Hunter X Hunter

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Water is not exactly abundant in Death Valley, contributing to the deserts name, but there is life and where there's life there's moisture. In the ground around the rare tree, small remnants in crevices on the north-side of a mountainside. Still, she'd hoped to find more than three measly bottles of it. She can only hope it's enough to keep Katarina's strength up. She's shown to be made of sterner stuff than Ryn had assumed. The abandoned mining town they're holed up in comes into view as Ryn crests a ridge and suddenly stops, twisting her head in the wind. Something is coming. Off in the distant the sand is billowing in the air, not in a continuous cloud like cars leave behind but the intermittent bursts of something large loping across the desert.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The shape, distorted into something larger by the haze of desert heat, resolved itself into Agent Leo Eskandari running straight for her. He had locked onto Ryn like a bloodhound and wouldn't rest until he intercepted her. Of course, she had no way of knowing that he hoped only to talk.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Like recognizes like. She's had at least some vague notion that Leo is being ridden by a spirit not too dissimilar to herself. Sealed away, if what the boy had said about how he came to be this way. And somehow the Morrigan convinced him to come after her. She'll show him what comes of listening to Gods. He's still some distance away so she finds a suitably sized boulder and starts pounding where it emerges from the ground until the cracks span it's base and fridge-sized chunk of rock comes free. She hefts it up, her frame threatening to buckle under the weight. She's strong, especially out here in the wilds, but even she has limits. She manages a couple steps, which takes her down the slope of the mountain and she lets the momentum carry her for a moment before twisting herself around her own axis a full rotation and heaves the boulder at the advancing Leo.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

Leo's golden eyes went wide and he dropped into a more quadrupedal run just in time to pass under the boulder before it crashed into the ground behind him. He returned to his more natural locomotion and kept running.

"I'm not here to fight!" he yelled as he started up the slope. He didn't expect her to listen, but he had to try. Though they were now on different sides and their personalities were very different, he could help but feel a strange kinship with her. Or, at least, the thing within him did, though he wasn't sure where the division was anymore. "At least, I hope not!"

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Why else would you be." she shouts down at him without breaking her run. She's less than half Leo's weight, easily, but she launches herself at him regardless. Aiming to hit him high, tackling his shoulders and using the speed she picked up to try and topple him to the ground and springboard off of him should he go tumbling down the incline.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

Leo was determined not to be so easily outmaneuvered again. So, when she tackled him and knocked him to the ground, he grabbed her arms with an iron grip and pulled her into the resulting tumble. He attempted to end up on top, pinning her to the ground beneath him. He just needed to get her to listen.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn's slippery but not enough to avoid the sheer bulk of Leo. With her hands pinned she pulls her legs up and plants them against his chest. "Off!" she snarls and her legs pull back a couple inches before snapping back and kicking Leo's ribcage. And does it again and again until ribs crack and her kicks threaten to hit his solarplexus.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

Leo lifted her a couple of inches, only to slam her back down in an effort to disorient her enough to get a few words in edgewise. Her efforts to break his ribs were quite painful and extremely distracting. If it wasn't for his superhuman healing and resilience, he imagined that she'd have kicked a hole through him and splattered his guts down the mountainside.

"Stop it! I'm not here to fight you or Katarina! I just care about the orb!"

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn is slammed into the ground and responds to Leo's explanation by coughing up blood and spitting in his eye.

"Still need it." she growls as her 'wings' unfurl and spread out across the ground, finding little cracks and crevices into which to slip and digging themselves in. Only to suddenly tense as Ryn's whole body flexes with the effort and the rock beneath them cracks and shifts and gives way in a rockslide that engulfs the both of them.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

"Don't you get it! Sooner or later, these musical outbursts are going to get someone ki--" His argument came to a sudden halt as the mountainside gave way, and she was ripped from his grasp by the chaotic tide of tumbling rocks.

When the rockslide was over, all was silent for a moment before one clawed, inhuman hand burst from the rubble. Broken fingers snapped themselves back into position and a second hand emerged. Then, Leo, battered and bloodied, pulled himself free and collapsed, content to just breathe for a moment as his cracked bones knitted themselves back together.

Well, that didn't go quite like I imagined.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn manages to avoid the worst of it though she's hardly unscathed when she climbs out of the avalanche of rubble. She's on her feet before Leo and walks towards him, hands tensed into claws and nails glinting in the harsh sun.

"You're still half asleep. Go back and be a lapdog before I end you."

[Leo N. Eskandari]

"Do you... really think I'd be here alone... if I were following someone's orders?" he huffed. "Wyldclay would have our interdimensional guests kill Katarina. You might kill them first, or you might not. Either way, I can't live with that."

"I thought if I could get the orb back, I could get the Society to let you two be."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"They won't. You're lucky Katarina might get upset if I kill you." she says and casually picks up a fist-sized rock and slams it into the side of Leo's head.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

Leo slumped against the ground, a big dent in his skull. But, as she had guessed, he wasn't done. Suddenly, his fractured skull mended itself, the dent filling out rapidly. His entire body began to writhe as muscle and bone quickly molded themselves into a much larger form. The great beast that took shape was roughly twice the size the agent's file reported. That had only been a newborn.

The creature had been completely feral when the Society found it and brought it to heal, but intelligence now glittered in its four eyes. "The part of us that wishes for peace has been silenced. That was a mistake, godling," it rumbled.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"There you are." she says and cocks her head to the side to crack her neck. The tattered strings of her wings wind themselves together into a dozen cords, all frayed at the end into razor sharp threads to form grasping 'fingers' at the end of the improvised tentacles. Three of them lash out, one aiming for his eye to tear it out of the socket while the other two grasp his arm and bite into his tough hide as they add momentum to Ryn's jump to try and land on his back.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The unnamed beast evaded the eye gouge with surprising speed, whipping its body around in an effort to change her trajectory and smash its powerful tail into her.

