Kupi
Jul 22, 2002, 09:51 AM
Hey there. This is (or will be) a large topic dedicated to any writings, artwork, etc. that I come up with about the Yuteki Brothers (the characters in my sig) and any related characters. The first set of stories are set up like this: the first three stories will be short ones dedicated to one of the Yutekis at a time, and the last one, Kupi's, will connect them all in some form or fashion. But, I've blathered on too much, and you're probably waiting for the actual writing to commence, so here goes.
Kupae's Story - You Are Too Weak
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A HUmar stared at the monster in front of him. He wore a blue uniform above a suit of body armor, which he'd found in the very area he was exploring. His skin was a pale white, his hair a bright orange, pulled back into a long, segmented ponytail. With both hands, he brandished a red-colored scythe that dwarfed his miniscule form. He wasn't fond of the weapon; it had an eerie aura about it. However, it was a gift from his father, and beyond that the physical might of the weapon counterbalanced whatever doubts about its spiritual integrity were in his mind.
The beast that was so mindlessly rushing towards him was black over most of its body. The two parts that weren't night-black were blue; namely, the blades that could be loosely considered arms, and the horizontal stripe pattern across its chest. That is, if it could be called a chest; the creature was little more than a boomerang shape with arms, legs, and a shark fin. Little more than a common Dimenian. With one sweeping cut of his Soul Eater, the HUmar named Kupae slashed it in half at its waist.
The interesting, possibly bizarre thing about the creatures in the area commonly called the Ruins of Ragol was that when they died, they evaporated. They never left so much as a corpse, just a glob of purple goo on the floor and a potentially fatal purple haze that gathered in certain rooms deep underneath the Ruins.
But there was a catch. If one were to venture deep enough into the Ruins, they would discover, with the proper equipment for translating the foreign language, that these weren't ruins at all. Rather, it was a ship. A massive space ship, much like the Pioneer 2. However, this ship did not carry a cargo of people. It carried... something. That much Kupae had deduced. It was something so dangerous that those who had sealed it away had sealed it with traps designed to prevent anything with a trace of organicism in it from reaching the center. Poison-spitting orfices dotted the landscape, odd semi-ovular exploding chambers that dropped on anything unwise enough to stand under them, and a maze of warps so complicated that one could get lost in and starve to death were deterrent enough for most Hunters. Not Kupae. Kupae always needed a greater challenge, and no challenge was greater than finding out what this ship was designed to protect... or keep sealed away forever. That was what he'd set out to do today: he was going to go as deep as he possibly could.
The task practically bored him. Dimenians and their kin, La Dimenians and So Dimenians, fell within a cut or two of his Soul Eater. Dark Gunners, the buglike, scuttling creatures that couldn't be hit by weapons (that positively infuriated Kupae) until they tried to attack with their lasers, were little more than annoyances. Delsabers, some kind of demon that attempted to mimic human Hunters with a sword-arm and shield, were amusing but ultimately too stupid for their own good. They had evolved for sword-fighting, with little regard for ranged weaponry. A bullet to the head and they collapsed on the spot. Dark Belras--
Speak of the devil. A tall, brown, bear-like creature blocked his forward path of travel. Its head was little more than a narrowing of its body near the top, with two small holes for its eyes, out of which green light shone faintly. Its legs were similarly feeble. They hardly seemed able to support the beast's weight, let alone carry it distances. The true danger lied with the Dark Belra's arms, which nearly doubled its width. How they stayed with the body was a mystery to Kupae; where most creatures would have elbows, Dark Belras had gaps of nothingness to which the arms floated dutifully. That is, until the Dark Belra deemed its prey too far out of reach of a good pummeling, in which case they would launch one of their arms at the offender. Another one always materialized in its place.
Kupae hung his scythe in the holster he kept at his back. He had alternate equipment for dealing with these lumbering oafs. Coolly, he drew a photonic handgun from his belt. It had a purple string of photons across its top, to indicate its relative strength. It was a two-star handgun, also called a Lockgun. All Kupae wanted was one shot. He placed it squarely between the Dark Belra's eyes. It reeled in pain, bending backward, tipping, about to fall, but suddenly it regained its strength and pulled itself upright once again. With the same momentum, it thrust both of its pairs of claws forward and together, crushing Kupae's body to a bloody pulp.
Well, it would have, if he were there.
In the time that the Dark Belra was staring toward the ceiling, Kupae had deftly run behind it. The Belra was stunned with confusion. He-- it-- but-- well, it was gone, whatever happened to it, so the Belra was sated. With a flicker, the green energy ceased to glow and the Belra returned to its sleep. Too bad for it, Kupae thought. He unsheated what someone in another world might call a katana. It was rusted, but some otherworldly power existed within it nonetheless. That stupid Tekker had refused to do so much as clean it because it was a "fake." It seemed real enough to Kupae. It was probably even more real to the Dark Belra as it was thrust through its back. In one large purple cloud, it disappeared. Kupae sheathed his sword and sighed. These monsters bored him. All in all, they were too weak to challenge him, even though he'd already journeyed farther now than he ever had before. There must be something stronger! Kupae passed through the door with that thought in his mind. There had to be something stronger than these mundane grunts!
