Zone C -- Megacity One

[Karl Jak]

Face to Face
Cell vs Jak Mar, Dawn, & Tamsin

 
Erika forced herself back into combat, only to be force fed a burst of ki that exploded across half her face.  As Cell watched the woman collapse, he turned—his eyes manic as adrenaline screamed through his ravaged body.  Jak Mar moved in to attempt to finish the wounded lion bio-android, but Cell sidestepped his efforts.  With a growl, Cell stepped forward and shoved his adversary backwards into a pile of debris.  A few bursts of ki kept the warrior down long enough for the synthetic creature to peel backwards toward another alley.
 
He couldn’t reach absolution before Tamsin literally dropped down onto him from a fire escape.  A blade arched at Cell’s face, and he felt more wounds open up across his body.  After the third blood-laced arc splashed against the nearby building, he reacted fast enough to swing up a foot and drive it up into Tamsin’s chest.  The girl let out a grunt as the back of her head cracked against a building.
 
Cell scrambled to his feet.  His eyes saw the exit of the alley roughly ten feet away.
 
He made for an exit when his leg was torn apart by the rattle of automatic weapon’s fire.  Collapsing, he turned and glared at the ravaged, pock-marked limb and the woman stalking toward him.
 
The fallen bio-android racked his mind for a pun—he had generated hundreds over the course of the last few days.  He wanted something here.  A zinger.  A side-splitter.  A closing note on this whole week of chicanery and tomfoolery.
 
He opened his maw.  Erika shouldered her rifle but paused, perhaps knowing what the dying creature intended.
 
Cell fired a ball of ki that hit Erika just a few centimeters from her eye—a final declaration of defiance by someone who had won in principle through his sacrifice.  He was going to die here, but he’d ensured victory for his allies.  Better yet, he had allies.  Not everyone out there was vindictive charlatans.
 
Erika pulled back on the trigger and enjoyed just slightly the site of Cell’s head blowing apart.
 
Morals were for pussies.  She was undefeated.
 
Behind her, she heard a whoosh of air and smell that sulfuric twinge as the other two were teleported to the facility.  With her gun resting at her side, she glanced up to the sky and smirked.
 
By this time next year, there would be nothing to stop her rise.
 
This wasn’t a loss.  Just the warmup.  The journey to the next one would be marked with the corpses of her many opponents.  She would crush them all—including the individual who she had allowed to win this event.  Crush them all.  Then she would return her and destroy everyone.
 
Erika looked up, passed the slowly degenerating corpse of the bio-android.  At the end of the alley, she saw the goliath of a man, clad in ragged clothes that dripped water and a face guard from the long-dead era of some withered reality. A machete, clenched in one giant gloved fist, hung lazily toward the ground.
 
He just stared at her—his body heaving as he pulled breath into lungs that shouldn’t work.  Erika, whose gun arm had tensed on the sight, relaxed and stared.  There was something primordial in the huge monster’s solemn stare.  A glint of intelligence wrapped in a rotting carcass and fueled by rage and murder.
 
They shared that silent moment:  Two alpha predators who knew that their paths weren’t supposed to cross just yet.
 
The air around Erika swirled.  She nodded her head slowly just as the recall ushered back to the facility.
 
Thus it was that Dante’s Abyss ended with a whimper.
 
[spoiler]

#08 Cell DEAD

 
Dawn takes 4 point of Accumulated Damage
Jak Mar takes 12 points of Accumulated Damage
Tamsin takes 6 points of Accumulated Damage
 
The three are recalled to the facility.
Cell’s ‘death timer’ will be counted from yesterday (7-8) at 6 am – I had some ‘stuff’ go down that prevented me from holding my usual Saturday morning OV time and I don’t want to hold that against Jefe.
[/spoiler]