El Dorado of Adventure (Sexy Vixens: Closed)

[EriChar]

“It was pretty surprising; this guy was just walking around without a head… Well he had a head, but it was tucked under his arm!” Smiling Anne Brennan pulled the collar and shoulders of her jacket upwards to tuck her head inside and emphasize her point, holding her bag underneath her arm to imitate the individual she was describing. Passing through the streets with the girl named Chloe, the would be pirate captain regaled her companion with stories of her life on the high seas, the story’s she wove delighting their teller easily as much as the girl who she hoped to impress.

“My, weren’t you scared?” Chloe had been wide eyed throughout most of the chronicles of adventure and danger, seeming to scarcely believe half of what Anne said, and doubting the rest even more.

“Nah, it was more funny than anything, after I kicked him, he dropped his head and went running after it… You see loads of weird guys like that in the Grand Line!” Still partly acting out her yarn, Miss Brennan flung her arms out in front of her as she imitated the mentioned beheaded figure in her tale. With her head bursting free from the confines of her jacket, Anne began to giggle, positively titillated by the memory of the story that the young woman conveyed to her acquaintance, who herself have a small smile and slight blush at the pirate’s exaggerated antics.

“From your stories, the Grand Line seems like a scary place…” The moment of amusement having passed, the girl that Miss Brennan escorted placed her finger onto her chin thoughtfully, seeming now to have mostly recovered from her earlier ordeal of almost being kidnapped.

“I suppose, you sort of just get used to it in time…” Raising and lowering her shoulders in a shrug, Anne pouted and glanced to the side nonchalantly; Anne herself had taken a good long while herself to ‘get used’ to the pace of things in the Grand Line, being not much more of a skilled pirate than Chloe was now when she first entered the great sea route. It had been a long and hard battle for the widow Brennan to adapt to the pace of things in that terrifying but exhilarating stretch of water, but she was glad for it; seeing a tiny piece of her old self in the timid girl that Anne had rescued, it helped her to see how far that the dreams of herself and her departed husband had taken her.

“I’m not sure I’d ever get used to such a scary place, even the streets around her scare me…” Glancing from side to side, Anne could see that the recent near-kidnapping experience had, as one might expect, not been so easily forgotten. It was lucky for the girl really that Anne had happened into that alleyway in pursuit of that interesting talking monkey, and while it had been disappointing to have lost the trail of such an interesting, tailed fellow, the Brennan girl had been glad that she had the opportunity to rescue this innocent young miss. Pirates tended to have a bad reputation, and nine times out of ten, you’d likely expect them to be the ones doing the kidnapping rather than the rescuing. However, Anne Brennan wasn’t forged from your typical pirate mould, she was perhaps what some might call ‘soft-hearted’, but more in terms of her beneficent attitude rather than a lack of steely resolve within her. Standing up and fighting for people, particularly ones she cared a great deal about, was when Captain Brennan showed her true quality, and made the fast and weak moves with which the gang of abductors had been dispatched look like the flailing desperation of a small child.

“Ah, don’t be like that, you just have to stand up for yourself a bit more… If some guys try and stuff you in a bag, you kick their balls and run for it!” Sensing the worries of her companion returning, Anne perked up encouragingly, thrusting her fist forward to emphasize her point, and trying to drive home a message to help this young girl find her feet. Anne knew that their time together would probably be short, but she also hoped that even in some small way, she could in some way set this girl on a path towards finding her strength. Despite being somewhat boastful in the stories she had previously spread, what Anne hadn’t mentioned was the time that she herself spent as a girl who felt powerless, like Chloe seemed to do now. It had been Jim, and Master Queenstone, and many others that had played their part in helping Anne herself find the courage to stand for herself, and knowing that she had been like Chloe and become what she was now, the pirate hoped that one day, with the right guidance and circumstance, her new friend could feel that way as well.

“Ah, well, hmmmm… I guess so…” Meekly, Chloe seemed to quiet down a bit, perhaps a hint of shyness within the girl that left her a bit abashed with Anne’s unashamed forwardness and with a slight nervousness, the girl seemed to stop in front of a small apartment block and glance towards the pirate.
“Um, this is my home, so…”

“Ah, looks nice!” Anne scanned the building with her eyes with a smile, scratching the back of her head with a hint of awkwardness as well, saying goodbye to a friend that she met so recently.

“Y-You can come up if you want, it’s the least I can do after all you’ve done…” Politely, Miss Brennan was offered the chance to explore Miss Chloe’s abode, but it was not an offer which would be taken up.

“Ah, sorry… I’d like to but I have a lot of things to do while I’m here; no rest for the wicked, they say!” Waving her hand with the usual pursing of her lips that the Brennan girl had become so accustomed to, Anne metaphorically batted away the invitation with her paw in a playful manner. It wasn’t that Anne was terribly disinclined to her friends hospitality, more so that she really ought to be finding for herself at least one good nakama…

[thormundsson]

Ogatai wasn't sure why he was drinking so much. For a few moments he had a plan, he and the little girl were gonna travel a bit and see more of this world. That look of hesitation on her face and the sting that came with it when she said that she had other business to see to and she could move faster between islands on her own was incredibly painful. He had been alone before but this time he had really enjoyed himself when talking to the girl, he had really wanted to join her on a trip. All others before had been at best lackluster but now there had been a real spark of life for him. And now it was gone. He had stumbled into the nearest bar and begun to drink, not sure what to do with himself the entire time.

Bottle after bottle he downed, trying his best to get as wasted as possible. It was annoying how much his relatives seemed to increase in numbers with each sip of wine that he took. He was trying to get rid of the whole group of them, not bring more to him. They were nagging on him as much as they could, making requests that he was fairly certain they would gain nothing from him completing. One of his aunts was asking him to move further down the street and check out a dress there with him, possibly even to buy it for her. Two of his younger cousins were trying to get him to take his weapons and practice with them.

But most annoying of all was his father who was standing next to him the entire time, explaining how his brothers had been better swordsmen than him. He was trying to block it out as best he could, getting irritated by each word and syllable. He had sparred with his brothers numerous times back in his youth and he had always beaten them, even before he held any official ranks amongst his clans. His mother was nowhere to be seen in all the confusion, something he found fairly interesting as she was usually the most scary and overbearing of all of them.

