Rise of the Ryu-onna
Chapter 3
Disclaimer: I do not own DC Comics.
Sinestro flew up and out of the dust, Amarante quickly flying up in pursuit. As she flew at him, she fired two ki blasts in rapid succession, Sinestro dodging one while knife-edging his hand and slicing the second in half, the two halves exploding harmlessly above and below him. She fired three more blasts at him, forcing him to dodge two and slice the third to pieces, the pieces falling a short distance before exploding.
As Sinestro searched for her, she appeared from his right side partially behind him and give him a HARD knee to the gut, the armor plating covering that part of her adding a lot of damage to it and actually getting a cry of pain from the man as Amarante grabbed him and shot like a rocket to the ground, adding a centrifugal rotation force to it for added power.
After he hit the ground, he struggled to his feet, only to receive a hard headbutt that sent him flying, Amarante following it with a ki blast as her feet hit the ground. Sinestro gathered his wits and dodged the blast, only for her to fire a second that created a cloud of dust. Knowing better than to charge into a smokescreen like that, she stood there and waited, waited for Sinestro to reappear.
When she finally sensed him, he was standing nearby with his arms crossed as he said "You are as powerful as the legends about you say, but then, I too am a warrior of legendary power." Amarante nodding in reply.
Before she could put up a defense, Sinestro was on her once more, a series of hard punches to the gut leaving her open to an elbow to the back of the head and a kick to the jaw, sending her flying into a rock formation that fell down on top of her. Sinestro, knowing better than to let her get her second wind, used his ring to fire two bursts of energy, bringing the entire formation down on her.
As Sinestro watched his handiwork, he was caught unprepared as a ki blast fired out from the smoke, and he flew into the air to avoid it, the blast hitting the ground with an earth-shaking explosion as Sinestro flew into the cloud.
Lights flashed as the two traded blows, some successful and others not, Amarante eventually getting a hard one that sent Sinestro flying. Amarante quickly followed in pursuit and gave him a hard blow from above, but when she stepped back he set himself and gave her a hard kick to the stomach, sending HER flying instead.
Sinestro flew after her in pursuit, only for her to get her bearings and fire a ki blast at him, which he deflected off away from him.
In the air a safe distance away, a Sinestro Corps member hovered in the air inside of a hard light yellow bubble-shield like construct and watched the fight. He had very short, almost buzzed hair with matching sideburns and facial hair, one eye-brow raised as he studied the moves used and the destructiveness of the battle.
As he hovered there, the Green Lanterns made their appearance, and shooting towards the dueling warriors the lone Sinestro Corpsman raised an open right hand in Hal's face as the man attempted to pass him.
"I wouldn't go into that crazy shit if I were you." the user of the yellow light commented, Jordan stopping in his tracks just as Amarante's voice called out "Rōzu no Taiho!" and a rose red beam of energy shot from her hands, the green lanterns hovering there in surprise just before the blast detonated in a huge explosion, sending rock-based shrapnel flying everywhere alongside the dust as it seemed like the very planet trembled from the force and a mushroom cloud rose into the air.
"Who gives a damn what a fucking pussy like this Sinestro Corps bitch says." Guy popped off and the Sinestro Corpsman looked at Hal and said "Is that stupid muthafucka for real?"
"Unfortunately. What's going on here?"
"A spar, nothing more." came the reply
"A spar? That's nuts" Kyle commented.
"Who is Sinestro sparring against?" Hal asked.
"An Arielian from the ancient past." the Corpsman replied.
"How ancient?"
"Try ten thousand years, that hot ass babe fought against Ariel the First."
"A woman? You gotta be shitting me." Guy popped off, not noticing as Sora cracked and popped her knuckles.
What he did notice, however, is the towering figure who suddenly appeared before him, crimson scales and all, Amarante wasting no time in slamming a haymaker into Guy's jaw so hard that a snap like that of cord wood breaking sounded out and Guy went flying, slamming into the dirt and raising a cloud of dust.
Before the greens could respond, Amarante was already gone.
On the ground, Amarante and Sinestro stood in their ready stances, their breaths coming quickly as they enjoyed the thrill.
"Anata wa, watashi ga imamade nozonde iru kanōsei yori mo haruka ni ōku nodesu , Hiroshi-dono."
"Anata ga aru to shite, Sinestro-dono." Amarante replied, the smirk on her face was one of confidence and excitement.
"Zan'nen midori wa sore o subete o dainashi ni suru hitsuyō ga arimashita."
"Dōi shite." Amarante commented just as she began to glow so brightly all they could see was an outline. To everyone but Sinestro and Kyle's shock, her massive form began to shrink and change shape, the shape looking inhuman and otherworldly as a bolt of lightning slammed down.
