The Land of the Dead (Vash/'Guo/Rin)

[Vash, the Angel's Moon]

I looked downward at her, shook my head.

"Don't worry about it; wait for me to get him down, then we'll tag-team him down there. Just... be careful of that glowing pillar; it's pure mana. You don't want to touch that stuff!"

[Akira Satou]

"I don't completely understand how... But I'll go with it, Mr. Vash. You seem to know a helluva lot more than I do right now..." Now her attention turned to his wings. These wisps had formed his wings. She had no idea what the wisps even were. Souls of the dead? This guy was looking pretty shady right now. The only reason she was choosing his side is because of the giggling little girl who was always by her side. '...what is this feeling that I keep getting from him...? It's familiar. And I think I'd remember this guy...'

[Zhen Anguo]

"What can I say?" 'Guo said, spinning his halberd around his head before stabbing the shaft of it into the ground, looking somewhat triumphant as he spoke, his eyes finally opening now that the woman's invisibility had worn off. "It's a little ability of mine, I have a tendency to be able to track and absorb the excess mana in the air. So, when you're invisible? You leave small traces of it, so I can follow it to the source, which would be you!" He picked up his halberd again, pointing it at Bast.

"But enough games! It's time to end this!" He should have had his eyes closed, he should have been tracking mana signals, but if he had he wouldn't have been able to keep his eye on Bast who was no longer using mana. He would suppose later on that it was one of those things that just couldn't be avoided...

"Lunar Wave!"

Another wave of energy...

[Kodoku Itami]

Speed. Speed, aggression and power. These were the keys to gaining the upper-hand in battle. If you controlled any one of the three, it was possible for you to take the advantage in a fight, if you controlled all three? It was nigh impossible for you to lose. Kodoku Itami had spent most of his life learning to control these three factors, the first thing he'd had was aggression. Having to grow up without a proper family had taught him how to channel and control his hate into pure rage. Next came speed, that was taught to him by Kurai, to be a shinobi he'd need to be fast, to be able to get past enemy lines without them knowing. Finally, had come power, his fully activated Sharingan had granted him that, tie that in with how fast it had been developing, he'd become a power house... But it was affecting his vision, he was using it to often, he daren't even use his normal Sharingan for the time being...

The Lunar wave crashed against a pallid grey wing, shaped like a hand. The attack grinded against the flesh of the wing for a few moments before it batted outwards, pushing the energy aside. The wing slowly receded back towards Itami before molding back with his flesh. Reaching town he pulled his shirt back up and over his chest before looking up at Zhen Anguo, his eyes were bandaged, he needed to have some way to regulate his use of the Sharingan, so he'd stopped himself using it at all, relying on his other, superior senses.

He looked over his shoulder at the woman whom he had just saved, before turning his attention back to the young warrior. Then he spoke, making no effort to let anyone know just who he was talking to. "Don't use magic, or mana." He said bluntly. "They can track it with ease, I'm guessing you've had no proper training in controlling it... You're leaving residue mana in the air, which he's using to find your location before you're even there yourself. His eyes are weak, no good for combat. Move quick enough and you'll catch him off guard." He turned his bandaged eyes up into the trees.

"I'm going to go help your friend."

With that, he disappeared as if he had never even been there in the first place...

[Monthu]

Monthu suddenly leaped over a shot of pure energy that had been launched towards him with a small grunt. This guys aim was good, but thankfully, Monthu was fast enough to keep out of his line of fire. He was crouched behind a tree trunk as he unholstered two more arrows from the quiver on his back, these weren't smoke bombs, or explosives. One was something a little special that he'd cooked up since he'd arrived here on this planet. By paying attention to the surroundings, Monthu had managed to paint these arrows in camouflage accurate enough to be near invisible to the naked eye.

Leaping from his hiding place, his ear twitched as he heard his prey move, he quickly nocked the two arrows. One a normal one, the other one the painted. He launched them both at the same time, with a little luck, his target would move out of the way of the normal arrow, and instead jump right into the other, which was far better camouflaged. If the eye sees one obvious target or threat, it focuses on that, zoning out from any other possible dangers in its path.