Something prompted Kupae to look up, away from his feet. Whether it was the smell, the change in the floor, or some celestial aura, there was something wrong about this room.
Kupae was in a field of green grass and colorful flowers, the scent of nectar hovering in the air. The sky was blue, with happy clouds frollicking past in the sky. A heavy rug of peace covered Kupae's heart. Some spiritual voice seemed to speak directly to his soul. All is right with the world. Join us. You don't need to fight any more. Join us. The time for war is past. Join us. Stop resisting...
Kupae was no psychic. He had very little sense of the spritual world. It just wasn't something that had jumped out at him when he had decided on a path of training when he joined the Hunter's Guild. Some trained their eyes, some trained their souls, some trained their bodies. The latter group included Kupae. He knew how to regenerate his body with spiritual power, and that was all that mattered to him. Yes, he could create fire if he concentrated on it, or throw ice shards, or hurl thunderbolts, but why bother when a slash of his Soul Eater did the same thing better? Diversions aside, Kupae was no spiritual tank. For him to pick up on something of that nature meant that whatever it was, it was powerful beyond belief. And despite its positive message, there was something evil behind it.
Facades were never deep. If you knew that they existed, they were easy to cut through. Kupae removed his Soul Eater from his back and gripped it tightly, before proceding to hack away at the ground beneath him. His scythe tore gashes in the soil, wrent the flowers from their roots, and put scars in the grass. They all seemed real enough. Yes... Kupae could find peace here... NO! Kupae struggled to wrest that thought from his mind. It was a Trojan Horse for something evil that wanted him to die at its feet. There must be something--
Kupae saw it. In the center of this paradise, a monument. A simple monument, just a brown, rectangular, stone tower with a pointed top on an alter. Though prominent, it was out of the way and easy to miss in the same way that an object passes in the haze of a dream. That was the key to all of this! The key to the facade! With reckless abandon, Kupae charged at it. To an outside viewer, it would seem silly for a small man in armor to charge at a stone monument with a scythe, but nevertheless this is what happened. As soon as he took his first step onto the alter, though, the world twisted and writhed, the obelisk desperately attempting to avert its pursuor.
The field of flowers and peace had been replaced by a vision of Hell. Kupae's exit was blocked by a circular trench around a span of land constructed of screaming, tormented faces. From each one rose a peculiar diamond-shaped object with a blades jutting from their midsections. They spun and whirled above the ground in unison, converging on the warrior foolish enough not to avert this bloody fate by giving up before. And still Kupae fought on. His Soul Eater spun toward one of these bladed menaces, snapping it in two and sending it to the floor. Five more took its place. To simply fight these could only end in his death, Kupae realized. With focused slashes, the HUmar cut a swath through the throngs of the Darvants to realize that he had nowhere to go. The bladed ones spun closer to him, threatening to either rip out his intestines or drive him off the edge. So far as Kupae was concerned, neither was an option. He took an enraged swing at the ground, slicing as many Darvants as he could in one cut. He switched to a vertical cut to take out another. Something cut into Kupae's back, causing him to lurch forward with the pain. One of them had gotton behind him... now he was in the center, but he couldn't let it end like this. A desperate idea garthered in Kupae's mind. Without questioning it, he acted. Like one of the Darvants, he started spinning with his own blade out. Kupae couldn't count how many blows he struck, but suddenly he was frozen with a flash of light. Every Darvant, no matter whether or not he'd struck them, fell and melded once again with the floor. Something shouted directly into his mind:
ENOUGH.
The obelisk--! Kupae had forgotton about it entirely. Waves of energy eminated from it, shaking the ground and suddenly, it burst into shards that flew everywhere. But that was not the end of it. In its place appeared a monster that defied belief. It almost seemed like a giant human, but with blue skin. It had two massive prongs for main arms though two smaller, "normal" arms existed near the head, and appendages from its back that could only be folded wings. But this monster did not exist alone. It rode upon some manner of three-headed beast that had single-segmented legs down its necks, all three converging beneath the giant humanoid. The monster let out a roar that made Kupae's ears ring. He'd wanted a challenge...
A tiny thought nagged at the recesses of Kupae's mind. He ignored it.
The center head, protruding out in the same direction as the giant blue humanoid was sitting, layed down and rapidly vomited five out of its throat, which didn't end quite where it was supposed to and thus jutted beyond the back of the head's mouth. Kupae would have happily expressed his disgust for this spectacle, but ultimately the desire to stay alive by eliminating what was going to try to kill him won and Kupae charged at the whirling blades as they simultaneously charged at him.
