected eye had just stopped working, and what she could see through the other eye was blurred.
“I’m so sorry… Ruby.” She croaked out in a warped voice. "I can't... do it."

“Hyaaaah!!”

It couldn’t be…
Weiss’s functional eye widened, and she managed to tilt her head just enough to see a familiar looking red blur in the section of the coliseum to her right.
Was it a hallucination?
Or… Could it be...?
A shaking hand tried and failed to grab Myrtenaster. Her sword arm shook too much.
So she focused on getting up, instead, using her good arm to push herself up to her shaking feet.

“I’ll win.
So.
Please.
Be real.”

The marine swung at her with a fingerless hand, but he was too slow, with his armored carapace weighing him down. Weiss managed to dip her head just enough to avoid the strike, a wheezing, blood-filled cough her reward for trying to dodge while half-dead. Her body fell forward, and her shoulder smacked something metal to the ground as she collapsed next to Okor.
“Ruby…” she muttered through her own drool.

“It’s over, Schnee.” Okors muffled voice wheezed.

Her hand pawed around for something, anything, and to her surprise, it found the stock of a handgun. Okors pistol.

Her good ear heard the muffled screech of metal being dragged across dirt as Okor shambled towards her, but Weiss knew she had time for one shot.
Weiss’s trembling hand pulled the pistol into a shaking grip, and she did her best to try to aim the gun. She could see Okor as only a vague blob of pink, gray, and brown, but for center mass, it was enough.

“I gotta… Win…” Weiss slurred, and in exchange for spraining her hand with the recoil of a weapon not built for use by mere mortals, the heavy weapon engulfed Okor with a round of burning phosphex.

750 words on the dot according to wordcounter.net. 4161 characters too.

[Okor]

Okor’s eye, sheltered behind a piece of sullied glass, widened in surprise as Weiss pulled the trigger. What did not surprise him in the least was her prompt cry of pain, as the recoil took its toll on her slight wrist. A chuckle rose unbidden in his cut throat, which began to die as the bolt round streaked towards the cloud of volatile glasses he resided in. Gods dammit. He could do little but watch as the shell broke apart in front of his rotten face, the searing cloud of phosphex igniting his gaseous environment, tearing apart his mortal form, shattering his coffin of steel. His symbiotes screamed in agony as they were disintegrated, corpulent maggots incinerated by the cleansing flame. The Plague Marine let out a roar of anger as the fire consumed him wholly. Weiss began to smile, victory finally within her reach.

Then, he moved.

A largely skeletal foot landed heavily on the sandy surface of the coliseum, the dead meat wrapped around the rotting bones charred and blackened, its regenerative abilities cancelled out by the purifying touch of fire. The remainder of the chosen marine’s corpse fell out from the clearing smoke, embers and isolated pockets of flame resplendent on his charcoal-like hide. Broken remnants of his warplate had been fused by the heat to his skin, still glowing with residual thermal energy. A gauntlet, crimson with the inferno’s caress, pounded into a burnt fist, as a scorched helmet looked impassively towards the wailing warrior, her face betraying the despair that was sinking its claws into her still-beating heart, a stark contrast to Okor’s own damaged organs. She didn’t run. Her breathing came ragged, the once pure-white of her garments burnt, bloodied, and torn. The Plague Marine loomed over her, black flakes of skin falling from his incinerated frame. The femme fatale’s pale eyes looked into the feverish gaze of Okor, betraying her horror and disbelief. “Well… fought.” He slurred, even his impressive, yet ultimately mortal form too ravaged to sustain coherent thought. “See again… maybe. You are something more than just a… prime. You are… Worthy.” The giant blinked, attempting to remember what remained of his past as his present slowly cooled, the molten remnants of his armour still steaming. “Was called worthy… once. Fought, ran, fell. Got up. If you are to… lose all hope, succumb to fear as the skies rain blood, and the end draws near… Then get back up. Don’t matter if you fall. So long as you… rise.” Okor rose unsteadily to his feet, slowly limping into the back rooms, white mages flowing into the theater to deal with the rapidly fading life signs of his former foe.

None of them dared to approach the Chosen of Nurgle, his stride implacable, as the air around him became suffused with the stuff of nightmares, the atmosphere becoming slick and sulphurous. As a familiar pain etched itself on every agony of his being, his genome screaming in agony as it was torn apart and remade in a form more pleasing to his patron. What remained of his face twitched in a smile, as he staggered away from the prying eyes of the crowd, and collapsed into a heap, spasming and drooling as he warped and twisted, his skull splitting apart, and armour coalescing around him as toxic vapours and sullied Omnillium surrounded him.

All he felt was exultation that his Gods were still by his side.