Literally Snails

"But it is real," Selene said as she circled to Dynamo's side, keeping her attack charged. Even with Dynamo entranced she wasn't going to strike. The point of this wasn't to get an easy win, plus she was still cautious about approaching him. "You only understand one part of reality, but existence is perception. Right now, you do not exist to Dynamo. I don't create facsimilies. I create windows into new truths, every bit as real as the one you experience." Selene watched Dynamo's reaction with a calm spirit, waiting to see where this new information would take him. Soon, she decided that his spirit was crushed, and there was no more need for her to be cautious. She raised her glowing hoof again, and prepared to fire. Copper's words were clear in Dynamo's ears. Somehow, his friend's shouting had managed to get through in a way that his other teammate's had not, and Dynamo was given a split second realization of where he was. Still, the pain of loss was heavy on his soul. Selene fired a psychic beam of energy at the back of Dynamo's head, this time prepared to kill him and decisively end the fight.

Selene stood back up, but Dynamo still saw Starlight laying on the ground as he inched closer. "I don't know what's happened! It looks like Selene is the one who took the hit, but Dynamo looks like the one in pain!" Tricis announced, but Dynamo couldn't hear her. "I've never seen such a boring fight," Rail commented. "She doesn't want to win without finding out who's stronger," Rokata observed. "Mason might try a trick like this to get an easy kill. For her, it's the opposite. Dynamo's strength is hidden behind a wall of insecurity and self doubt. This is a fight that can only be had at the breaking point." "Dynamo..." Starlight said through half lidded eyes, looking up at the blue unicorn as blood dripped from her lips. "Why didn't you stop it?" She weakly raised a hoof to Dynamo, but let it fall back to the ground. Dynamo could see them in her eyes, Frostflame, Tricis and Quick Fix all laying helpless and lifeless. "Just... one more, right? You can't afford the luxury of having your friends survive. You're too weak." She closed her eyes. DwhitetheGamer @Canteen_the_unstable @Unicorncob @dragon4111 @reader8363 "It's something he needs to learn. It's something all of you need to learn." Selene said, she was looking at Dynamo, but it sounded like she was addressing his team as well. "You don't get to choose if you make sacrifices. Not really. If you don't give up what it takes to make yourself strong, the universe will take its due... with something else." She pointed her hoof at the back of Dynamo's head, and charged a blast, ready to end the fight here.

That was a bit of a hair splitting technicality. The offer still came from Nin, Rail was just the one who did the talking. The ground beneath Dynamo's feet exploded into solid debris as soon as he jumped, Selene's strike had missed its mark despite her usual accuracy. He's still fast. He shouldn't be able to move with such swiftness after his injuries. She moved back onto all fours and looked up at Dynamo when he started his retaliatory attack. As I suspected. His strength and his resolve are closely aligned. Dynamo swung his blade at Selene before she had time to mount a proper defense. The audience saw a clean hit. Selene put up some kind of energy barrier to slow down the strike, but it still broke through and left a deep slice on her right slide, even cutting a few of the eyes on her torso as she was pushed to the ground. The first major damage she'd taken. However, once again, Dynamo saw something different. There was a flash of light as his blade connected, and when he was able to see again, he was on the ground, standing next to the body of Starlight Glimmer, bleeding onto the fragmented cement.

Selene's original eye softened, half lidded. "I wonder what you gained when you rejected Nin's offer. Something in the next life, perhaps." She charged energy into her hoof and leapt at Dynamo when he still appeared to be off balance. The sphere in her hoof was like a small bomb that would explode as soon is it hit its target. This time her target was Dynamo's center of mass.

The shield shattered like a glass mirror when she swung through it to strike Dynamo, but the shield slowed her strike enough to avoid anything fatal. She slammed into his shoulder and he was flung to the edge of the ring, dropping like a sack of wet flour. "And Selene scores a second consecutive hit on Dynamo! The advantage here is obvious!" Topaz announced. Selene stepped toward Dynamo, her hooves softly clicking on the concrete with each trot. "Is this your best effort? I've misjudged you." Her largest eye narrowed at Dynamo. "I mistook you for somepony with true conviction, but you aren't even worth the lives it cost to get you here." Her right eye glowed like it did during her semifinal fight, radiating a solid yellow light while she concentrated her power into her right hoof. She pointed the hoof at Dynamo like a loaded gun. Dynamo had used at least half his power but she clearly had plenty to spare. "We all make misjudgments."