The Darvants were dispatched with a few well-placed swings of Kupae's Soul Eater, leaving the path to the massive beast uninhibited. If he'd stopped to think about it, Kupae wouldn't have had a clue as to how to harm the thing. However, one of the lessons that his father had taught him was never to stop and think about in the middle of a fight. If you did you would usually be stopped and never think about anything again. That in mind, Kupae took the immediately reasonable course of action and rushed headlong at the center head, which still hadn't raised off of the ground. In one grand horizontal slice, Kupae severed the head's lower jaw from the head and put a long cut through the throat that was sticking out beyond the head's mouth.
This seeemed to produce no reaction from the cut head itself, but the giant blue humaoid gave an unearthly howl of agony. Unfortunately, while Kupae was observing the humanoid half of the creature's reaction, he had failed to notice the head that he had cut pulling to the side and snapping back into position, thus giving Kupae the slap of his life.
Kupae was aware of the brief sensation of flight before his back came into contact with the ground again and he slid all the way to the edge of the "arena." Dazed but, thanks to his armor, relatively undamaged, Kupae jumped to his feet and clenched the Soul Eater. Suddenly, in a manner of physical heads-up, his entire front side throbbed to remind him that he'd withstood one heck of a blunt impact. In reaction to that, Kupae tried to remember what the lesson produced from a particular Technique Disk had taught him. With an arcane motion of his hand and a unique spiritual focus, Kupae produced a brief, small swirl of restorative energy that encircled his body, causing the throbbing pain to abate.
That was that. Kupae growled, ready to fight once again. It was then that he noticed that the blue humanoid's right forked arm was pointing at him. Without warning, a yellow blazed from the sky and pointed to a spot right undersneath Kupae's legs. The HUmar had just enough time for half of a curse before a ball of fire knocked him halfway across the raised area. Before Kupae had a chance to restore himself again, much less get to his feet, the giant blue humanoid pointed its other forked arm at him. Another yellow line pointed at him, this time to his chest. Just as suddenly as the explosion had come before, a rain of ice shards from the sky tore at Kupae. He was thankful that his armor was slash-resistant, but he'd need new clothes, and possibly new skin, after this was over.
Kupae, finally given a respite, leapt to his feet and quickly summoned the regenerative Resta magic again. His timing was excellent, because another wave of Darvants was approaching, presumably spat out by one of the beast's heads. Kupae was becoming weary of the things. Just like the monster of Ragol, they fell easily but just kept coming. Again they tore at his armor, and again Kupae felled them in a broad slash of his Soul Eater. Kupae decided to strike them out at their source: the heads. So long as the blue humanoid was planning to blow him up again, he'd make his move. He advanced on the center one, the head that he'd attacked before. But rather than attack head-on, Kupae ran to its side and switched his grip on the Soul Eater. He held it with both hands at the end of the staff with the blade facing toward the head's "neck." With the scythe held so, Kupae used a vertical chop and took the head clean off.
This earned Kupae an extremely satisfying wail of pain from the humaoid. However, it also caused an odd secondary effect. The entire three-headed beast disappeared, replaced by what looked like a wriggling red sack no wider around than the humanoid itself. The blue humanoid turned red, and what had looked like folded wings unfolded and filled with rainbow-colored energies. The entire creature moved, faster than Kupae's eyes could trace, to the outside of the platform, floating in the empty space between the "arena" and the walls of rock enclosing the two combatants.
The nagging thought nagged harder. Kupae pushed it out of his mind harder to match.
The creature seemed exhausted by its transformation, floating motionless just within weapon reach. Kupae took the opportunity to rush it while its guard was down. It was quite a hike from his end of the arena to its, but the monster was inert for the entire time. Once at last over to the beast, Kupae began hacking away at the nearest part of it he could-- the writhing sack at the lower end of its body-- with his scythe. The cuts he put in it never lingered; as soon as they were opened, they closed. As well, none of Kupae's attacks, no matter how deep the scythe's blade pierced, ever penetrated the "skin" of the sack. It must have been guarding some kind of vital organ. Nevertheless, it was all Kupae could hit and thus he did.
In time the monster regained its strength and straightened out rather than slouching down. It floated downward, removing the sack that Kupae was starting to enjoy hacking away at from weapon range. For a second it looked down at the Humar, then pointed its right forked arm at him again. Kupae managed a blink of recognition before a hurricane of ice knives tore at every part of his body at once. Kupi was right in the middle of conjuring the restorative magic when the monster pointed its other forked arm at him. A wall of fire cascaded across the arena from the monster, scorching his face and superheating his armor but thankfully not lasting long enough to burn.
