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

[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.