6/6/2006
Station City - 400 Freedom Way
It's impossible to escape bureaucracy, and at times, like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, you've even got to tangle with the red tape willingly. Welcome to Freedom Way, Station City's resident governmental district.
A strong sense of patriotism pervades this quarter of the city, from the UMA member-state seals engraved into the sidewalk slabs, to the monolithic ministry and embassy compounds that line both sides of the broad dual-lane streets. The crowd here is distinctly formal, neatly pressed suits mixed with military uniforms. The traffic is brisk, but not heavy; vehicles are always more than willing to make way for the patrolling forms of UMM light Ride Mecha, as the machines make their rounds of the district. Superior firepower always has right-of-way.
You can't fight City Hall. Especially not when the front steps leading up to the building are guarded by mecha in full formal regalia. The structures here are all Acorn-era, old government buildings of white stone columns and proud copper domes, restored to their pre-war grandeur. Beside City Hall is the sprawling complex of the Supreme Court, the avian form of the Goddess of Order carved in bas-relief against the court's facade, the scales of justice held in her talons. The city centre and commercial districts lie to the southeast, and Freedom Way continues to the northwest.
[Exits : Station Square , and 300 Freedom Way ]
[Players : Shadow ]
Gantz is wandering the streets of Station City again. Amazing, huh? Since Klonoa's mission (which NO ONE would be kind enough to inform him of), he himself had been assigned to stay put in the dullest of places. Well, dull now that he'd had his fill of it. He's itching to move on, possibly to do a little moonlighting for extra cash, but he holds to his current obligation because he's being paid to do so. And getting paid to do nothing isn't so bad. Until they tell him what they want, at least.
Gantz sighs, "I wonder where Klonoa went?"
Flicker.
A cascade of lights flicker from the nearby City Hall. It could be easily misconstrued as the lights turning on as the light begins to fade in the evening dusk. If it weren't quite so bright.
And if, an instant later, every single window in that City Hall didn't shatter into a deadly rain of glass, an explosion just briefly preceding--and eclipsing--the cacophony of an unconscious and unarmed Rocket Knight being thrown bodily through the doors of the City Hall and rolling to a stop in the yard.
Quietly stepping through the now empty framing for the glass doors, a black hedgehog emerges, holding what looks to be a spear. He looks a few shades of derisive, and all of them are very unhappy. "Tch," he spits. "Pathetic."
Gantz practically jumps and rolls away as City Hall explodes with awesomeness. Dazzled, Gantz shrugs off the glass shards digging into his ruff and jacket (having protected his face with his arms as well as turning his head just in time) and whips out both handguns like nobody's business. He blinks as he notices the fallen Rocket Knight and his brain registers that this is BAD. He blinks at the hedgehog standing over the armored figure and registers that this is BAD. Rather than shoot off at the mouth or the gun right away, he simply watchs the black hedgehog, waiting for him to do something else. He's not about ready to throw himself into combat without at least this much. Gantz is a bit reckless but not absolutely stupid. Every muscle in his body is tense, ready, and just a bit worried. But his expression remains roughly the same as always, aside from the sweat and the brow that is furrowed even more than usual.
Glass crunching underneath his shoes, the black hedgehog walks blithely past the downed Knight, only giving him the barest of dirty looks as the Knight comes to, groaning. For whatever reason, the Knight is either unwilling or too weak to stand again.
It's a shame he had to fight before he could acheive his goal, but that's was a risk he took by not doing this in a more clandestine manner. He expected trouble. He'd've just preferred it not have been so soon. Still, he'll take the spear with him. He'll ditch it somewhere along the way so that that weakling would have second thoughts about trying to stop him. His grip tightens on the spear.
The black hedgehog walks out of the main yard to the street. It wasn't there. It's probably up in their military headquarters. What a pain. "Hey," Shadow calls to the fox without looking, "You intending on doing something with those pea shooters other than stare?"
"...Who are you?" Gantz asks, "And please have the kindness to turn around when you're talking to me as, despite whatever egotistical view you may have of everyone enjoying the sight, your ass is of little interest to me."
"Heh. I should be asking you the same. But. I like your style," Shadow decides, blatantly ignoring Gantz and his interest in his ass, or lack thereof. Dust slowly begins to funnel out from the sides of his air shoes, lifting him into the air. The spear goes limp in his hands as his arms go slack as his sides with the upward movement, leaving him to stare into the middle distance ahead. "So I'll tell you."