Kupae was finding it difficult to call forth the healing magic. All people had limits to their spirit's power, and Kupae's was short. However, he had enough energy for one more swirl of yellow light to encompass his body and return it to pristine condition, even mending the slashes in his armor that the ice storms had caused. The monster stared at him with a spiteful glare. It rose higher than it had before and suddenly dropped, sending a shockwave through the groud than ran a chill through Kupae's body. He was still standing, but his muscle's couldn't move. Through slowed perceptions, he saw the monster raising both of its arms into the air. Briefly, they crackled with pure white energy before firing a pair of massive beams into the sky.
Slowly, Kupae felt his body become mobile again, but it was too late. The monster had stopped him to ensure that he wouldn't interfere with this attack, a ploy that had succeeded. There was no stopping the two beams that Kupae could surmise. But why just shoot energy into the sky? Kupae's question was answered as the beams shattered in midair, sending a rain of death into the platform.
The entire world turned white for a moment as a large beam landed on Kupae. His body involuntarily shook with the sheer driving force of it. It had left his body, clothes, and scythe untouched, rather stabbing straight into his soul. Kupae simply collapsed into a heap and settled to a prone position, unable to move from the pain. The monster elected to watch and see if the tiny little human would pose any further challenge to it.
The nagging thought screamed into Kupae's mind. He flatly denied it. He would not give up. He didn't care that he'd been bested in combat. He didn't care that the monster might well kill him in whatever attempt he was about to make. He didn't care if he was to die in the attempt. He wasn't going to lose to this thing!
Against all odds, Kupae stood. Even the monster seemed slightly suprised. Kupae instinctively reached for his Agito, letting the Soul Eater drop to the ground. He drew it back behind him. The Humar couldn't see it, but both he and the Agito were glowing with a red energy. It was best that he didn't notice it, or he might not have hurled the Agito at the monster with such force. Incredibly, the Agito's blade seemed attracted to the red sack that Kupae had hit so much and without even stopping sailed through it in a blast of red energy.
There was a horrid squelch, followed by the monster's wailing death cry that slowly diminished into nothing as it started to fall... right at Kupae! The HUmar took only a second to realize what was about to happen, grabbed the Soul Eater, and ran for his life, quite literally. At the very last moment, Kupae dove out of the monster's shadow as it crashed, face first, into the ground.
Kupae shifted until he was right-side-up, then looked at the monster. Without a doubt, it was dead. No moment whatsoever. Kupae laughed, releived. It had nearly beaten him and he'd lost a perfectly good sword, but he'd beaten it. His laughter rose as he became more certain of the monster's defeat. No doubt about it, this was what had been sealed away in the ruins for so long. And he, Kupae Yuteki, had killed it. Now, how was he going to get out of here? That was an issue for another time. For now, he could rest, because that nagging thought was out of his mind, he couldn't feel any more god-like spirits around, and it seemed like all was right for real this time. As if on cue, heavenly music began to filter into his ears.
That wasn't right. Kupae looked around from his sitting position for the source of the music. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. But something else shocked him even more than the tune, and that was the resurgence of his sense of the monster's life force. Kupae hardly had enough energy to stand, but he pulled it off. The voice that had shouted to him after he had felled the very first wave of Darvants spoke again.
FOOL!
A wave of invisible energy washed through Kupae's body. He must have blacked out, he thought, because the world had once again changed. He was standing on a ring of runes floating miles above the ground. Somehow he was still supported, even in the empty space between symbols. There was one large hole in the runes, through which the monster in another transformed state rose. It was large and blue, retaining it's former wings, though they hung limp at its back. Nevertheless, it still floated. The two previously forked arms had reformed into massive blades born of the same rainbow energy that had condensed in its wings. An odd thought struck Kupae, and that was its striking resemblence to a massive, floating, blue Dimenian. The music that he could hear was joined by voices singing praises...
...to a god.
The nagging thought returned once again to Kupae's mind. He hadn't the force of will left to repulse it.
DIE!!
The great blue god took a sweeping slash across Kupae's sector of the rune ring nearly too fast for him to realize. If he weren't able to see it, he would at least have felt the effects as his entire body exploded with pain. Kupae felt the Soul Eater snap and his grip slacken as he fell to the floor. He was still in one piece somehow, but no force in heaven or earth could help him. Kupae didn't care to question how he'd lived through the attack. He didn't get the opportunity, either. The god rose far beyond his reach and stared at him malicicously. It let off a burst of countless blue energy balls shot toward's Kupae's limp body and exploded on impact, causing him to convulse involuntarily under the sheer force of the attack, every energy bomb heaping mountains of agony onto his already-strained body.
Kupae realized that the god was playing with him. He was defeated, his fight was over and done, and he was at the mercy of this abomination. He'd messed with something too great for ever him to defeat. The nagging thought broke through his mind's defenses as the god told him the exact same thing.
YOU ARE TOO WEAK!
Kupae could feel his entire body burning, but was helpless to do a thing. With a sound like a celestial pane of glass shattering into a thousand pieces, Kupae's entire world was pain, and then there was nothing.