In the end he couldn't quite take it anymore and whipped out a swords, slicing straight at each of them, sending a whipping wind of blades with each slice. The slices cut straight through houses and walls like butter, people shouting in panic as it happened. Fortunately it was already evening and whilst some noticed who had done it Ogatai was quick enough to disappear behind the nearest corner and go for another bar.

He found himself in a quiet little place, sitting at the end table nearest the bar counter and listening to the waitresses talking to each other. Apparently they were talking to one of their friends at the bar who had just been saved from a kidnapper or something like that. They talked a bit louder than Ogatai would have done if discussing such a matter but they didn't seem to mind. They only began to talk in hushed tones when they noticed him sitting in the corner, the mask on the table along with his black clothes probably didn't show him as the nicest kind of guy. Not that he mattered, even in the hushed tones he could still hear all they were saying. Apparently a red haired...monkey of a girl had saved her. Ogatai had to take a moment to recall if that's what they had said, he was probably hearing things now.

As they were talking a giant of a man stepped into the bar, his face a booming smile as he bent almost completely over to get through the door. "There's a man with giant blood in him if I've ever seen one" Ogatai muttered to himself as he kept an eye on the man. He seemed to be in good spirits and caressed the end of a huge club, which was strapped to his back, whilst looking across the entire bar. His smile only widened when he saw the three girls talking at the bar and he walked slowly towards them.

Ogatai could swear he caught the glitter of malice in the man's eyes as he passed him...

[EriChar]

“I thought for sure there would be a pile of great crewmembers hanging around a place like this…” The evening of Mrs Anne Brennan found her very much in the same sort of position as she was when the young woman had started the day; lacking new comrades as well as lacking any sort of decency in her seating position. Upside down on a bench in the city’s park, the scruffy head of multi-coloured hair that Mrs Brennan possessed draping onto the floor from the inverted head that hung down from the bench wearily, her legs and chest sticking up into the air as her arms sprawled across the seat to take up most of its broad size. Onlookers would pass by and stare, the ones with a sense of decency being disgusted by what they saw, whilst the ones without that seemed enthralled by it. Anne herself paid little attention to the slackened jaws and pointed stares, largely oblivious to anything but her own sense of tiredness and dissatisfaction.

The monkey-guy, that strong man, the guy with all the arms… They all seemed great for my crew… Raising an arm from its rest on the bench, the worn pirate tapped her chin thoughtfully as she mulled over the day’s events.
But the monkey ran away… The strong man turned out to be a woman and threw me out of her shop… And the guy with all the arms was an octopus… Who also ran away. Anne folded her arms across her chest and rolled her jaw from side to side for a few seconds, the girls lips pouting from side to side of her face as she mulled over her days work further, but extra attention wasn’t really making her feel any better about the situation at all.

“DAMNIT! WHAT SORT OF ISLAND IS THIS WHERE THE GREAT GUYS AND GIRLS DON’T DREAM OF A ROMANTIC SEA ADVENTURE?!?!?!” If people’s attention wasn’t attracted to Anne by the shamelessness of her previous position, the brazen burst of speech and action would be surely enough to draw even the most focused eye to the Brennan girl’s form. Throwing a temper tantrum that would have been embarrassing for even a six year old, let alone a twenty six year old, Anne’s arms flailed around in the air as the rest of her body rolled up and down the bench livelily, the air around her turning blue from screams and swears that the narrator is not cruel enough to repeat. For several minutes, the spinning, flailing, screaming and swearing show continued, until a sizeable enough crowd had gathered to attract the attention of a passing policeman.

“Now, now, Miss, you’re making a scene… Move along.” The outburst of the seemingly immature pirate captain was ended when with some effort; Mrs Brennan’s forearm was seized by the firm hand of a burly policeman, who was just about strong enough to stop both the limb from thrashing and the body it belonged to from turning. Blinking, Anne looked over the man who had halted the huff that she had been in, paying particular attention to his walrus moustache and shining police badge.

“Gah, it’s the long arm of the law!” Panicked by the criminal instinct inherent within the heart of this often childish but experienced pirate, the sight of an officer of the law overrode Anne’s ability to understand his simple wish for her to calm down, and instead interpreted her to be under arrest for piracy.
“You’ll never take me alive, walrus-pig!” Snatching up her bag of belongings with the arm that was not in the grasp of a now irritated policeman, Mrs Brennan kicked off the bench with her toe and pushed her body into a more forceful roll along the seat upon which she had still been laying. In moments, the girl had spun off the bench and onto her feet, driving the heels of her boots into the ground and sprinting away into the park. Much faster and more powerful on her feet than a man twice her size, the fleeing pirate girl’s feet dug into the earth and propelled herself forwards, dragging along the confused face and body of the policeman along by the arm that he had, either from stubbornness or bewilderment, failed to release Anne’s arm.

“Grrrrr… Leave me alone, lawman!” Noticing at first from her slow getaway speed, and then the meaty fist still gripping her arm, that the peeler was still seemingly trying to restrain her, the Brennan girl thrust her foot into the ground and swung her arm forwards, in a sort of improvised throw that looked like a very haphazard judo move. Anne’s muscles were well honed for combat, having been rigorously wrought through almost innumerable hours of training; these alone were enough to shake off the officer at their full force, without even taking into account the momentum she had already built with her short run. Thrusting the bobby forward and from her, Anne watched for a moment as his frame bounced into a bushy growth in the park around her, before the girl smiled confidently as she dusted off her clothes.
“No power in the ‘verse can stop me!” The girl said triumphantly, thrusting her arm into the air gloriously to the worried crowd around her.

[thormundsson]

Even as Ogatai was staring at the huge man who just walked inside he realized that he wasn't as drunk as he had been before. He was hammered like he had rarely been before but he could tell it was sobering a bit off him. He took a moment to try and gather his thoughts, as chaotic as they were. The beer he was drinking was dark and murky, like old water with mud in it. He hadn't even realized that he had been drinking beer the entire time he was there. He usually kept a grounded rule with his drinking and that was to always drink the wine. As his uncle was quick to remind him, since he was standing behind his left shoulder, there was a saying about this sort of thing.