[Vash, the Angel's Moon]

I almost fell into his trap. Almost. But that trap counted on a human's eyes, which were weak and unreliable. Mine were far more accurate, because I was far more than human. With my second limiter still in place, and my firstonly halfway removed, I was nowhere near full potential, but I caught the movement where none should have been and barely avoided the arrow in time.

Then I leaped forward, aiming another shot at the point the two had been fired from, aiming to bring the archer back down to our level.

Hopefully, my reaction would give me the element of surprise.

[Bast]

She gaped at the figure who had just appeared and disappeared like a ghost.

Speed? She was good at speed, but she had a feeling he was underestimating her opponent. And overestimating her own remaining capabilities. Her wounds were starting to take their toll...

Starting? I need to stop fooling myself, she said to herself. I'm slowing down, and I'm losing a lot of blood.

But she had to stop this man. He was just a kid, really; but he fought like he'd been training his whole life.

"Alright, give me what you've got!" she called, knife coming to her hand. She would just have to be as fast as she could, and end this quickly.

Hopefully, Monthu could take care of the man in red...

[Monthu]

Monthu had used the distraction of the two arrows to move to a more opportune location. As soon as the man in the red coat fired at the direction where Monthu had been mere seconds earlier, he took it as his opportunity to strike.

He moved without hesitation. Lunging out of the trees, he drove his shoulder into the man's side, aiming to push him off balance, Monthu had assumed that his enemy was much stronger than he was, in every sense of the word, that's why he'd chosen this particular spot in which to fight him.

Monthu had tackled him towards the mana well.

[Bast]

And Bast grinned.

"Kiss your friend as you know him goodbye," she taunted her opponent, looking like thecat at the cream, as her mother would describe her expression. "Look! He fell in the well... no human could survive that!"

........and then the well flared....

[Vash, the Angel's Moon]

The minute he made contact with the well, it surged, its energy and his locked in a brief, intense struggle that burned out and burned up the last limits he held over his power. When that happened, no force of mana in the world was strong enough to overcome him. The well flared at that moment, a surge of protest before....

BOOM!

The well exploded in a surge of light.

Standing at the center, wreathed in a crackling corona that matched the well's fire, but burned with an intense purity far from the well's subtle, distorted wrongness, was a single figure. That same light glowed from his eyes, and as the spectators looked on, that corona coalesced into two, massive glowing wings that stretched over the plain. To the Earthlings, they seemed longer than tall buildings; to the Allorans, the tallest trees. They radiated from a single figure, shirt and red coat burned away to reveal a mark, visible beneath the glowing wings - a crescent moon, and two folded wings from which his real ones grew. In his hand, where a stone cross had once been, there was a long, elegant cross-like polearm, somewhere between a spear and a scythe. At the top, where the crossblade and pole met, hung a green-blue crystal, spewing wisps...

-----

My eyes swept the battlefield, resting on 'Guo, worried ever-so-briefly about his reaction, before they found our opponents. THe melted, twisted, now-useless shards of what had once been the well device lay scattered around me.

When I spoke, it wasn't with the voice most had heard me speak with, but a mix of my true voice and the one that belonged to this body.

"Well," I said to the archer, quietly, not needing to raise my voice. "Are you beginning to rethink that plan of yours?"[/b]

Energy gathered around the hand with which I held my Cross, now having taken another form, perhaps one truer to its... and my... nature. My Crystal flickered within, the wisps drawn to and from it circling me and blending with my radiating Moonlight.

[Monthu]

"What have I got myself in to..? This guy is something else, it's like he absorbed all that energy... He's not even human, my speed gives me no advantage here... But I can't back down, I refuse to be stabbed in the back!"

Monthu gritted his teeth. "Enough play time!" He reached to his back and pulled out three arrows. Each one was explosive, lined with shrapnel and was irradiated to all the depths of hell... He'd kept these as his last resort. Nocking the arrows, he growled in frustration, closing his eyes before he released them in Vash's direction.

A single tear, dropped towards the floor...

"Maeve... I'm sorry..."

[Vash, the Angel's Moon]

Anger.

It was no stranger to me. Anger both righteous and vengeful, both justified and irrational; anger was something I was all too familiar with.