Until someone hit Kupae in the chest...
---
If you've read this far, please give me whatever comments you have. I can't write better if you don't tell me how! ^_^
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kupi on 2002-07-25 16:05 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kupi on 2002-08-01 06:19 ]</font>
Kupae's Story - You Are Too Weak
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A HUmar stared at the monster in front of him. He wore a blue uniform above a suit of body armor, which he'd found in the very area he was exploring. His skin was a pale white, his hair a bright orange, pulled back into a long, segmented ponytail. With both hands, he brandished a red-colored scythe that dwarfed his miniscule form. He wasn't fond of the weapon; it had an eerie aura about it. However, it was a gift from his father, and beyond that the physical might of the weapon counterbalanced whatever doubts about its spiritual integrity were in his mind.
The beast that was so mindlessly rushing towards him was black over most of its body. The two parts that weren't night-black were blue; namely, the blades that could be loosely considered arms, and the horizontal stripe pattern across its chest. That is, if it could be called a chest; the creature was little more than a boomerang shape with arms, legs, and a shark fin. Little more than a common Dimenian. With one sweeping cut of his Soul Eater, the HUmar named Kupae slashed it in half at its waist.
The interesting, possibly bizarre thing about the creatures in the area commonly called the Ruins of Ragol was that when they died, they evaporated. They never left so much as a corpse, just a glob of purple goo on the floor and a potentially fatal purple haze that gathered in certain rooms deep underneath the Ruins.
But there was a catch. If one were to venture deep enough into the Ruins, they would discover, with the proper equipment for translating the foreign language, that these weren't ruins at all. Rather, it was a ship. A massive space ship, much like the Pioneer 2. However, this ship did not carry a cargo of people. It carried... something. That much Kupae had deduced. It was something so dangerous that those who had sealed it away had sealed it with traps designed to prevent anything with a trace of organicism in it from reaching the center. Poison-spitting orfices dotted the landscape, odd semi-ovular exploding chambers that dropped on anything unwise enough to stand under them, and a maze of warps so complicated that one could get lost in and starve to death were deterrent enough for most Hunters. Not Kupae. Kupae always needed a greater challenge, and no challenge was greater than finding out what this ship was designed to protect... or keep sealed away forever. That was what he'd set out to do today: he was going to go as deep as he possibly could.
The task practically bored him. Dimenians and their kin, La Dimenians and So Dimenians, fell within a cut or two of his Soul Eater. Dark Gunners, the buglike, scuttling creatures that couldn't be hit by weapons (that positively infuriated Kupae) until they tried to attack with their lasers, were little more than annoyances. Delsabers, some kind of demon that attempted to mimic human Hunters with a sword-arm and shield, were amusing but ultimately too stupid for their own good. They had evolved for sword-fighting, with little regard for ranged weaponry. A bullet to the head and they collapsed on the spot. Dark Belras--
Speak of the devil. A tall, brown, bear-like creature blocked his forward path of travel. Its head was little more than a narrowing of its body near the top, with two small holes for its eyes, out of which green light shone faintly. Its legs were similarly feeble. They hardly seemed able to support the beast's weight, let alone carry it distances. The true danger lied with the Dark Belra's arms, which nearly doubled its width. How they stayed with the body was a mystery to Kupae; where most creatures would have elbows, Dark Belras had gaps of nothingness to which the arms floated dutifully. That is, until the Dark Belra deemed its prey too far out of reach of a good pummeling, in which case they would launch one of their arms at the offender. Another one always materialized in its place.
Kupae hung his scythe in the holster he kept at his back. He had alternate equipment for dealing with these lumbering oafs. Coolly, he drew a photonic handgun from his belt. It had a purple string of photons across its top, to indicate its relative strength. It was a two-star handgun, also called a Lockgun. All Kupae wanted was one shot. He placed it squarely between the Dark Belra's eyes. It reeled in pain, bending backward, tipping, about to fall, but suddenly it regained its strength and pulled itself upright once again. With the same momentum, it thrust both of its pairs of claws forward and together, crushing Kupae's body to a bloody pulp.
Well, it would have, if he were there.
In the time that the Dark Belra was staring toward the ceiling, Kupae had deftly run behind it. The Belra was stunned with confusion. He-- it-- but-- well, it was gone, whatever happened to it, so the Belra was sated. With a flicker, the green energy ceased to glow and the Belra returned to its sleep. Too bad for it, Kupae thought. He unsheated what someone in another world might call a katana. It was rusted, but some otherworldly power existed within it nonetheless. That stupid Tekker had refused to do so much as clean it because it was a "fake." It seemed real enough to Kupae. It was probably even more real to the Dark Belra as it was thrust through its back. In one large purple cloud, it disappeared. Kupae sheathed his sword and sighed. These monsters bored him. All in all, they were too weak to challenge him, even though he'd already journeyed farther now than he ever had before. There must be something stronger! Kupae passed through the door with that thought in his mind. There had to be something stronger than these mundane grunts!