He floats only a scant two or three inches in the air, but the thrust from his shoes can be clearly seen. He raises his left index finger, a swift cutting movement, punctuating his word. "My name is Shadow. I'm the world's ultimate life form. If you cross me.."
He shifts his right skate lightly, causing him to glide just so across the ground, rotating swiftly to face Gantz with a glare nothing short of oppressive. He points the spear forward.
"I'll end you right here and now."
"Theatrics," Gantz says quite clearly, "Am I special or do you do this for everyone? But don't misjudge me. I am known as the Golden Death for a reason."
Clearly suicidal, Gantz smirks. He acts as if he isn't scared shitless, for the simple reason that it just ain't cool. If only Klonoa was here, he'd be absolutely full of it. But no matter... he's stubborn and he's lived through some pretty nasty scrapes.
"However, I'm not really concerned about having a 'Who has the bigger dick?' contest with you. I only want to know why you felt the need to destroy a building that wasn't harming anyone, other than to possibly make them die of boredom as they wait in line for a speeding ticket."
"Preoccupied with something?" Shadow asks, quite dispassionately.
Smirk.
Shadow sweeps the spear off to the side, as if the topic were just unimportant to him. "It's simple," he explains, as if talking to a small child. "I'm looking for something. And they got in my way." He shrugs, easily, without guilt. As if it happened all the time. He certainly doesn't seem too interested in keeping anything a secret, right now. "So.. 'Golden Death,'" Shadow uses the title, with some degree of amusement, "I don't have all the time in the world. You satisfied?"
He continues to float there.
Gantz shrugs but doesn't take his eyes off of Shadow, "Not really. I hate it when people find what they're doing so boring that they try to pass that feeling onto me as well. Where's your passion for life, hmmm? Or do you want me to take it and see if you become a little more grateful for what you've lost?"
Shadow blinks at the question. He seems seems distinctly concerned, his resolve .. not exactly weakening, but passing elsewhere for a moment, some darkness flashing across his vision as it refocuses to the middle distance. The leather in his gloves grow slack as his grip loosens. His eyes narrow.
Then, just like that, he's back in the real world.
"..." Suddenly reticent, the hedgehog focuses dead forward on Gantz with cold red eyes. "...Heh," he scoffs. "You can /try/." One spinning point to bear on Gantz an instant later, the hedgehog starts to glide forward towards Gantz, throwing the weapon ahead of him with full force dead at the fox's face.
Gantz is sensible enough to duck and roll, though he gets scratched by some more of the glass from before. He also doesn't calculate how fast it's going properly and gets hit in the thigh with the weapon. SHIT! It hurts like a bitch and now the shaft is going to hinder his movement (not even counting the spearhead lodged into his goddamn flesh, making it bleed.) He was careless, having been puzzled by that hint of... something that he saw a moment ago.
Gantz grits his teeth as he tries, not to pull out the spear, but to shoot off the metal arm of it instead. At such close range, this would seem impossible, but Gantz is practically gifted when it comes to his guns. Still, even this takes time which he knows he shouldn't waste in the slightest.
"Hmph!" Shadow scoffs, sliding across the ground as Gantz narrowly avoids being killed with a spear to the face. As expected. This 'Golden Death' had that kind of look about him, someone skilled. Someone he might want out of the way later, but still someone he could respect, moreso than the fool he just put down like a dog.
But in the end, it's all academic.
"You're--" The spearend is shot off with the power of Gantz's ammunition, sending the staff twirling through the air. "--too--" Shadow kicks off, his air shooes exploding with sudden force. "--SLOW!!"
Across the way, as that staff twirls in the air, Shadow literally rockets past in a very long, very fast jump, snatching the spinning length out of the air, twirling it around him as he cants his air skates forward to suddenly and violently arrest his forward momentum. He uses the gyroscopic motion of the staff to stabilze him and keep him from tipping over with the suden halt.
An instant after Gantz's impressive shooting destroyed the weapon, Shadow clsoes the distance and drives the reverse end right towards the fox's chest.
This time Gantz is a good deal faster. Even though that hidious gash in his thigh should have slowed him down. No, Gantz was just warming up. And distracted. Seriously.