The anger that filled me now was the fury of the avenger. The justiciar. Death has many aspects; in the wake of the evil I had just purified with nothing but the sheer force of my body and soul, I was not embodying one of its kinder ones at the moment. That rage, that fire, gave me strength, converted to power, and it reached out towards the archer's last arrows.

They were tools of pure destruction; malice and the intent to kill were wrapped up in them. They were forged as tools of slaughter and my eyes narrowed. Slaughter also was under my domain. Unfettered by the limiters that had been literally burned out by the amount of energy they had had to contain, my power over abstraction was nearly infinite. Lunars are not gods - but we are the closest thing mortals have ever made.

I stepped forward, held out a hand; those deadly arrows lost all potency as I absorbed their death into me, internalized it, purified it and sent it back out to the world. They fell to the ground, lifeless twigs.

"I can't let you do that," I told him. "Do you and your companion even realize what you're doing, with your wells? I can't let you poison my land."[/b]

----

((To the admins - I knwo this is bordering on Godmod territory, but Jordan and I have talked about and agreed on most of what's going to happen here. Think of this like 'cutscene power' - none of this will likely ever happen again.))

[Monthu]

"And I can't let you end me here today..." Monthu reached to his waist and pulled out his long, thin, awlpike dagger, the same one he'd carried when they had planted the last well before Guasto. A blue aura started to cover the archer as he clenched his fists, and charged towards the super-charged Vash before him. His monocular suddenly grew across his face into a V-Shaped Visor covering his eyes, with two large antennae growing out near his ears, blue lines shot across his combat gear, and what seemed to be a black cape unfurled as his hair changed to a bleached white.

Monthu Let out a roar as his dagger slowly grew, surrounded by blue aura, into three swords. Monthu wished to god that he could have stopped and examined them, but he didn't have time. Charging forwards, he realized that his hand wasn't even touching the blades, they were merely hovering just out of his grasp.

"Eat this!" He roared as he swung his hand, the three blades all swinging towards Vash.

[Vash, the Angel's Moon]

I didn't move out of the way, simply let the blades stab through me. THey hurt, of course; this body is human, even if the soul within is far from that. I reached out, grabbed my enemy.

"Your power is strong," I told him, "but it isn't enough. I gave you a warning, and I gave you a chance. You chose not to follow. Hopefully, sleep will give you time to reflect upon your actions. Sleep the deep sleep of those on the brink of death... the sleep of death's cold kiss..."

I felt my power flow through him, bathing him with my Light, and the Mana which flowed from me. Slowing down the pulse of his life, the beating of his heart, the rate of his breath; slowing them down until they were just enough to sustain him, but no more, shutting down his conscious mind and letting the deep, dark rest of mind take him in its comforting embrace...

[Bast]

Bast... Maeve... watched in horror as Monthu collapsed, screamed in wordless fury and charged for the man - if he could even be called a man - with daggers ready. ANother of those shimmering fields of energy blocked her advance, and she fell to her knees next to Monthu. Next to Jin.

"What have you done to him?!" she screamed. "What have you DONE?!"

Those eyes, those frightening eyes filled with eldritch light and the weight of history fell to hers. The barrier surrounding them lowered, dropped, releasing more of the colored lights into the air to swirl around their master.

"He isn't dead," he said, with that eerie, dual-toned voice he had. "Merely asleep. Waiting. I gave him the chance to leave; I'll give the same to you. Leave my lands, I don't care where you go, and cease the use of those polluted things. Take your companion with you, and live out the rest of your life in peace, either in our world or your own. And I and mine will leave you and yours to that peace."[/b]

"HOW DARE YOU!" she screamed. "Monster! Freak! HOW DARE YOU!" She leaped to her feet, no longer caring for her own safety, charged him, tears streaming from her face.

She couldn't admit that it wasn't him she hated; that it was herself. For being so weak. She had no chance - her injury slowed her down. He would kill her, but she didn't care.

"I'll kill you, just like you've killed Jin!" she cried, drawing near him. The field didn't go up this time. Instead, she stumbled from the pain in her side, fell to his feet.

He knelt next to her. "I do not kill," he said with the voice of absolute truth. He placed a hand on her shoulder, that light surrounded her...

And she felt herself falling, down, down, down into sleep....