Selene tilted her head up, pointing her largest eye- that replaced her mouth- directly at him. "I did not. You saw what your mind was ready to believe. You tricked yourself." With Dynamo's hoof locked around her right leg, she raised her other leg which swirled with a red aura. "You take everything at face value and create a little world for yourself based on what you believe. A construct like that is a deadly prison, and you aren't likely to break it." Her largest eye narrowed at him, with the slitted pupil turning like the head of a screw. "For example, you still don't believe I'll kill you." She swept her hoof at Dynamo with the force of a wrecking ball packed into her small leg.

@Unicorncob @DwhitetheGamer @Canteen_the_unstable @reader8363 @dragon4111 I want to apologize to everyone in the RP and especially @Dynamo Pad for how slow the RP has been recently and how poorly this last fight has played out so far. I made a mistake by not planning out Selene's plan properly. For all the other members of team Rokata, I had a plan for how they would fight and what strategies they would use, but with Selene, I decided to "wing it" which was entirely the wrong thing to do considering how complicated her powers are.

@Unicorncob @DwhitetheGamer @Canteen_the_unstable @reader8363 @dragon4111 The span of this deception lasted mere seconds for those watching the fight. Dynamo stood staring at Selene, neither of them saying a word, and then Dynamo lowered his weapon as Selene stepped closer. "It was unfortunate you couldn't save everyone," Quick fix said to Dynamo. He reached for Dynamo's shoulder, but as soon as he touched him, Dynamo felt a sharp sensation of burning pain in his chest. The illusory world Dynamo was in faded away in an instant, and the blue unicorn suddenly realized where he was and what had happened. The cloud in his mind disappeared and he instantly remembered the fight he was in prior. "A direct hit!" Topaz announced to the cheers of the crowd. Selene stood directly in front of Dynamo. Blood trickled from Dynamo's chest where Selene's hoof struck him just beneath the ribs. There was a glowing aura around her hoof that made it burn like fire, searing through his flesh and penetrating deep.

"Don't you remember? You won the tournament," Quick Fix said, taking a step closer to Dynamo. "I heard it was incredible. After you won your battle, Jade narrowly defeated Rokata and saved you all from certain doom. You were given one wish and you asked for me." When Dynamo tried to recall what Quick Fix was saying, to remember what happened during his fight with Selene, his memories were incomplete. He couldn't remember what happened. "I'm so proud of you. Why don't you put that weapon down?"

When Dynamo turned around, his vision was blurry like an unfocused camera, as if his brain was still trying to process the information it was given. But he saw a figure in the center of the hallway behind him. A pony. One who was far taller than Selene and didn't have her same shade of blue fur nor her grotesque mutations. It was a stallion, and as Dynamo's eyes focused again, he saw that it was someone familiar. Quick Fix was standing just a leg's length away from him, with Selene nowhere to be seen. "What are you waving that thing around for?" He asked.

@Dynamo Pad "The mind's eye sees what it expects. To alter your expectations is bewitchment," Selene said, stepping backward from Dynamo. She too faded into the black abyss. Dynamo could hear Topaz's voice echo all around, "After a long exchange of blows, the two fighters are in an intense standoff!" The world around Dynamo reformed into a long hallway with a marble floor and polished wood paneled walls. It looked like part of an old Victorian style mansion, but the hallway seemed unending, extending into blackness from both directions. Dynamo got a sudden tingling sensation down his back, a sixth sense telling him there was danger behind him.

"That's quite the transformation... I don't really know how to describe it," Topaz said. "All I can say is that if you can't see her, there's a good chance that she can still see you!" Shining Armor had a visible shocked expression from the reveal. "Alright... I'm alarmed," He said. "Not... My first guess," Quill commented. Dynamo certainly liked to ask a lot of questions he had little hope to be answered. Selene wasn't interested in having a ringside chat with Dynamo. Not yet. "These eyes enhance everything about my abilities. What I see. What you see. What I see that you see," She explained, completely ignoring answering his question. The blue aura from Selene's body extended and Dynamo immediately noticed an effect on his vision. Anything outside of the ring darkened and blurred like he was being taken into a world of unfocused darkness. Purple and blue swirling lights darted the landscape and soon even the ring beneath his hoof couldn't be seen. @dragon4111 @Unicorncob @DwhitetheGamer @reader8363 @Canteen_the_unstable For everyone else, they appeared to be standing in the ring as normal.