[Insert Theme; Invocation of Apocalyptic Evil + Valley of the Damned - Dragonforce]
That one bolt was quickly followed by others, the lightning becoming radically violent and swift as bolt after bolt arched from the heavens and the winds became truly monstrous. The greens found themselves scrambling in every direction as the lightning exploded down on them with frightening rapidity. The Sinestro corpsman, however, remained perfectly calm and avoided the bolts with casual ease while never taking his eyes off of the glowing Ryu-jin.
The clouds began to erratically spin, come together, rip apart, and generally cause their own bits of chaos and havoc. As the greens scrambled and panicked like a flock of headless chickens, a bright FLASH of lightning suddenly illuminated the area around Amarante, causing the image of a colossal, mountainous greater dragon to superimpose itself over her glowing form as an earth-shattering booming roar a thousand times louder than all of the thunder previously heard pierced the stormy night.
Sinestro looked on, his expression one of maniac glee, thrill, and overwhelming anticipation as he floated in mid-air, watching as things got even WORSE, a gigantic two mile-wide tornado forming itself in the air before slamming to the ground around Amarante, the dark gray mass of destructive wind turning dark beyond blackest pitch as the tell-tale locomotive like roar came to life.
Kyle was suddenly struck by even greater panic when Sora began to cry out in pain, her still new and relatively untrained ki senses overloading from the raw output of Amarante's power as it was further compressed and intensified. To the horror of the more intelligent greens that still remained, the deep roar of the two mile wide tornado seemed to turn demonic as a dragon's head wreathed in an infernal glow appeared at the tornado's face and four more, smaller, tornadoes spawned at it's cardinal points; North; South, East, and West.
As Kyle tended to Sora, the seemingly demonic and hellish storm continued to grow stronger and stronger, deep booming thunder, flashes of lightning, and the insidious ill-willed chant that was the massive main tornado's roar, all of it growing more and more powerful as solid rock began to crack, rupture, and lift into the air, ripped from the planet by the power of the five cyclones and transformed into deadly missiles that were fired in seemingly random directions, forcing everyone to dodge or huddle behind hard light constructs that would crack and buckle against the onslaught.
Sinestro, his subordinate, Hal, Kyle with Soranik in his arms, and Kilowog were the only ones to not have difficulty evading or blocking the earthy missiles, Sinestro and his corpsman doing so as their rings feasted on the mounting fear of the expendable greens to grow ever stronger, ever more potently charged. Guy was the most unfortunate, his unconscious bulk picked up by the cyclonic suction and dragged in, being smacked, beaten, and abused by all of the debris he encountered.
As the cosmic storm itself grew stronger, hail joined the wind, rain, and lightning as a threat against the relatively helpless power ring users. Frozen ice smacked, belted, and pelted those unfortunate enough to not be able to pull up a bubble shield in time, their uniforms getting torn and ripped to shreds as their exposed skin was scratched and torn.
Kyle's careful care over Soranik left him vulnerable to the ear-piercing shriek of pure PAIN that screamed from her throat, her ki sense a far bigger hindrance and even endangering her health due to the lack of training as the ki she felt kept rising higher and higher. Deafened by the scream, he was unable to hear it when a massive boulder was thrown from the cyclones and slammed into his bubble shield at over 350 miles per hour, explosively destroying the shield and sending both lanterns plummeting to the ground, only for the cyclones to grab onto them.
Unlike Guy, Kyle and Sora were sucked into one of the four smaller tornadoes, not the main, parent, cyclone. Kyle, recovering slowly, put his shield back up and did his best to safeguard Sora as much as possible. He quickly moved as best he could for the center of the cyclone, hoping with everything he had, down to the deepest pits of his soul, that the cyclone was 'normal' enough that the center would be peaceful and calm. To his relief and joy, he finally reached the center, the winds there practically non-existent when compared to inside and outside the funnel cloud.
Hovering inside the eye of the storm, Kyle continued to hope, hope with every fiber of his being that the storm would soon pass and the planet would return to normal. His hopes, at least for Sora, came to a head when he heard her moan in pain, but it was a light moan, not the ear-piercing scream she'd loosed before. Looking down at her he smiled as her eyes began to flutter open.
"Hey Sora, glad to see you're getting over whatever hurt you."
"Ky-Kyle?"
"Yea, it's me."
"Where, are we?"
"Inside one of the tornadoes that chick Sinestro was fighting spawned somehow."
"She didn't do this on purpose." Sora began. "No, this is the effect her ki, her life energy, is having on the planet, she's ascending to a new form of power." she finished.
"Damn." Kyle popped off as the cyclone began to rapidly destabilize, endangering the two once more.
Outside, the four smaller cyclones and the larger one began to explosively expand and contract themselves as the radical weather became even more erratic and chaotic, so unpredictable that only Sinestro and Hal were able to sufficiently protect themselves from it. The parent tornado began spewing lightning and fire like some twisted combination of a lightning storm and a volcano as it's center began to glow and expand, the energy sustaining it destabilizing until, finally, the massive cloud of condensed air EXPLODED, the exploding cyclone setting the other four off in tandem as rock, smoke, wind, rain, and ice flew like shrapnel in every direction.