"Beer before wine and you'll be fine; wine before beer and you'll feel a bit queer" He mumbled to himself as he regretted his actions instantly. He was going to wake up with a massive hangover tomorrow and it was all because another creature had left him. He had lost friends before and he couldn't understand why it felt so bad this time. "I guess I'll shake it off when I get off this island" he kept mumbling, taking a swig of beer without realizing it. The beer tasted horrible now that he was clearing up a bit, almost as bad as it looked.

He kept looking at the huge man as he walked over to the counter. He was most definitely not there for the nice company. "Hey missy, you can't leave just yet...I need to bring you to my master" He hissed with a voice that was so sinister it belonged to a villain in a play. It was a voice so unusually raspy and hoarse for a man of that size that Ogatai nearly spilled his drink. "Now you can either come quietly or I can beat you down and stuff you in the sack" The man continued, hissing his words like a python and reaching for the haft of his club.

At that point Ogatai had enough. He raised himself from his seat, his hands touching the hilts of his swords as he took a few steps towards the man, sliding his mask on as he did. "Get out of the bar, you're giving me a bad taste in my mouth, the very air around you feels foul" Ogatai said with a murderous intent in his voice. The huge man just turned his head slowly and was obviously surprised that Ogatai wasn't intimidated by his huge form. He had apparently been so certain of his imposing stature that he made no provision for a challenger. Or so Ogatai had reasoned in his drunken mind. This fact was swiftly proven wrong as a club almost as big as him came swinging around, aiming to crush his left side like a fruit. He raised a sword in response and let it take the blow, carving slightly into the huge club.

"Wrong move!" Ogatai shouted in anger as he drew both blades, carving at the man like he'd carve a wheel of cheese. Again he found to his surprise that the alcohol was affecting his reflexes and before he could draw back to swing again the club had hit him straight on. He barely blocked it in his dazed state and the two men locked their weapons and a test of strength began. The giant, smiling at first, began to look worried when Ogatai didn't show any signs of tiring when faced with the half-giant's strength.

Ogatai was confident he was going to win this one...

[EriChar]

“Ya see what she did to that Copper?”

“She’s a monster!”

“She’ll probably attack us next!”

Moments after her triumphant unhanding of the Policeman, in place of the worried crowd that had watched her toss him across the park with little effort, Anne was now only surrounded by clouds of dust which were left in the wake of fleeing bodies. Blinking around her with a pout, Mrs Brennan steadily lowered the arm that she had raised in victory, somewhat surprised and bemused by the fact that the people around her had fled in terror. Perhaps having spent a little too much time amongst the monsters of the Grand Line and the Wild Gunn crew, what Anne had just done seemed pretty normal to her, as the pirate girl had spent years with men and women of similar and even higher levels of strength and ability to cause carnage than she had been able to demonstrate. Giants, Fishmen, monsters with phenomenal strength or crazy Devils Fruit powers; these had become what Mrs Brennan would see as ‘normal’, so what was actually ‘normal’ in the blues was somewhat confusing for this woman.

Anne’s confused glancing around herself became interrupted by the slightly sputtering high pitched screech of a whistle, no doubt from the police officer that she had so recently sent cascading across the park, which was quickly followed by a gruff call for help.
“Ah, I better get out of here!” Not wanting to get caught up in a battle with the island’s local law enforcement any time soon, the pirate girl threw her pack over her shoulder and dashed her way from the park, following suit from the previous onlookers to leave a dust cloud of her own. Running through the streets of Strawberry Hill, the figure of Mrs Brennan slipped in and out of the light of lamps as she dashed through the dark streets and alleys, sprinting away in the hopes of avoiding contact with the comrades of the cop that she had floored within the small park. Dashing through lamplight and moonlight, Anne finally stopped minutes later in the darkness of an alleyway, where she panted for a few seconds, looking around herself for signs of chasing policemen.

Looks like I managed to get away clean… Letting out a last sigh to signify her breath having caught up with her once more, Anne dusted off her clothing and peered out to the part of the town where she had ended up; an area filled with small, tall buildings and poky looking bars.
Hmmm… Much quieter than the main street… Recalling her adventure in the hustle and bustle of the marketplace earlier on where Anne had met the monkey, the low key area of seedy looking bars looked like it was perfect for shady dealings, and looked as if all manner of actions backed by ill-intent would take place here on an almost routine basis. Taking a step forward from the almost pitch black backstreet down which she had sought refuge, but was quickly sent scurrying back into it by another shrill screech, though this was the sound of a scream. Initially worried that someone had ‘caught’ Anne after her escape, the paranoia of the pirate girl died down quickly when she realised there was no one near enough to properly recognise her, and instead the scream had come from elsewhere. Curious and cautious, given her earlier entanglement with a kidnapping ring, Miss Brennan dashed in the direction the decidedly feminine vocalization to see what the cause of the commotion was, and to her disappointment, it was exactly as she feared.

“CHLOE!” Anne’s voice rang out in the direction of a waitress being manhandled by a greasy looking thug, the woman being the exact same one that Anne had earlier fished out of a burlap sack a half dozen or so hours earlier in the day. There was no real judgement that had returned Anne to the side of the young woman, rather it seemed to have been luck or some other power at work that had led to the would be pirate captain again being able to aid the girl in front of her, but the fact that there had been two attempts at kidnap in a single day definitely implied that the goddess of luck was a fickle mistress in regards to the girl from Strawberry Hill.
“Didn’t you guys learn your lesson the last time?” Regardless of what the fates had in store, Anne had her own plans, and with anger in her voice, taking no pause from dashing forward to punching the greasy man handler away, she yelled at the troop as she set about saving her friend once again.

Sizing her opponents up, Anne scanned the room and her eyes locked onto one individual in particular; a weird looking guy in a creepy mask, swinging his swords around like a madman.
Such a shady character, is he the ringleader? Everything about the swordsman told Anne that he was a bad guy, and she had to guess that the big guy he was tangling with was probably just a concerned traveller, unable to sit idly by while a young woman was kidnapped.
There’s still some good guys left in the word it seems…

Dropping her bag next to Chloe and sprinting from her friend’s side, Anne took a half-dozen steps forward along the ground, before hopping from a table after a chair, leading to her body becoming skyward.
“Stay away from Chloe, bastards!” There are some with a certain code of conduct that they adhere to in battle; often times attacking people from behind or blindsiding them would be considered a dishonourable act of these people, and would likely be something that they would actively seek to avoid to maintain their own sense of pride and integrity. As the heel of Anne’s foot arced towards the back of the masked swordsman, one would have to realize that this young woman was not one of those people with a strict code of conduct. Mrs Anne Brennan was a pirate, and that meant that any sort of tactics were good tactics, as long as you survived. Her foot finding resistance as it collided now not with the free particles of air but rather the rigid structure of a body, the momentum of Anne’s blow drove the body with which it contacted away, hard and as crashing was heard in the air, Miss Brennan landed on her feet with satisfaction.