"Begone, spawn of the betrayers!"

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"None spawned me!" she snaps before Leo's tail slaps her out of the air and into a nearby boulder. She grabs hold of it's surface and plants her feet against the boulder. She catches her breath for a moment, forcing her collapsed lung to inflate again and ribs to settle back into place. Then she pushes herself off,rocketing herself into Leo again. Next to him she's small. Small enough to be up close and inside his guard. She hammers blow after blow into his chest and shoulders as she dips and weaves around his arms. She finishes with one final blow that lifts Leo off his feet and swipes her sharp nails across his stomach before he comes back down. They're shallow, just enough to bleed, but despite his regeneration they don't close like they should. Ryn sending a message that she can, in fact, hurt Leo.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The beast backed away to reevaluate its strategy. "It seems that I have overestimated the strength I have retained. Were I at my peak, you would already be but a stain upon the desert."

"Yet I am still a match for the likes of you." It planted its taloned feet and a red light blossomed within its mouth. A beam of mystical energy suddenly lanced out at the Deva, a heat greater than the desert's charring the ground beneath it.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn barks out a laugh and dodges in one direction, only to juke back the way she came and somersaults over the beam as it rakes across the rock. She breaks into an inhumanly fast sprint as the beam follows her, stone crakcing and breaking from the heat and sand being cooked into furrows of glass behind her. She slides behind a giant boulder for cover, the heat cooking the air around the shadow cast by the rock as the beam pelts it. She only has a couple seconds as stone slowly melts into lava. She plants one foot against the rock and jumps, hurling herself through the super-heated air and above the beam, leaping towards 'Leo' and banking on the creature being too bulky to respond fast enough in craning it's neck to catch her before she clears enough distance to safely land on his back and shoulders.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The beast craned its neck back, the ruinous beam chasing after its quarry near enough to blister the skin of her legs. But it wasn't quite quick enough; the beam depleted before it could connect. It roared in angry frustration as she landed on its broad back, instantly trying to buck her off. This, however, was a cover for its true objective. The same red energy coated the tip of its tail, transforming it into a deadly stinger which snapped towards her.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn's fingers dig into the thick hide of Leo's neck, not quite managing to get deep enough to reach his spine but enough to hold on against the bucking. All eight of her woven 'tentacle' strands flare out and wrap around his tail to try and keep it at bay for at least a moment. Her free hand pulls back and hammers into the back of his head over and over and over. "One. Mis. Take. God. Kill. er." she snarls out with each punch.

She slides off his back and plunges her hands into two of the threads cinched around Leo's tail. "I'm no god!" she adds and jerks with shoulders, arms and threaded-tentacles at once, the frayed fibers at the ends cinching into Leo's tail and slicing it into a dozen cross-sections, the end with the glowing tip falling to the ground.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The beast howled in pain and fury as its tail was violently severed, a spray of blood staining the desert. It bucked hard, succeeding in dislodging his passenger now that her strands no longer held her there.

"I will not let you send an innocent to the underworld before his time!" it vowed, perhaps surprisingly more worried about its host than itself.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn bares her teeth and her eyes flare bright with the angry huff of air she expels. "Not once have I killed an innocent, spirit!"

She briefly glances over to the town and hidden mine. Or rather, the stamped out campfire nearby with the gathered Peyote cacti. If she could get to them she could try laying bare the spirit riding Leo's flesh. Practice what she wants to do to Katarina on someone she hasn't sworn not to harm. That would risk bringing this monster closer to the Siren first... And nevermind that this kind of ravenous spirit would probably not come away clean and more than likely kill the boy. Whose soul has not yet succumbed to the Asura gripping it. Even less so than Katarina. No, if Katarina is innocent then so is Leo. She huffs and spits out a mouthful of blood-laced saliva.

"And I will not start now. But I know many ways to hurt your kind that do not kill."

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The beast followed her gaze to the campfire. It could smell something unfamiliar on the wind, but knew enough to get an idea of what sort of plant it was. "You are right to hesitate. The boy would not survive, but not for the reason you think. I would leave him if it were in my power. But I am what holds his fractured soul together."

"Once I was as you presume, a monster that lived to destroy, believing itself invincible. Death taught me much, and the human soul to which I have been bound even more. I sincerely wish that I could have realized the value of a single life before the damage was done."

The boy in question must be waking if the beast would rather parley than fight.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Krmm." Ryn makes a guttural sound of dismissal. "Stalling words. Pain it is." she says and darts off to the side and keeping track of her is suddenly very difficult, though having four eyes certainly helps to keep her from slipping through blindspots. Still, it's like trying to keep ones attention on one of those eye-floaters and within moments she's closed the distance between them. She rakes her claws over his chest again in the same spot at a different angle before slamming her fist right into the center and into his damaged hide. She grips his sternum and bones creak as she clenches her fist.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The beast had been injured before, but never as easily as this. It truly was weaker in this new life. Or, perhaps, this hunter of monsters was unique. The reason didn't matter, though. Either way, it was suddenly difficult to breathe. It needed rest and its human half would soon wake.

It backed away to guard its injuries. "You have won this battle. I thank you for sparing the boy. Doubt me if you wish, but know, though he is flawed like any human, he is steadfast in what he believes is right."

[Erynies Adrasteia]

"Most think their intentions good." Ryn mutters but she does let the beast back away.

[Leo N. Eskandari]

The beast seemed to curl into itself, rapidly shrinking until all that remained was the unconscious form of Agent Leo Eskandari lying on the ground. Though she had wounded the beast, the process of reversion seemed to have healed most of the injuries.