Something prompted Kupae to look up, away from his feet. Whether it was the smell, the change in the floor, or some celestial aura, there was something wrong about this room.
Kupae was in a field of green grass and colorful flowers, the scent of nectar hovering in the air. The sky was blue, with happy clouds frollicking past in the sky. A heavy rug of peace covered Kupae's heart. Some spiritual voice seemed to speak directly to his soul. All is right with the world. Join us. You don't need to fight any more. Join us. The time for war is past. Join us. Stop resisting...
Kupae was no psychic. He had very little sense of the spritual world. It just wasn't something that had jumped out at him when he had decided on a path of training when he joined the Hunter's Guild. Some trained their eyes, some trained their souls, some trained their bodies. The latter group included Kupae. He knew how to regenerate his body with spiritual power, and that was all that mattered to him. Yes, he could create fire if he concentrated on it, or throw ice shards, or hurl thunderbolts, but why bother when a slash of his Soul Eater did the same thing better? Diversions aside, Kupae was no spiritual tank. For him to pick up on something of that nature meant that whatever it was, it was powerful beyond belief. And despite its positive message, there was something evil behind it.
Facades were never deep. If you knew that they existed, they were easy to cut through. Kupae removed his Soul Eater from his back and gripped it tightly, before proceding to hack away at the ground beneath him. His scythe tore gashes in the soil, wrent the flowers from their roots, and put scars in the grass. They all seemed real enough. Yes... Kupae could find peace here... NO! Kupae struggled to wrest that thought from his mind. It was a Trojan Horse for something evil that wanted him to die at its feet. There must be something--
Kupae saw it. In the center of this paradise, a monument. A simple monument, just a brown, rectangular, stone tower with a pointed top on an alter. Though prominent, it was out of the way and easy to miss in the same way that an object passes in the haze of a dream. That was the key to all of this! The key to the facade! With reckless abandon, Kupae charged at it. To an outside viewer, it would seem silly for a small man in armor to charge at a stone monument with a scythe, but nevertheless this is what happened. As soon as he took his first step onto the alter, though, the world twisted and writhed, the obelisk desperately attempting to avert its pursuor.
The field of flowers and peace had been replaced by a vision of Hell. Kupae's exit was blocked by a circular trench around a span of land constructed of screaming, tormented faces. From each one rose a peculiar diamond-shaped object with a blades jutting from their midsections. They spun and whirled above the ground in unison, converging on the warrior foolish enough not to avert this bloody fate by giving up before. And still Kupae fought on. His Soul Eater spun toward one of these bladed menaces, snapping it in two and sending it to the floor. Five more took its place. To simply fight these could only end in his death, Kupae realized. With focused slashes, the HUmar cut a swath through the throngs of the Darvants to realize that he had nowhere to go. The bladed ones spun closer to him, threatening to either rip out his intestines or drive him off the edge. So far as Kupae was concerned, neither was an option. He took an enraged swing at the ground, slicing as many Darvants as he could in one cut. He switched to a vertical cut to take out another. Something cut into Kupae's back, causing him to lurch forward with the pain. One of them had gotton behind him... now he was in the center, but he couldn't let it end like this. A desperate idea garthered in Kupae's mind. Without questioning it, he acted. Like one of the Darvants, he started spinning with his own blade out. Kupae couldn't count how many blows he struck, but suddenly he was frozen with a flash of light. Every Darvant, no matter whether or not he'd struck them, fell and melded once again with the floor. Something shouted directly into his mind:
ENOUGH.
The obelisk--! Kupae had forgotton about it entirely. Waves of energy eminated from it, shaking the ground and suddenly, it burst into shards that flew everywhere. But that was not the end of it. In its place appeared a monster that defied belief. It almost seemed like a giant human, but with blue skin. It had two massive prongs for main arms though two smaller, "normal" arms existed near the head, and appendages from its back that could only be folded wings. But this monster did not exist alone. It rode upon some manner of three-headed beast that had single-segmented legs down its necks, all three converging beneath the giant humanoid. The monster let out a roar that made Kupae's ears ring. He'd wanted a challenge...
A tiny thought nagged at the recesses of Kupae's mind. He ignored it.
The center head, protruding out in the same direction as the giant blue humanoid was sitting, layed down and rapidly vomited five out of its throat, which didn't end quite where it was supposed to and thus jutted beyond the back of the head's mouth. Kupae would have happily expressed his disgust for this spectacle, but ultimately the desire to stay alive by eliminating what was going to try to kill him won and Kupae charged at the whirling blades as they simultaneously charged at him.