Turning back to Chloe with a grin and her thumb raised, what Anne saw in response was not the expected expression of relief, but rather one of horror.
“Hey, what’s wr-?” The would be rescuer never managed to finish her question, as the untimely intrusion of a table-sized club silence her words, smashing into Anne’s side like a speeding car. The wind knocked out of her, Anne felt a rush of air across her body for a moment or two, before something much thicker and harder crashed past her frame.

[thormundsson]

Ogatai was looking the man square in the face, their arms locked and muscles tensing to keep the other one from breaking their stance. The giant's grin was slowly fading from his face as the contest of strength dragged on. Ogatai himself was gritting a bit as the two men had been locked for a good 25 seconds. With a trembling move he withdrew one sword back, keeping the giant at bay with one arm, burning with strain as he did. The giant's face turned to horror as he realized Ogatai was a match for him and more. The other sword, drawn back to a piercing stance, went straight forward towards the man's chest, ready to gauge out his heart. Then he lunged forward with it....

....only to stab at nothing

Suddenly he got a sharp pain in his side and the whole room seemed to shift. He was sliding away from the giant, his weapons sliding past him to strike at air itself. Then the impact really took him and he felt wood and glass shatter on his right side as he was hurled through the nearest wall like a boulder. He ended his journey, insane as it was, in the kitchen of some hapless family, his body bursting through the brick was that they had been sure would save them from any problems. They screamed and leapt for the door, leaving the disoriented fighter in the middle of their dinner table, food soiling his dark cloak. Ogatai had to take a few moments to shake his head. How in the hell did that happen, the giant didn't have a second weapon, he thought to himself. He took a peek at his bruised sides and noticed obvious footprints in his clothing.

His particular predicament wasn't helped by the fact that his brothers and younger cousins were all standing around him, mentioning and teasing him with the fact that he had just been kicked through a building like a rank amateur. He disliked their taunts as much as he did getting hit with a weapon. He was better than all of them, least ways that's why he was still alive but apparently they hadn't lost any of their cheeky ways by dying."AAAAAAAAAAAARRHHGG" Ogatai roared like a monster as he picked himself up and drew both weapons above his head. There was no way that he was going down to an unarmed fighter, no matter how skilled he might be. "Challenge accepted! prepare yourself!" Ogatai thundered as he stepped out of the brick house, aiming an attack straight at the tavern, through which he could see a red haired beauty get blasted through the other wall. But the giant and his club wasn't even a concern of his anymore. He could see the girl's boots as she went flying, she was going to feel a lot worse once he was done.

"Serpent Wind Slash" came the hissing name of the technique he used as he slashed forward. Blades of seemingly pure wind went rushing outwards from him and straight at the giant and the girl on the other side. The blades seemed to overlap, slicing through the walls, the tables, the chairs and even the floors as they kept their path. If one looked close at the ends of each slice one could see faint glitter of snake fangs and eyes, as if there was something live moving within the vivid attack. An optical illusion but it was enough to get most people to run away from it. The whole attack ended with half the tavern crumbling down, save for the wall part that was next to the bar table. Ogatai himself couldn't even see through the dust but he smirked with satisfaction, knowing that at least his attack had been devastating.

"Come out girl! You don't kick another fighter in the back and expect no response!" He shouted through the smoke, taking slow steps towards the center of the ruined bar. The giant wasn't there anymore but Ogatai was far more concerned with the red haired girl. She had pissed him off, the idiot that she was, and he was not going to back down...

[EriChar]

“Guuuuuuhhhhhh!!!”
Splinters exploding from around her body, followed shortly by the crumbling of masonry, Anne Brennan burst through the wall of the tavern and into the street beyond it. Springing off the floor like a bouncing beach ball, the pirate girl crashed into and then through the front window of an antique shop. Like the proverbial bull, by the time that the momentum that had carried the woman had ceased to send her cannonballing through the air and anything else that got in her way, it had to be said that the merchant that ran this establishment would have to say goodbye to a lot more than one high priced heirloom. Skidding to a halt in a pile of broken porcelain and splintered wood, Mrs Brennan lay motionless, as would be likely expected of a person who had just been hit hard enough to be knocked from one building to another.

“UUUWWWRRAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”
With a roar like a lioness standing firm between a predator and her cubs, the debris that covered the pirate girl was flung from her body, and with a hop, she stood back up, dirtied but otherwise largely unhurt. Grazed flesh allowed a small amount of blood to ooze it's way from her temple, and the girl felt a slight discomfort in the shoulder where whatever had struck her, but the monstrous tolerance for damage that Anne had built up in pirate life and battle training showed itself in the ease she shrugged off such a potentially damaging strike. Anne Brennan was not a girl who was easily beaten.

”Damnit, they took me by surprise…” Anne wasn’t entirely sure exactly who she was referring to when she addressed the anonymous ‘they’, but none the less, she was not entirely happy with whoever this mystery person or even persons happened to be. Stomping back towards the hole that she made in the window, Anne was just about to climb back through it and dash back into the bar when, more by reflex than intent, she sent herself flying to the side and out of the way of another explosion as a compressed blast of air tore into the window at the front of the antique store. More pottery and wood was blasted into oblivion, and that was just by the Brennan girl’s dodging; the massive air blade that crashed into the front of the shop tore away both the window and most of the store’s front wall before it dissipated, leaving Mrs Brennan with a much larger access route, but also an increase in irritation.
”I’m coming, I’m coming…” Once again pushing herself back onto her feet, Anne drudged from the shop and back into the bar, which now had a massive extra door that presumably had been created by the recent rush of very sharp air, practically ripping the wall from its surrounds. By the time that she had made it back to the bar after her recent ‘flying excursion’, someone was bellowing in it for her return, howling about something or other like a lonely old dog.