"How old area you?" Dai demanded. "You know that fight would have killed you right? You signed up for this when you went all out." She placed her hooves on both sides of his torso and moved one of his broken ribs back into place. "Now stay still while I set this." @Dynamo Pad Canteen's warning didn't come soon enough, but he was fairly close to being right. With the top of her head wrappings removed, the runes were facing out at Dynamo. Luckily he chose to attack at range, but the eight blasts of energy were met by electric pulses from the runes that bursted the first blast like a balloon and slowed down the others. The last seven blasts were repelled by a sonic wave of energy fired from Selene's forehead, which shot them back in Dynamo's direction in a scattered pattern, none of them heading directly for him due to the erratic nature of their repulsion. "I didn't expect you to attempt to attack me. That's more of something I would expect from Mason, but I thought you had a higher sense of honor than that." She pulled off more of her wrappings, unfurling her horn and revealing the top of her head. "Those runes are designed to repel demonic energy, they're far less effective on pony magic. Yet they were strong enough to repel your attack. I'll leave the interpretation of that up to you." When she unwrapped her eyes, showing the covered spot where her left eye would be, there was nothing but bare flesh and fur. She really only had the right eye. "You may find my appearance alarming," she warned. She stripped her head of the rest of the bindings, and it was clear that she more than made up for the lack of a left eye with a grotesque mutation. There were eyes of various sizes dotting her head, two on her neck, one under each eye, one quite literally on the back of her head. Strangest of all, her mouth was replaced by a large eye, starting beneath her nostrils and replacing her entire jaw. That large eye was yellowed with a purple, stilted eyeris. "I followed Rokata, and made myself like him, but I was not perfect." She explained. The vocalization seemed to come from nowhere, since she had no visible mouth. She cast off her robes in one motion, and her body was similar to her head. Yellow, red and white eyes dotted her blue fur, looking in all directions and blinking out of unison. They were in odd places, and totally unsymmetrical. @dragon4111 This included her flanks, making this about the time that Draco would regret fantasizing about her.

@Dynamo Pad @dragon4111 @Unicorncob @DwhitetheGamer @reader8363 @Canteen_the_unstable "That's enough!" Selene said in a clear, powerful voice, loud enough to reverberate throughout the ring. She straightened her posture and stood straight. It certainly wasn't a ready fighting posture. She reached up with her right front hoof and gripped the end of her head wrappings with her fetlock. There was a shimmer in her eye. "I will fight you now." "It seems like that last attack was more effective on Selene than we thought! She seems to be completely disoriented!" Topaz announced. "I say that because the last time I checked, this fight has already been going on for over a minute." "First, I will remove these seals," Selene said. She pulled the wrapping on her head, revealing her light blue mane beneath, and Dynamo could see that there was black runic writing on the other side of the binding. Static electricity shot from the black lettering and struck her skin, but when she pulled the bindings further off, the electricity disappeared. As she unwound more of the wrappings, freeing her entire mane, Dynamo could see that every inch of her bindings were covered in the runic pattern, and the parts of her body that were freed emitted a faint glow. She freed the top of her head, but still had a lot of bindings to remove. Since it was taking her so long, she was opening herself up to an attack from Dynamo if he chose to attack her while she couldn't defend herself.

The Bracer's flew past Dynamo when he rushed beneath Selene, this time without hitting Dynamo at any point. Selene couldn't fly either, and she was already on the way down when Dynamo made his rush. He's already learning to adapt, but he still can't see my illusions. If he did, he would know that only two of the rings from my psychic bracers are real. If that's the case, I know exactly the technique to recycle next. "Dimensional Slash!" Selene swung her hooves like before, miming like she had a polearm in her hooves when in reality she had nothing. She swung in the direction of Dynamo's sword, and he felt his blade collide with something as hard as steel. Sparks appeared out of thin air, but his Minato blade continued on, cutting the fabric on Selene's left shoulder and drawing a thin mist of red blood.

"How dismal," Rail complained. He sighed and reached into his pack of cigarettes before lighting a new one. "At least if I was in my room I could get a drink." "Both of these fighters do like to take things slowly, but things are going to get interesting." Rokata assured. Selene observed her enemy, attempting to interpret his thoughts. He's already worried. Perhaps I can end this quickly. But he's also contemplative. I need to keep my distance. She repeated her attack from earlier by jumping for a bit of height and summoning her psychic bracers, three on each leg like before. Then she tossed the group of rings at Dynamo and they tracked him. "Psychic Bracers!"