The Darvants were dispatched with a few well-placed swings of Kupae's Soul Eater, leaving the path to the massive beast uninhibited. If he'd stopped to think about it, Kupae wouldn't have had a clue as to how to harm the thing. However, one of the lessons that his father had taught him was never to stop and think about in the middle of a fight. If you did you would usually be stopped and never think about anything again. That in mind, Kupae took the immediately reasonable course of action and rushed headlong at the center head, which still hadn't raised off of the ground. In one grand horizontal slice, Kupae severed the head's lower jaw from the head and put a long cut through the throat that was sticking out beyond the head's mouth.
This seeemed to produce no reaction from the cut head itself, but the giant blue humaoid gave an unearthly howl of agony. Unfortunately, while Kupae was observing the humanoid half of the creature's reaction, he had failed to notice the head that he had cut pulling to the side and snapping back into position, thus giving Kupae the slap of his life.
Kupae was aware of the brief sensation of flight before his back came into contact with the ground again and he slid all the way to the edge of the "arena." Dazed but, thanks to his armor, relatively undamaged, Kupae jumped to his feet and clenched the Soul Eater. Suddenly, in a manner of physical heads-up, his entire front side throbbed to remind him that he'd withstood one heck of a blunt impact. In reaction to that, Kupae tried to remember what the lesson produced from a particular Technique Disk had taught him. With an arcane motion of his hand and a unique spiritual focus, Kupae produced a brief, small swirl of restorative energy that encircled his body, causing the throbbing pain to abate.
That was that. Kupae growled, ready to fight once again. It was then that he noticed that the blue humanoid's right forked arm was pointing at him. Without warning, a yellow blazed from the sky and pointed to a spot right undersneath Kupae's legs. The HUmar had just enough time for half of a curse before a ball of fire knocked him halfway across the raised area. Before Kupae had a chance to restore himself again, much less get to his feet, the giant blue humanoid pointed its other forked arm at him. Another yellow line pointed at him, this time to his chest. Just as suddenly as the explosion had come before, a rain of ice shards from the sky tore at Kupae. He was thankful that his armor was slash-resistant, but he'd need new clothes, and possibly new skin, after this was over.
Kupae, finally given a respite, leapt to his feet and quickly summoned the regenerative Resta magic again. His timing was excellent, because another wave of Darvants was approaching, presumably spat out by one of the beast's heads. Kupae was becoming weary of the things. Just like the monster of Ragol, they fell easily but just kept coming. Again they tore at his armor, and again Kupae felled them in a broad slash of his Soul Eater. Kupae decided to strike them out at their source: the heads. So long as the blue humanoid was planning to blow him up again, he'd make his move. He advanced on the center one, the head that he'd attacked before. But rather than attack head-on, Kupae ran to its side and switched his grip on the Soul Eater. He held it with both hands at the end of the staff with the blade facing toward the head's "neck." With the scythe held so, Kupae used a vertical chop and took the head clean off.
This earned Kupae an extremely satisfying wail of pain from the humaoid. However, it also caused an odd secondary effect. The entire three-headed beast disappeared, replaced by what looked like a wriggling red sack no wider around than the humanoid itself. The blue humanoid turned red, and what had looked like folded wings unfolded and filled with rainbow-colored energies. The entire creature moved, faster than Kupae's eyes could trace, to the outside of the platform, floating in the empty space between the "arena" and the walls of rock enclosing the two combatants.
The nagging thought nagged harder. Kupae pushed it out of his mind harder to match.
The creature seemed exhausted by its transformation, floating motionless just within weapon reach. Kupae took the opportunity to rush it while its guard was down. It was quite a hike from his end of the arena to its, but the monster was inert for the entire time. Once at last over to the beast, Kupae began hacking away at the nearest part of it he could-- the writhing sack at the lower end of its body-- with his scythe. The cuts he put in it never lingered; as soon as they were opened, they closed. As well, none of Kupae's attacks, no matter how deep the scythe's blade pierced, ever penetrated the "skin" of the sack. It must have been guarding some kind of vital organ. Nevertheless, it was all Kupae could hit and thus he did.
In time the monster regained its strength and straightened out rather than slouching down. It floated downward, removing the sack that Kupae was starting to enjoy hacking away at from weapon range. For a second it looked down at the Humar, then pointed its right forked arm at him again. Kupae managed a blink of recognition before a hurricane of ice knives tore at every part of his body at once. Kupi was right in the middle of conjuring the restorative magic when the monster pointed its other forked arm at him. A wall of fire cascaded across the arena from the monster, scorching his face and superheating his armor but thankfully not lasting long enough to burn.
Kupae was finding it difficult to call forth the healing magic. All people had limits to their spirit's power, and Kupae's was short. However, he had enough energy for one more swirl of yellow light to encompass his body and return it to pristine condition, even mending the slashes in his armor that the ice storms had caused. The monster stared at him with a spiteful glare. It rose higher than it had before and suddenly dropped, sending a shockwave through the groud than ran a chill through Kupae's body. He was still standing, but his muscle's couldn't move. Through slowed perceptions, he saw the monster raising both of its arms into the air. Briefly, they crackled with pure white energy before firing a pair of massive beams into the sky.