”Keep your pants on…” Pushing through the debris created by the crevasse that was once the bar’s wall, Anne found herself back in what remained of the light of the bar, standing opposite to the guy from earlier on.
This guy again? But there’s something different about him… Something about the creepy mask wearing guy had changed, but Anne couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly is was… Everything she saw before was still there; swords, weird clothes, eerie mask, but something about the man before her had shifted.
It doesn’t matter; I don’t have time to be checking out his fashion… A quick scan of the bar area had told the pirate that Chloe was no longer there, presumably having been dragged off by the cohorts of the creepy mask guy while Anne was plough through brickwork.

”Trying to buy your friends escape time, huh?” Anne was in no mood for messing around, with her recent rough treatment and situation with her friend, the cheer that the girl had demonstrated earlier in the day had been lost, even if temporarily. If this creepy guy wanted a fight, she’d give him everything that she had, and while that didn’t mean the use of a fancy pair of swords or the expertise to weave destruction from the air itself with them, what she could bring to the ‘table’ was a whole lot of fighting experience, some pretty wicked strength and martial arts, as well as the heart of a ferocious lioness. While she was a pretty simple minded and peaceful girl when the situation around her allowed it, it was a completely different matter when her friends were in trouble; in those cases, the docile kitten that people might have mistaken Anne for could become a terrifying beast indeed.

Reaching for the long length of leather on her hip, and snatched it from the belt around her waist and unfurled the whip which Anne used to supplement her somewhat unorthodox fighting style. A calm immersed the battlefield in the briefest of moments before it was replaced by an oncoming storm, and with a battlecry, the Brennan girl launched into assault on the swordsman, hooking her foot around what was left of a battered bar table and tossing it at her foe as like she was kicking a soccer ball. Against a foe wielding sharp blades that could project themselves at a distance like this, Anne would need to close that gap so that she could deploy her own frightening powers, so she darted behind the table in a sprint, using its size to hide her movements as she approached from behind the visual cover. Snapping her arm out to the side, in the same motion Mrs Brennan shot her whip out from her, looking to snag an advantage that had caught her eye in the earlier scan of the scene…

[thormundsson]

Ogatai was impressed that the woman emerged mostly unscathed from his strike against the house. Most foes would have at least moved back or think twice about attacking him but this girl seemed more than eager to take him on. That only spurred Ogatai on more than ever. The girl's moves were athletic but she was at a disadvantage against his fighting style and he wasn't about to let her get close enough to fix that. With a casual flicker of his blades he sent a rippling slice through the air and straight for the table that the girl had kicked at him. It was a brutish and straight-forward kind of attack and as the table was cut in half he had to wonder if the girl was really that bad at fighting. Certainly she hadn't hoped that such an attack would have actually hurt him.

That's when the second desk hit him straight in the sides and sent him flying into a pile of broken chairs and a part of the wall. The whole wooden pile went to bits but it still stung more than he had anticipated. So the girl was better than she looked, it would have taken strength far beyond a normal human and speed equal to his own to hit him without him noticing it. He smiled a bit as he spit out a small gob of blood from beneath his mask, this might prove a challenge enough to improve his skills.

To his left he could hear his father speaking. The old man was always educating and even the loss of his life didn't seem to have 'caused him to change his ways. Now he stood all primed and ready just at the edge of Ogatai's vision. As always he had the right idea, telling Ogatai to keep the girl away from him. The woman's fighting style spoke of someone trying to harass him before she could get in close and really hurt. He nodded slightly in the direction of his father, muttering a thanks as he knew what he had to do.

With one fluid motion he got to a crouched position and then jumped as hard and high in the air as he could drawing his blades back in a stabbing motion. Then he began to repeatedly stab in an arcing motion downwards, letting each strike echo through the air and fly towards the girl. He narrowed the area that he could spread it to, aiming to cause more and more damage to the girl and the remains of the bar. "Rain of Iron" he shouted as the full power of the attack was unleashed. There was a sound of thunder as he did and the small echos of his attacks seemed to solidify and harden, raining down like thousands of little blades, cutting through what was left of the bar, completely destroying the wall that was behind the girl. The attack wasn't his most devastating but it was almost impossible to dodge without some sort of magical assistance and that was something he needed to play to.

"Let her try and catch him up here with the winds" he thought to himself, bouncing on one leg in the air like some strange bird. The winds themselves were his allies and he wasn't going to let some woman take him down. What could she do on the ground against someone in the air...

[EriChar]

“Whoa!” Chasing the table that she had kicked in front of herself, Anne Brennan had the sudden need to reposition herself as it ruptured into splinters in front of her, a wave of deadly compressed air akin to the one that had destroyed the store front a few minutes earlier now turning the wooden chair accompaniment to kindling in front of her eyes. Ducking down and to her side, Anne threw herself out of the berth of the destructive surge of airflow, but even with the cat-like combat reflexes that she could demonstrate, it didn’t stop the sting of pain digging its way into her arm. Caught with the heightened discomfort that only a blade edge could inspire, the pirate girl forced herself to ignore the sensation of her skin being torn by the outer edge of so simple and attack and instead grasped the leather length of whip in her hands, pulling it tightly towards her body as she twisted around and dragged a second table from the ground a few feet away, having snagged it earlier on while chasing the first countertop.

“Hnnngggg!” Mouth broad through effort rather than happiness, Anne bore her fangs as she pulled the bench across the bar, using the objects that were strewn across the room as weapons, to equalize what the masked enemy before had within his hands. Though she often fought with a whip in her hand, Anne tended to classify herself more as a ‘fist-fighter’ than anything, employing her animal-hide made weapon usually as something of a side arm to support her skills in brawling, particular against armed foes like this. Obviously, the girl was at a distinct disadvantage against people who used weapons; even without the dangerous ‘Air Blades’ that this exotic fencer could produce, the edge of a sword or spear could quickly make mincemeat of a girl before she ever had a chance to land a blow if she wasn’t careful. That’s why she was using the whip and furniture in the bar as additional weaponry; she needed to keep those nasty edges busy while she could get close enough to deploy the full weight of her own arsenal. This approach was one that Miss Brennan had developed as a seasoned fighter on a pirate ship, as this wasn’t anywhere close to the first time that Anne had received occasion to match wits and weapons with a swordsman, though it was the first time in a while that she had met an opponent who was capable of causing her injury with a simple sword manoeuvre alone.

