[Round 3 - C] Ash & Jak Mar vs Cerise & Gildarts

[Albert Wesker]

This place was a nightmare. Like a hurricane had come through in the aftermath of an all out war and gotten into another fight with a tornado full of blood and corpses. The fact that there was as much still standing around here as there was seemed nothing short of a miracle. Then again...stranger things seemed to happen with sense-slapping regularity around here.

The bigger issue was how she was pinned down now, with the threat of blaster fire tearing her head off if she peeked out for longer than a second. That damn long-eared fool, Jak, and his gun. He wasn't a real marksman, but skilled enough that it didn't matter at this range with the volume of fire he was putting out. "This is why I hate machine guns," she hissed under her breath.

Behind one side of the main gate, she was safe and out of sight for the moment; she couldn't see the fight between her partner and the insufferable demoness going on among the muck and corpse garden outside, but she could hear it well enough. Thanks to her brief intervention before being chased away by a rain of bullets, it looked like Gildarts had it handled well enough for the moment. Which just left the more irritating problem for her to deal with.

She knelt down, sliding her pistols into their holsters under her coat and scooping up weapons from a fallen soldier. Shield, and a short sword. A nice compliment of weaponry, even if they weren't exactly her forte. With them in hand, she took a deep breath to steady her nerves and then closed her one good eye. After a moment, she simply faded from sight; nothing more than a shadow among the corpses.

Stealth work. What she'd been trained for. Rarely did she get a chance to make use of it, but no time like the present.

Not back around the gate; not back out into the open. She crept back the wall, toward the edge of the arena, before she knelt down and sprang up and over the wall.

She touched down lightly, dropping into a crouch and bolting forward to not present an easy target. She had no idea how observant the long-eared gunman was. Just because she was invisible didn't mean she couldn't still be found.

And always, she kept her eyes open. Both for sight, keeping track of her surroundings, and for keeping a keen eye on her opponents. Carefully scanning and observing to get a picture of what they were capable of while she skirted around to a more advantageous position.

The thunder of the crash mage and the repeated, frenetic crack of gunfire constantly sounded as the snake clambered her way up a hill made of equal parts dirt, grime and corpses. She crouched lightly there, peering down at the other participants in this fight. Gildarts had been left hard-pressed on his own to contend with both of their opponents; he was sturdy, and holding his own, but as Cerise observed she could see it was a defensive fight on his part. His teeth were bared in a grimace, as he slowly retreated and ducked this way and that, parrying and lashing out with halfhearted strikes to discourage rather than actually wound. "Cerise!" he shouted, backpedaling from the engagement. "Where are you?!"

The huntress hopped forward, onto the downslope of the disgusting hill she perched on and let it aid her as she picked up speed to break into a run. She let the pilfered sword trail behind her, testing the weight of it to get the right feel as she adjusted her grip on it. Not exactly an expertly-crafted weapon...but it will do.

She closed in quickly, waiting for an opportune moment before striking with bared fangs. An opportune moment that came when the crash mage parried another blow in a shower of sparks, grimacing as he was forced back from the fray. Cerise struck, darting in quickly and leaping upon the back of the gunman with a sharp hiss. Arms came up, latching around his neck with a grip as tight as she could manage.

Like a viper, fangs flashed in the dim battlefield light as they bit down, striking at Jak's exposed neck. Her visible eye flashed angrily, as venom coursed from her bite. The shock of it nearly deadened the pain, only making the man's eyes go wide before the unbearable agony set in. He stiffened, reaching up with both hands to try and swat the girl off, flailing and snarling madly. A tremble set in soon, as his snarling turned into mangled nonsense, just vocalizing pain.

Her grip couldn't hold on forever against such a desperate attempt, especially not when Jak leaped backward, crashing down to the ground on his own back and sandwiching the snake between his armored back and the cold, hard ground.

A mismatched pair of gasps of differing degrees of pain wheezed out of both of them as Cerise squirmed and worked her way free, rising up into a crouch, ready to continue the fight.

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Sneaky sneaky. Cerise looted some weapons and then went stealth and snuck around to surprise Jak with a Snakebite. Then promptly got floored in a very painful way.