Hal, Sinestro, and the other powerful ring-bearers raised their arms to shield their faces from the rushing elements. After a few minutes everything began to clear, even the storms that normally tormented the planet were dissipating, slowly revealing the results of Amarante's ascension as Sinestro quickly flew over to look her in the face.
The Green Lanterns looked on in surprised wonder at the armour-clad woman, her upper body now clad in armor just like her waist, hips, legs, and feet, and her head now covered by a kabuto, her hair wild and unkempt as it fell down her back. For Sinestro, he was now looking head on into a mempo, etched into a dragon's snarling visage, whiskers like those of a catfish sprouting from it's upper lip. On her helmet's forehead was a rose shaped maedate while huge kuwagata adorned the kabuto and rose high over her head.
Overall Amarante's appearance was now as elegant as it was intimidating, and more than a couple of the more intelligent and strong willed Greens were already bugging out, deciding that even staying within that cosmic storm was suicide, much less trying to face Sinestro and a foe capable of matching him.
Amarante studied her hands, turning and rotating her wrists as she felt the power now coursing through her veins, empowering her, uplifting her, and reaching up to the mempo with her left hand, she undid the shinobi-no-o before pulling the mempo's chin away from her face and sliding it down, allowing Sinestro to see her face once more. Sinestro watched the emotions in her eyes, the euphoria, the thrill, and the pride ALL because of the power she now possessed as what looked like over-sized prayer beads wrapped themselves across her torso from left shoulder to right hip and then around her waist.
[End Theme/Insert Theme; Bodies - Drowning Pool]
As she stood there, a large number of the Greens suddenly attacked, and that sealed their fate. The mempo was already back in place, the shinobi-no-o tied, and her katana drawn a mere millionth of a second after the expendable pawns known as the Green Lantern Corps surged passed that lone Sinestro Corpsman, who popped off "Fine by me, less work on my part, I'll have to thank Lord Sinestro later for letting me witness the match."
The air was filled with screams of the dead and the dying mere milliseconds later, Amarante moving so quickly that she seemed to teleport. Even Sinestro and Hal were having difficulty keeping track of her movements.
Swinging her sword, she sliced a corpsman in half from hip to shoulder, blood pouring out as his ring slipped from a cooling dead finger and flew away, to find a replacement user. Turning her head, she exploded passed a large group, and their heads slipped from their shoulders to bounce like macabre beach balls on the ground. Green rings were shooting away from the planet in droves at terrifying speeds as blood was spilled and men were killed.
Stewart, having had enough of the slaughter, followed the orders given by the Oans to kill Sinestro even as Hal ordered him to stay back, and flew in to attack just as the last lantern to charge into the fray fell. A gurgling cough and a gob of blood coming from the woman's lips as her torso and legs fell from each other, landing on the rain and blood soaked ground.
As Stewart reached the deadly samurai who hovered in mid-air, he felt a sudden pain in his wrist, and looking down, found that his hand, WAS GONE! Amarante had sliced his hand off at the wrist before he could even see her move, much less react to it. As his hand flew through the air, the ring removed itself from the finger and attempted to fly onto Stewart's other hand, only for Amarante to snatch the power ring from the air and seemingly stuff it snugly between her belt and her armor, when in actuality she sent it into her stuff space.
As Stewart's pained screams rent the air, he was punished with a hard punch to the jaw that snapped it like cord wood and sent him flying in the direction of Kilowog, the massive alien being dragged back for three times his own height due to the force in the punch Amarante delivered.
"Take them and go, Lanterns, there has been far too much unnecessary bloodshed here today. If the Oans ask who was responsible for the deaths, tell them this; 'The Saigo no Ryu-onna has arrived.' and that I hold them personally responsible for every death that happened here today." Amarante told the group of Greens, fear evident on their faces at the sight of her blood-stained armor and sword.
The only Green Lanterns who weren't cowering in fear were Hal, Sora, Kyle, and Kilowog while Stewart had passed out from blood loss and Guy was still out like a burnt out light bulb.
"Soranik, Kyle, take John and Guy and go. The rest of you save for Kilowog follow them, now!" Hal said and the regular lanterns all called in unison "Yes sir!" and began evacuating the field in droves, green comets of light following them out of the cosmic storm as everyone followed their orders.
[End Theme]
Author's Notes:
"Anata wa, watashi ga imamade nozonde iru kanōsei yori mo haruka ni ōku nodesu , Hiroshi-dono." - You are far more than I could have ever hoped for, Lady Hiroshi.
"Anata ga aru to shite, Sinestro-dono." - As are you, Lord Sinestro.
"Zan'nen midori wa sore o subete o dainashi ni suru hitsuyō ga arimashita." - Too bad the greens had to ruin it all.
"Dōi shite." - Agreed.