It was the fact that her opponent had been the one to draw first blood that made the moment when Anne’s second tossed table hit him feel all the more sweet, the vision of the creepy katana-mask being smashed into a pile of chairs inspiring a slight sense of satisfaction in Anne, but she knew the battle was far from over yet.
“Come on, Masky, I know that isn’t everything you’ve got…” Shaking her wounded arm a couple of times, Anne raised her fists again and waited for her opponents next move, knowing that someone who could apparently shrug off being kicked through a wall by her would not be beaten by a blow struck by any sort of wooden yo-yo table.
As she had predicted, the pirate girl’s opponent had indeed not been defeated by the flying bench, but she still found herself to be a little surprised when the sword-wielding combatant sprang upwards and into the air, keeping her arms up and eyes on him, expecting a lunging attack.

However, no such lunge was made, and with a few blinks, Anne watched her opponent with a sense of bemusement as she seemed to just flailing his swords in the air, like he was thrusting at an invisible foe between the two of them.
What the… It wasn't until a sharp sting in her cheek burst with a plume of blood that Mrs Brennan even realized that she was being attacked, and within a short space of time, the body of the pirate girl felt like there was a swarm of wasps striking at the space all around her. As the attack intensified from a single sting to a barrage of what felt like needles, the clothes and flesh of Anne Brennan exploded into tears, the fact that she was being attacked by tiny versions of the earlier blades of air finally dawning on the girl.
Damnit, pinned me down… Buckling slightly, the multiple points of pain that stung like notes of a song from around her body began to overwhelm the Brennan girl’s ability to ignore her pain, forcing her to release a small groan as her knees and body bent under the weight of her opponent’s attack.
“I don’t… Have time…” As painful as it was to feel the sensation of being stung in dozens of places all over your body at the same time, what overrode that feeling in Anne was one of frustration and desperation; every moment that she spent ‘fooling around’ with this guy was a moment that the rest of the kidnappers would get further away with Chloe.

“I need to save her!” Anne was not the type of who would carefully mask her thoughts or feelings, wearing her heart on her sleeve and acting more out of impulse than intelligent intent. Her frustration and anger getting the better of her, the widow of James Brennan flung herself back into the action quite literally, forsaking the damage that she might receive to her body at least for the moment. Permitting herself to buckle fully down, the pirate girl dropped her whip and placed her palms onto the ground, pushing against the floor with both the power in all of her limbs. Propelled into the air even through the harsh rain of stinging air strikes, force that Anne had driven herself with only furthered the damage that those tiny blades of artificial wind did, and around body a mixture of clothing, blood and even stray strands of her hair was cast off by the speeding strikes. However, it did not stop her assault; as painful as this sensation was, it was nothing compared to how awful it felt to lose a friend or loved one, and instead she let out a yell as the girl fought her way through the rain of wicked needles.
Closing in on her opponent, Anne drew her fist close to her chest and snapped it out at the creepy sworsman’s torso, looking to stab straight through her target with her bear hand alone. Anne Brennan was a girl who was endowed with a lot of physical strength; however, it was the speed of her striking blows that gave the girl’s combat style such devastating power. With her limb rocketing in the direction of her foe at a speed that your average eye would find to be almost unnoticeable, the corner of her mouth curled into a small grin as she felt her arm arrive at its longest reach.
“Echo Snap!” Her hand drawn back a few inches, Anne Brennan unleashed the most basic move of her martial arts arsenal, but it was by no means less devastating for its rudimentary level. Twisting her wrist and forcing it forwards again, the pirate girl unleashed a second strike only a moment after the first, unleashing the full potential of her ‘Echo’ onto the masked swordsman in front of her…

SPOILER: Click to show

Echo Snap
A simple snap punch, using the principle of Anne’s ‘Echo’ to increase its attack power. Using a fast, straight armed punch, Anne’s wrist and hand flicker slightly on impact, as she imparts the second part of the punch, giving the hit a little bit of a delayed effect. At its current level, this single punch has the offensive power to break through thick rock.

[thormundsson]

Ogatai felt a tinge of satisfaction that the girl did indeed seem bloody and damaged from his attack. That rain he created had a special place in his arsenal as an attack that would wear an opponent down. The added theatrics that followed, the sounds of the attack, were usually enough to take down entire regiments of soldiers and he was certain that the girl wasn't walking away from this unscathed. What he hadn't counted on was her apparent toughness that was belayed by her lithe body. As he bounced on one leg in mid air he was immensely interested to see the girl drop down to all fours. He had expected some sort of result from the attack but outright surrender seemed impossible.

That's when the girl came rocketing up towards him. His eyes widened in surprise and the mask he wore went all chaotic and insane, as if a wave of insects was crawling underneath it. He moved his blades to counter but he already knew it was too late. Somewhere off in the distance he could hear his grandfather shouting a line of warning, that the dying serpent bites the hardest. He half wanted to ignore the old geezer but something told him that he was right, as the old man had a tendency to be. He should have remembered that idiom when he engaged against this girl, he could have saved himself a lot of pain.

The blow that tore into his body was a hundred times more powerful than any punch he had ever taken. He considered him on par with every fighter he had met but in this case he knew he had at least met a match, if not only in pure strength. He had hoped his breastplate would protect him but he realized he hadn't been wearing it, it was still lying in his sack on the ground. Of all the moments to have some added protection this would most certainly be the one he'd regret the most. The muscles in his abdomen hardened reflexively to try and avoid most of the damage but he already knew the result. With himself being positioned in mid air he had nothing to fall back on and so was sent rocketing some 50 meters further into the air, his lungs emptying completely so as to survive destruction from the blow. Fortunately he was able to stop himself at that point, managing to somehow stay in the air, using his wind step technique to keep himself floating. The taste of blood was thick in his mouth and he had to spit some of it out. The girl had most certainly succeeded in hurting him, that was for sure.

But he wasn't about to go down without a strike back and as a reaction to slowing down he drew both his blades in close and started spinning. It was as if his whole body was transformed into a hurricane whose tip was aimed straight at the girl that was still hovering in the air below him. He dove down, each second increasing the speed of his spinning and the speed of his attack, diving like a lance through the air. "Hurricane Lance" came a shrieking sound from within the tornado of blades as he impacted with the girl.