Slowly, Kupae felt his body become mobile again, but it was too late. The monster had stopped him to ensure that he wouldn't interfere with this attack, a ploy that had succeeded. There was no stopping the two beams that Kupae could surmise. But why just shoot energy into the sky? Kupae's question was answered as the beams shattered in midair, sending a rain of death into the platform.
The entire world turned white for a moment as a large beam landed on Kupae. His body involuntarily shook with the sheer driving force of it. It had left his body, clothes, and scythe untouched, rather stabbing straight into his soul. Kupae simply collapsed into a heap and settled to a prone position, unable to move from the pain. The monster elected to watch and see if the tiny little human would pose any further challenge to it.
The nagging thought screamed into Kupae's mind. He flatly denied it. He would not give up. He didn't care that he'd been bested in combat. He didn't care that the monster might well kill him in whatever attempt he was about to make. He didn't care if he was to die in the attempt. He wasn't going to lose to this thing!
Against all odds, Kupae stood. Even the monster seemed slightly suprised. Kupae instinctively reached for his Agito, letting the Soul Eater drop to the ground. He drew it back behind him. The Humar couldn't see it, but both he and the Agito were glowing with a red energy. It was best that he didn't notice it, or he might not have hurled the Agito at the monster with such force. Incredibly, the Agito's blade seemed attracted to the red sack that Kupae had hit so much and without even stopping sailed through it in a blast of red energy.
There was a horrid squelch, followed by the monster's wailing death cry that slowly diminished into nothing as it started to fall... right at Kupae! The HUmar took only a second to realize what was about to happen, grabbed the Soul Eater, and ran for his life, quite literally. At the very last moment, Kupae dove out of the monster's shadow as it crashed, face first, into the ground.
Kupae shifted until he was right-side-up, then looked at the monster. Without a doubt, it was dead. No moment whatsoever. Kupae laughed, releived. It had nearly beaten him and he'd lost a perfectly good sword, but he'd beaten it. His laughter rose as he became more certain of the monster's defeat. No doubt about it, this was what had been sealed away in the ruins for so long. And he, Kupae Yuteki, had killed it. Now, how was he going to get out of here? That was an issue for another time. For now, he could rest, because that nagging thought was out of his mind, he couldn't feel any more god-like spirits around, and it seemed like all was right for real this time. As if on cue, heavenly music began to filter into his ears.
That wasn't right. Kupae looked around from his sitting position for the source of the music. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. But something else shocked him even more than the tune, and that was the resurgence of his sense of the monster's life force. Kupae hardly had enough energy to stand, but he pulled it off. The voice that had shouted to him after he had felled the very first wave of Darvants spoke again.
FOOL!
A wave of invisible energy washed through Kupae's body. He must have blacked out, he thought, because the world had once again changed. He was standing on a ring of runes floating miles above the ground. Somehow he was still supported, even in the empty space between symbols. There was one large hole in the runes, through which the monster in another transformed state rose. It was large and blue, retaining it's former wings, though they hung limp at its back. Nevertheless, it still floated. The two previously forked arms had reformed into massive blades born of the same rainbow energy that had condensed in its wings. An odd thought struck Kupae, and that was its striking resemblence to a massive, floating, blue Dimenian. The music that he could hear was joined by voices singing praises...
...to a god.
The nagging thought returned once again to Kupae's mind. He hadn't the force of will left to repulse it.
DIE!!
The great blue god took a sweeping slash across Kupae's sector of the rune ring nearly too fast for him to realize. If he weren't able to see it, he would at least have felt the effects as his entire body exploded with pain. Kupae felt the Soul Eater snap and his grip slacken as he fell to the floor. He was still in one piece somehow, but no force in heaven or earth could help him. Kupae didn't care to question how he'd lived through the attack. He didn't get the opportunity, either. The god rose far beyond his reach and stared at him malicicously. It let off a burst of countless blue energy balls shot toward's Kupae's limp body and exploded on impact, causing him to convulse involuntarily under the sheer force of the attack, every energy bomb heaping mountains of agony onto his already-strained body.
Kupae realized that the god was playing with him. He was defeated, his fight was over and done, and he was at the mercy of this abomination. He'd messed with something too great for ever him to defeat. The nagging thought broke through his mind's defenses as the god told him the exact same thing.
YOU ARE TOO WEAK!
Kupae could feel his entire body burning, but was helpless to do a thing. With a sound like a celestial pane of glass shattering into a thousand pieces, Kupae's entire world was pain, and then there was nothing.
Until someone hit Kupae in the chest...
---
If you've read this far, please give me whatever comments you have. I can't write better if you don't tell me how! ^_^
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kupi on 2002-07-25 16:05 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kupi on 2002-08-01 06:19 ]</font>