The spinning blades spun past Dynamo. Two of them lodged into the ice pillar on the ring beneath him, three passed over him while he jumped. The final blade nicked his left shoulder, cutting deep enough to draw blood before rushing past. The blade stung like it was coated in venom, and the pain lasted long after. While Selene was still high in the air, she had no way to dodge or change directions when Dynamo fired his power shot at her. She didn't have time to explore Dynamo's thoughts, or she might have realized that he wanted her to dodge it. She held her front hooves out as if she was holding a polearm and slashed upward with the mimed instrument. "Dimensional Slash!" Her attack was visually unremarkable. She appeared to be doing nothing but wave her hooves. But the beam Dynamo fired exploded in mid air, as if it collided with something. Selene landed on all fours.

I don't sense any aggression in his immediate thoughts. He's still holding off an attack. He's fighting with his head. I can respect that. But he'll never gain an advantage if he allows me to stay the aggressor. Selene jumped vertically and held her front hooves to the side in a cross formation. Three blue hoops of swirling energy formed at the tips of each hooves and traveled down her forelegs, looking like a stack of bracelets for a brief moment before she flung them at Dynamo when she started falling back down. "Psychic Bracers!" The circular blades where the size of frisbees. All six of them flew directly at Dynamo and they were tracking him slightly, but they didn't seem to have perfect turning, so they might have been dodgeable. The problem would be dodging all six at once.

Selene silently watched Dynamo. Topaz stood between them and shifted her eyes between both fighters. When it was clear that Dynamo wasn't going to attack, Selene teleported. First, she teleported to his right side and reared up for a kick, but when Dynamo reacted to that, she teleported again, this time behind him, and kicked.

Selene made her attack, and almost as if he was operating purely through instinct, Dynamo managed to block her in just such a way that caught her hooves moments before they hit him. As soon as he felt her touch his hooves, he saw her again and realized his hunch was correct. Exquisite. Selene pushed off of his hooves and landed a body length away from Dynamo. "You saw that." "You're insufferable," Dai said with a scrunched nose, but he was right. Still, now didn't seem like a good time.

Dai knocked Draco over on his good side. "No, you aren't." She said, completely ignoring his flirting. "You have enough energy left over to keep you alive, but your right lung has been punctured, and you've severed enough arteries to bleed out in less than an hour." She placed her hooves over the wound and started transferring healing magic to it with her Yokai cuffs. Dynamo saw Selene continue walking to the side, it looked like she was trying to flank him, but that's only what he saw. In reality, the robed unicorn switched directions and began walking to his left, trying the same tactic she used in the semi finals, but one thing was different. Dynamo got a creeping sense that what he was seeing wasn't real. His mind's eye was decoding the simple trick, but the question is how quickly his magical awareness would adapt. After getting to the left side of the ring, Selene charged at Dynamo and spun around for a swift kick to his ribs.

Oh I know, but Canteen did get in the ring.

I saw it but like... none of my characters had a reason to react. It's not like copper would be much to worry about after spending all of his energy in his match with Onyx. He should really be drained for the rest of the tournament so him losing control wont be a biggy.

"Excuse me!" Topaz declared in an annoyed tone. "Non combatants cannot enter the ring! They can't even enter the field, I-" @dragon4111 Just then, Dai kept over the dividing wall and landed in the field next to draco. "You have got to be kidding me!" Topaz groaned. Dai walked beside Draco and looked at the deep gash in his side left by Nin, enough damage to threaten his life for sure. "What are you doing still standing!?" She demanded. @Dynamo Pad "I've answered enough," said Selene. "At the risk of more distractions, I'd say it's time to start the match!" Topaz announced. "Its the third round and the scores are tied! For the advantage, its Dynamo Pad versus the undefeated Selene! BEGIN!" Selene kept her eye trained on Dynamo. Still clad in her robes, she started pacing to the right.

Selene looked back at Rokata and closed her eye. ________________________________________________ "I haven't had an opponent challenge me in a long time," Rokata said. He stood over a crater of freshly smashed rubble and debris in the ruins of an ancient gryphon city. Selene was curled in the crater, her hair singed and horn cracked, Her hooves charred half black. Her bag of archaeologist tools were still on her back, completely destroyed by the prior battle. The only thing of the pack that survived was the leather straps. "If it were up to me, I'd let you live. But I never default on a contract." Rokata raised his hoof and charged an energy blast at its tip. "It's a shame you have to die, but I will honor you with one last request." "A request?" Selene asked in a solemn tone. "I can think of only one thing I must learn before I die." She stood up, her legs broken and shaking. "I must know how you achieved this perfection. I need to see it for myself, what you truly are." ________________________________________________ "Yes, I have a wish," Selene said, looking at Dynamo. "To learn that which took my life. To see what grips the hilt, and learn it. No committee can grant me that."