"Time for you to go down!" He shouted as his lance met her strength in mid-air, the two fighters impacting like a bomb as the blast waves tore through the air and sent half the bar, the debris that was the bar that is, flying off into the distance....

SPOILER: Click to show

Hurricane Lance: coming down from spinning wind he uses a move similar to his Hurricane Slash as well as combining aspects of Spinning Wind to project himself downwards at an enemy like a lance. This is a fairly accurate attack that can aim for a specific enemy, most powerful against a single foe and little use against a mass of enemies.

[EriChar]

Now, that felt like it hit hard! Even in a circumstance such as this, with her body reverberating with the sensation of extreme discomfort that the several dozen small wounds that she had endured from the recent attack, there was still a sense of satisfaction that washed over Anne Brennan being when her fist plunged hard into her opponent. As she felt the weight of her hit drive deep into the body of the creepy mask-sporting swordsman, a short, small smile crept into the corner of the girl’s mouth; a sign of the temporary relief that had filled her entire body, thanks both to the cessation of the assault upon her, as well as the fulfilled desire to strike back against it.
However, the sense of relief was only a fleeting feeling, which quickly passed by the girl when her attack was finished, as Anne was now stuck in mid-air close to her opponent, without really having considered a plan of action following the blow that she had just delivered. The grin turning to a grimace on the face of the pirate girl, as she saw her foe, apparently not having been completely incapacitated by the weight of her earlier attack, now preparing his own counter-strike to the one which Mrs Brennan herself had delivered, his blades and body turning in mid-air and descending towards her. It was only at this point that the pirate girl recognised her opponent’s rather odd ability to move and direct him in mid-air, a skill that Anne herself was sorely lacking. In these kinds of situations, Anne tended to use the grab and drag that her leather whip could provide in order to give herself some limited evasive capabilities when not capable of propelling her along the surfaces, but there was a problem with that idea, at the moment. Such an action would have been warmly welcomed by the Brennan girl, if it had not been hindered by the rather annoying fact that the long length of lashing leather was now situated several feet beneath the girl, having been dropped in Anne’s powerful ascent into the sky; Anne Brennan had no chance of dodging the attack, without a chance to move herself in the air.

This is gonna smart like a b******… With no choice but to do what she could to minimize the damage, Anne hatched the best plan that she was capable of in the brief moments before the attack hit her, and threw herself at the attack. Thrusting her already injured arm at the twirling pirouette of cutting power, the pirate girl did what she could in twisting her body to move around the path of the attack, but to the scarcest of effects; her opponent clearly outmatched her in the air, and where she could assume he could dance around in the sky like a fluttering butterfly, Anne was at best a leaping monkey. Moving at most a foot or two by flinging the weight of her body around, Mrs Brennan did indeed not avoid completely the weight of the attack, as she hadn’t expected she would, and quickly felt the heat of pain as the sharpness of a blade dug into her skin.
Not a girl who wore armour or any sort of protective apparel anywhere on her body, Anne felt the burning sensation of pain as the contradictory cold edge of a sword penetrated her form, passing through her like a warm knife would through butter. Letting out a pained howl, thick streams of blood were torn loose from her skin, as her opponent’s blades gouged through her arm, but this was not the limit of the damage done to her. Pushed by now by the blasting force of air that accompanied her path of the sword’s edge, the tearing of Anne’s arm and torso was made more severe as she was sent spiralling away from her opponent, for the second time today having someone cast her through the sky like a thrown rag doll. Carried by the force of the blow and the spiralling trajectory that it gave her, the motion of Anne Brennan’s body was abruptly halted as the young woman plummeted through what was left of the tavern’s bar, smashing and splintering wood as the girl crashed to an abrupt halt in a mess of timber, becoming buried in the wreck that the landing had created. Nested in the wood and broken crockery, the pirate girl looked skyward as she lay on her back, a sick stream of blood pouring from the deep wounds that her opponent had given her; crimson rivers flowing from several places in her arm, as well as a deep gash in her waist as well.

That might not have been my best plan… Above Anne’s eyes, the ceiling wobbled and darkened, her vision doing its best to fade from her eyes as the pain of the attack and landing seized hold of her, the shock of injury and blood loss doing its damnedest to rob the pirate girl of her consciousness.
The steady streams from the ‘wasp stings’ done earlier mingled with the deep, dark tributaries of blood caused by the spinning attack of the mask-wearing foe, making Anne’s body appear to be a map of wicked wounding, the girl’s fists and jaw clenching hard as she fought the almost overwhelming temptation to pass out.
No, I can’t… I need to be stronger than this… Her vision fading and hazing, Anne’s mind could no longer focus on the environment around her, so she was instead compelled to concentrate on other things, the girl searching her mind for an image to awaken herself again.
You wouldn’t let wounds this light take you down, would you my love? It was, of course, the startling sight of a dark haired man, even more caked in claret than Anne was now which forced her mind back into sobriety, the image of her bloody husband standing tall to defend her all those years ago which chased away the drunkenness of near-defeat from his wife’s mind, instilling the courage and determination within her heart for her to force her body into motion again.

A blood covered mitt snapping upwards to Anne’s collarbone, the silky bow that wrapped around the girl’s neck was unknotted by a shaky hand, and pulled from it, which the pirate gripped and pushed herself out of the debris in a roll. With a wobble, the young woman forced herself up onto her feet slowly, seizing the sleeve of her damaged arm and winding the long ribbon around it, like a make shift bandage. Vision still hazy, Anne’s glassy eyes were forced into focus as she scanned around the room for a sign of her opponent, who by now was no doubt waiting for another chance to strike, but before the pirate had a chance to recognise something with her eyes, the girls ears were instead alerted to a new presence in the bar.

“YOU TWO ARE UNDER ARREST!” Her focusing vision called to the entrance-way of the bar through which Anne had entered a few minutes of pain before, the Brennan girl saw standing a flank of white-dressed bodies. Pure colours gleaming like lights in the dark of the night, the new entrants to the bar were in no way support for the pirate girl, and in fact were the very opposite thing to that; Marines.