Much more prepared this time, Gantz throws himself in Shadow's direction in an effort to try and take advantage of Shadow's momentum. This time he lands flat on his back, belly-up, and in a position that leaves him rather open. This is the Golden Death, however, and belly-up he's just as dangerous as before. Quickly, Gantz fires both blazing red pistols in Shadow's direction, gritting his teeth as more glass digs into his back. Damn! At this rate, the blood loss alone could do him in. He needs to even the odds somehow. So the last fifty or so (no, more like four, Gantz's trigger fingers are usually faster than that DDR Champion on Speed and the gun is set up to fire successive shots very well, but fifty is a bit much) laser blasts go for Shadow's feet, rather than the huge target that is his head.
"Ngh!"
He catches it, but not exactly how Gantz might have expected it. Don't underestimate his speed--the hedgehog twists to one side. It was sloppy work for someone claiming to be perfect, even he had to admit.
His staff thrust plants to the ground inches by Gantz's head to raise the hedgehog in an abbreviated pole vault. Shadow idly counts in his head. He almost moves quicker than even the eye can see--quite possibly how the Rocket Knight was so easily overcome. But it'd be foolish to discount the speed of Gantz's eye. That's about when the hedgehog catches the blast in one of the nozzles of his skates, knocking out its thrust and sending him spinning to one side..
It's not something that's going to stop him.
He alights easily on his other skate's exhaust, gliding slowly forward.
But his other skate shifts as its remaining nozzles hit the ground, causing a notable list to the hedgehog's position until his stance opens. Still, he glides ever so slightly to the right with the thrust differential.
But it is going to throw him off a little.
Damn.
Gantz smirks as he notices the listing. Though he sweats at the staff planted near his head. That was far too close for comfort! He rolls away again, this time trying to put enough distance between them so he can properly stand up. Lying on the ground, especially with all this glass, is a good way to get killed. At some point he won't be able to roll fast enough and already being down is a handicap to both his aim and his own speed. He knows that even now, Shadow can still outclass him in that department. Judging from his current predicament, he has been lucky and well-guided so far (thanks to those lovely little dots of laser guiding-light that his guns scan over Shadow's surface like a weak sniper's target.) But he can't let his guard down, even though he has gained a small victory. And he is tiring already, partially due to his sustained injuries.
Gantz adds in, as a little snide remark to go with Shadow's previous comment, "Slow but steady wins the race." Not that he actually believes that but he thought it would be amusing to say.
A wind kicks up, rustling his quills. The hedgehog's eyes are shut now--he can almost feel the heat off those little points of light focusing on him, accentuating the red stripes at his arms, causing a weird sparkling effect as his fur scatters the light. He still slowly lists to one side.
"You know.. I've heard that before," the hedgehog notes. His voice is absent, far away. He's still counting. Keeping track. "Doesn't work so well when you're playing for keeps." He kicks off. His strategy seems to be simple. Overload Gantz right there with a direct charge right into his face. He's doing his best to stay straight and isn't doing a bad job of it, but it is rather clear he's having to actually exert effort when sending his skates into a full blast forwards Gantz just to keep from flying off to one side comically. He leads with his broken skate, jumping up off the ground, the staff canted all the way back as Shadow comes in, his knee clearly aimed in a boosted attack right for Gantz's nose.
His eyes are still closed.
And Gantz goes down again. MOTHERFUGGER didn't even have his eyes open! This pisses Gantz off to no end, especially since his nose is bleeding and possibly broken. Dammit! But he refuses to call in back-up. He is gonna teach this bitch a lesson that won't soon be forgotten. After all, he shot point-blank at the hedgehog before he got kneed in the face and slapped into the pavement like he was a Robotown skank.
Huh. Something was wrong.
When Gantz's face folds around his knee, the hedgehog squints. He could /hear/ the click of the weapon as it prepares to discharge. So. That's the kind of guy he was? Shadow's skate /twitches/, just faintly. And suddenly the hedgeho's body jerks as his very carefully controlled balance is shattered with the high-speed knee. Now, at this kind of distance it wouldn't work as well as he intended. He still catches the blast in the right of his chest, eliciting a grimace and a spray of blood from his lower midsection.
