[b]OOC Note:[/b]  I mentioned to Nevyn over AIM that my character was still falling when he flipped in mid-air, but that's really no biggie.

Upon rereading I noticed that he specified the blood and gore from the first two warp monsters splattered all over my character, when I mentioned nothing like that in my post.  The way I wrote it was intended to give the impression that the first two were killed at a distance, before they could get close enough for something like that to happen.  I'm fine with it though, since it lets me flex my actions here  ;)  And I've let Nevyn know that I'm fine with small actions, like the caking of gore and such to be written as closed ones.  If a judge wants to comment about information being added in that wasn't there before, that's the judge's choice.  But please don't comment about small closed actions, since I'm not only fine with those, but I prefer them, since they make the fights flow more smoothly.  If he writes stuff like that, I'll write stuff like grabs landing.

[b]IC:[/b]

Ichi was surprised by the turn of events.

Lucius, he suspected and hoped, was probably a whole lot moreso.  When the skeletal figure rose from his crouch and turned towards the location he'd fired his hand-cannon at he saw…some dust, a smattering of warp-beast crud strewn over the ground…and a big hole in the dirt.

A fraction of a second later Ichi-gou's seven-foot bulk erupted from the ground on Lucius' gun-side.  Ichi-gou popped out amid a shower of detritus and flying rock [b]fast[/b], and he did it with his monstrous seven-foot bulk coming from just a few feet away, all four arms outstretched and grasping.

And he was screaming an ear-piercing shriek that was so bloody loud that any glass in the area that hadn't already been broken probably fractured into a few thousand more pieces.

If the 'blind the other guy with good and chaos energy' was a strategy the cloaked figure had used before, Ichi-gou figured it was a strategy he'd gotten a bit too comfortable with.  For his part, Ichi-gou had already shown the gaunt creep that his body could and would resist the influence of the warp taint the man carried and his creatures were infected with.  The ghostly and fog-like aura Lucius spread had passed over his body without being able to do more than strike him as a bit of wind.  And he'd been talking to Lucius' quite clearly and cognizantly after being showered in the dead remains of not one warp-monster, but two, and after having busted the jaw of the third with his bare hand.  If so much physical contact with the warp's taint had not only failed to give his Earth aspect's protection much pause, doing the exact same thing with the last monster's body had been a waste of minor effort on Lucius' part.  Ichi-gou had been quite able to track his approach by following the same green-hued aura he'd been watching earlier, and when he saw the gun come out he'd gone in the direction he doubted Lucius would've expected, straight down and below the dirt.


Lucius had asked Ichi-gou to show the last war-monster what he was made of, but he was the one who found out instead when the insectile beast cannoned into him.  Ichi-gou's synthetic body weighed hundreds of pounds, and he crashed into Lucius with the grace of a tank hitting a car.  One upper arm grabbed the wrist of his gun-arm in a pincer-grip, keeping the barrel from drawing a line on any of his carapace, the other upper arm snared Lucius' opposite limb at the elbow.  His lower-left hand grabbed at Lucius' bony ribcage, getting purchase as tightly as it could.

The two slid back a good distance, deadlocked for however brief a time.  Now he had a nice and tight hold on the little fucker, and now he could actually get to work being productive.

"I'm thinking I mighta overestimated you," Ichi's voice, previously clear and only slightly inflected by his pincer's harsh edges, had a bit of a battle-heady growl to it now.  He didn't have any blood to get pumping, but this was the kind of fighting situation his body was designed to prefer, and it got him nicely amped up, finally getting to lay claws on the guy.

"Prob not about your toughness.  I've been watching that aura of yours, and you're not too shabby with the power department.  But I'm thinking you're a bit more of a dumbshit than I thought."

Inside Ichi's gut he could feel a few more pieces clicking into place, the grenade finishing its transformation from an explosive device to an emissive system for a very different kind of energy.

"Me though…"  Ichi-gou had the advantage of height and leverage, and with both of Lucius' arms in his grip, and his lower left at Lucius' hip to keep the man from flipping or squirming away, he started pressing forward, hard.  "Since you went and called me something really silly, a coward I think it was, I think I'll clue you in on a little something, since you think I came down here cause I was afraid or some shit."

The warp-taint on Lucius was much worse than on the creatures.  Ichi-gou could see it flaring up at his claw-tips where they touched the fucker, crackling like bits of black lightning.  [i]That[/i] he was concerned about, since that level of power really could overwhelm his Aspect's defense if he let it go unchecked.  He diverted a touch more of power that would have ordinarily gone to his flight capability to the Trait Sphere, bumping up its ability enough that he could hold out a bit longer.  He wouldn't be able to fly while the Sphere was eating up the extra charge, but if his plan worked then he wouldn't be needing to.

"What makes you think I didn't just lure you down here, out of the open high spot, and down to where I could get close in, after I saw your cloud get denser and denser, and your little pets showed up?  Huh?"