But the upshot.. is that the hedgehog is very suddenly /gone/. This is because the uneven high speed boosting caused him to shoot to the side. It was all a part of his plan. The hedgehog lands on the ground, hard, his skates slamming into the ground for a split second. Shadow grits his teeth, clenching a hand over his wound as he turns, cracking an eyelid. "Heh... you got guts, Goldie," he admits. "Thought you might try and play keep-away."
Imagine how much worse that could have gotten if Gantz had actually had the wherewithal to move.
Gantz stands up swiftly, ignoring the annoying blood that drips down his nose. His mane of neck fur is standing on end and his ears are pricked forward aggressively. Something was indeed wrong.
Gantz can't be sure what it is. This guy is down and hit in a very soft, nasty spot to get hit in. But he doesn't seem overly concerned about it. Gantz starts to wonder where the hell this guy came from and considers what to do. He doesn't want to rush over in case it's a trap. Besides, he isn't really a melee kind of guy.
To test his theory about what Shadow is up to, Gantz decides to shoot laser blasts from both guns at him again. No longer point-blank but still painful if they connect. He is prepared to move, in case this exceedingly simple tactic doesn't work out as planned.
Gantz says, "Death doesn't play keep-away. Death is what people play keep-away from."
"Fair enough, Shinigami."
Shadow seems impassive, almost--/almost/ like he's concentrating on something else rather than the fight. Three thousand, four hundred and eighty seven...
Eighty eight..
Shadow whirls the pole in the hand as Gantz fires off at him. Kicking the end of the pole he still holds onto up with his weakened skate, it generates a soft resonant sound near the tip. He's got the broken end facing Gantz now--and Gantz might in fact notice there's a rather discernable flow of machinery inside the staff. It's a Rocket Knight weapon--they're not /just/ swords and spears. His hand braces on the very opposite end of the staff. And then he throws the entire thing at Gantz, head on, like a javelin. With the motion, he leans out of the path of the first shot, but puts himself squarely into the path of the second.
"But I'll kill Death himself, if he dares to get in my way!!"
Until the pole hits it, straight on to a degree that is almost /mathematically perfect./ The resonant sound was Shadow kicking the staff, gauging the structual integrity of its broken end by how hollow it sounds. In an instant, the weapon explodes into pieces with the direct contact, Gantz's second shot shearing it right up the middle until it hits the power core. That resultant explosion sends a dense hail of spread shrapnel at Gantz.
Gantz has no way of avoiding the full extent of the damage billowing his way like so many sharp, pointy leaves on the wind. He keeps one arm completely straight, inspite of the small slivers of jagged metal that tear through his clothes and imbed themselves into his skin. The other arm he shoves in front of his face, using his beloved gun as a weak gamble to aid him in sheltering his sensitive features from permanent impairment.
Once the Blow of a Thousand Cuts stops beating against him, Gantz fires another shot as if nothing had happened. His aim may have been thrown off by the horrible hurricane of metal but he doesn't bother taking the time to look up and recalculate it first. He has to shoot now and he has to shoot fast! And this is one hell of a blast too, perhaps one not to be expected given how his previous laser blasts came out.
--Gh! Damn!
This guy must have been made of some kind of maniac to go firing through that kind of hail. He's too off balance on both his skates and stance to evade an immediate second energy attack and especially not one of this magnitude. He crosses his arms in front of him as the blast rocks him full force, sending him flying off his feet and crashing into a nearby building, with the kind of force that causes pebbles to jump as far as 10 feet away.
Silence falls over the area.
"Hnnh.." Shadow pulls himself out of the concrete, chips falling off his quills. He wipes a bit of blood off his lip onto the wrist of his glove and spits out the rest to the side. He's an absolute bleeding wreck now. But that look in his eyes.. hasn't faded. It scans the area, looking up, and down, some idle calculations made in his head.
He lost his count, you see.
But either way, this comedy needs to end.
"S'pose I'll have to do this the hard way!"
Skates roaring to life, the hedgehog shoots himself out of his landing point, leaving a trail of blood floating in the air for a sick second. As he lands, his right skate slams into a manhole cover and sends it spinning into the air in a low lazy arc. By the time the blood hits the ground, he's already only a handful of feet from Gantz. He cuts his stronger skate, sending him shooting towards the side and making him a very difficult and less-than-threatening target. Til he's able to hit the manhole cover feet-first. Using its weight as a midair anchor, Shadow sends it flying one direction as he kicks off. And promptly swings the off skate right into Gantz's face.
Gantz has.. roughly 0.3 seconds to react before Shadow's air shoe kicks on full blast and propells him with great force all the way through the public's yard and into the lobby of the city hall.
Gantz lowered his arm once he was sure it was safe and noticed the hedgehog making straight for him again. In all honesty, Gantz is just damned lucky the shrapnel didn't damage his guns in such a way as to cause a second explosion. Damned lucky indeed.
But Gantz doesn't have much time, as would be obvious to any random observer who hadn't run away screaming by this point. Crazy with pain and desperation he... drops both guns, begins to lurch backward to soften the blow by going in the same direction as the blow, and tries to GRAB the shoe going for his face and jerk it downwards. Meanwhile, oddly enough, the only thing he can think is 'What the hell is with this guy and attacking my face?!'
"Do you think I need a makeover or something?" Gantz quips angrily.
His cockiness doesn't last for long. In the moment that he spoke and reached for the shoe, he found it hitting him harshly upside the head and then possibly somewhere in the chest given his attempt to move it. Oh, it hurts. But not as bad as it would if he hadn't been slightly prepared. In fact, he actually loses consciousness for a few minutes, thanks to a light concussion, but his hands remain loosely gripped around Shadow's foot for nearly as long as that, if not more, out of pure determination and his tendency to practice so relentlessly with his guns that he sometimes reaches for them in his sleep.
What the--Shadow manages to get the full force of his momentum blasted into Gantz's chest, but that damned fox is tenacious, if nothing else and latches onto his skate at the last second. Unfortunately, the practical effect of this is that Shadow /and/ Gantz both have momentum, sending the two flying into the city hall, where Shadow just /came/ from.
The lady at the front desk had just got done with re-sorting all the papers that Shadow blew over. And now they're all over the floor again. "Not again."
"Kuh!" Gantz is.. still holding onto his skate. Shadow makes his best attempt to get up, but.. well. It's hard when someone is latching /to/ your skate. He might even kick him in the shin a few times. "Khh.." This is bad, even he's having trouble keeping conscious and if he lags any more, that Knight's friends'll show up.
Definitely not a situation he wants to be in.
Comes out of his knocked-out state, into a mild stupor. He doesn't quite recall where he is or what he's doing there. All he knows is that he's holding onto someone's shoe. And he hurts. A LOT! Like shit!
"Grrrrr... OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
Foxes don't normally howl but this one is friggen GOLDEN DEATH and he is pissed off like there is not damn tommorrow. If there is a hell, or some other place of horrible unpleasentness that might be worse than Robotropolis, this very howl echoes from the darkest depths of it and beyond. Only problem is, he doesn't know what to do other than that.
"Ugh... offa me... fuckin'..."
And that's when, still not letting go of the shoe, he tries to bite Shadow's leg or whichever limb is in fact closer. His teeth are sharp and pointy too. He isn't willing to get another kick to the head though and is therefore trying to awkwardly extract himself from his present situation at the same time.
"Argh!" Did-- did he just /bite/ him?
Ugh, how irritating.
It might take Shadow giving Gantz another blast from his skates to do, but the hedgehog finally breaks free, leaving a bloody trial away from Gantz. Glaring pointedly at the fox, the hedgehog pants hard. "I've gotta go... heh. You fight pretty hard, Shinigami. As expected of someone calling themselves Death. If you'd been weaker, I'd've killed you for the insult." He tosses off a weak salute. "Play with you later." And with that he simply bursts out of the lobby again, the speed of his exit and the blast from his air shoes sending the papers all over again, distressing the desk clerk even more.
He has to find a place to heal now.
Gantz manages to avoid getting hit with the skate this time as he lets go pretty quick and pushes away to the side before he can get hurt. He glowers at the retreating hedgehog but has NO interest in following him. He needs to find somewhere to lick his wounds as well, so to speak, or he's going to be out of commission for a lot longer than he already will be.
He also flips Shadow off as he yelps, "Next time! NEXT TIME!"
Of course, he shouldn't make promises he isn't sure he can keep but... no matter. Once Shadow is out of sight, he runs out of City Hall to grab his guns and... make his way to the nearest hospital. He has aches in places he didn't know could ache! His tiny puff of a tail droops the entire way there but he does, somehow, feel mildly victorious. After all, he thwarted something... didn't he?
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