“Damnit…” Woozy from her injuries and thoroughly aggravated at having not only a mask guy, but also a platoon of Marines as her enemies, Anne had neither the energy nor mood to throw any more of an curse out from herself. Quieted from battle wear, if at least for the moment, the fledgling pirate captain raised her wobbly fists in front of her, ready to do battle with any and all that came her way…

[thormundsson]

Ogatai wasn't sure how the girl had managed it but she had somehow put his attack off it's trajectory. Weather it was skill or pure luck in the face of an overwhelming opponent he couldn't tell and that alone was pretty annoying. What was more irritating is that his trip and attack was about to end in a spectacularly, painful looking, pile of rubble. The problem with his areal techniques is that they counted upon the fact that most enemies weren't used to fighting in the air and that gave him an advantage. He had not been so fortunate in this battle and it hurt like hell.

As he crashed into the rubble he could feel the weight of his body being cushioned by something made of flesh and clothes, apparently he had hit somebody as he landed. The cloud of dust and splinters that was thrown up concealed him almost completely and he was able to get up and get his bearing before the could evaporated. He had to pick a few splinters out of his clothes and he was sure he'd dislocated his arm, at least that's what it felt like when he wrenched it back into it's socket. The pain was immense but somewhere along the line he had gotten used to all the agony of battle. He had trained so long and so hard and fought so many battles since he was young that something as trivial as a dislocated shoulder didn't bother him. He did feel a trickle of blood from a number of points on his body, aftereffect of diving head first into pieces of wood and glass.

As the smoke cleared he saw the girl, obviously wounded but standing completely still. He was about to rush at her when he noticed that the two of them were surrounded by a small host of white clad men. The so called Marines of the World Government had arrived, to take both of them into custody. Ogatai wasn't about to come quietly yet, he had that young waitress to save and he wasn't going to be kept down by some low tier foot soldiers. That girl had been taken due to the foolishness of that red haired girl and he wasn't going to let it slide.

"Idiots, I'm here to save a girl that was just kidnapped!" Ogatai shouted as he stepped forward, lurching a bit to the side as he lost his balance for a bit. "That moron of a red hair is in league with the kidnappers, trying to keep me from saving the girl, take her down!" Ogatai continued, his voice filled with anger as he took another two steps towards the girl. These marines were in the way and he had no time to explain this stuff to them. The didn't seem to care in the slightest about what he was saying, like the girls life was worth less than the possible capture of a pirate or a renegade. It infuriated Ogatai to no and despite his previous experience as a soldier.

He hefted both swords up, reading his stance, the marines tightening their grips on the guns as they shouted for him to drop his weapons. Ogatai's mask whirled around in horrible patters, changing from skull to spider to a strange tornado like look, as his face twisted in anger, though nobody could see that. "Hurricane slash!" he shouted as he performed his move, sending a wave of attacks outwards from him, the marines flying off or falling down, cut as if a sword had impacted on their bodies.

"What do you have to say for yourself, girl!" Ogatai shouted as he grabbed her clothes, wrenching her face barely an inch from his own.

[EriChar]

The iron sights of set of muskets aimed within the direction of the pirate girl, Anne Brennan threw herself forwards wearily, rolling forwards on the lone ‘good’ arm that she still had left, her apex being carried forwards and over the head of the girl who wheeled away from the hot balls of steel launched by cracking ammunition. Skidding slightly along the ground as the angry lumps of metal met with the wall behind where she had moments before been standing, Mrs Brennan gave out a slight, pained groan as the entirety of her body stung from the wounds accumulated in the battle with the swordsman, the bruises of impacts and incisions of blades were making their presence known with a sorrowful song of soreness. When Anne’s motion across the bar floor finally ceased, the girl found that good fortune had not yet abandoned her, as laying on the ground next to her head’s resting place was an old ally; her leather whip which she had previously been forced to drop.
Great, could use your help… Gripping the wound in her side with her weakened and injured ‘bad’ arm, with the one that retained most of its mobility, Anne Brennan scooped the grip of her leather whip between her thumb and index finger, regaining what she could of her full arsenal.

Rolling out of the next danger area that those nasty Marine rifles created was not a pleasurable experience for the pirate when crosshairs were again aligned, agony emanating from the injuries to the girl’s arm and waist wounds as her body rolled like a keg across the bar.
I’m not going to get away from these guys by throwing my body around the bar… Groaning again because of injuries pulsing with a heavy throb of pain, Anne forced her whip-gripping fist into the floor and forced herself back to her feet, ready to launch an attack on the pesky Marines, but instead her attention was captured by another foe; the dangerous swordsman was still in the fight, a fact which she had briefly forgot in her attempts to avoid the intent of the white-clothed lawmen.

“Huh? Save the girl?” Despite having her whip holding mitt ready for a fight, Anne’s battle-readiness was thrown off by the strange statement of the mask-wearing swordsman, whom she had guessed had been here as an agent of the bad guys. With that creepy looking mask and those wicked looking blades, this guy had ‘sketchy bad guy’ written all over him, so it was only natural for a girl as intellectually disinclined as Anne Brennan was to assume he was a bad guy; he may as well have been tweaking a thin moustache and ruffling a long, black cape. Though, if one judged him by his previous statement, they might have to admit that the pirate girl may have been mistaken in her impression of him.
“I’m not one of the kidnappers… I’m here to save the girl! You mean Chloe, right?!” With the same level of efficiency that he had met her, to the injured Anne’s relief, the swordsman seemed to dispose of the intrusive marines with another of those potentially pesky slashy-air moves, disposing of their obstruction in seconds; something that the misplaced Miss Chloe might have benefitted from much sooner. It was perhaps with a large helping of irony that recent revelation of the swordsman’s inclination cast a new light on their current and previous battle; the pair of them had been fighting as hard as they could to beat the other, assuming that their opponent was connected to the miscreants that had made off with the barmaid, while all they actually achieved was the injury of the young woman’s potential saviour, and the gift of extra getaway time for the real enemy.


“Wa ha ha ha ha ha ha… Whoops, Sorry Masky, I thought you were a bad guy, what with the mask and all…” Her body being held by the masked swordsman, the intensity of the man’s bearing was lost on the red-haired pirate girl, who flopped around in his grip chuckling, the wave of relief at the elimination of her enemies getting the better of her for a moment.
“It’s good you’re not; you’re a tough guy to beat!” Wincing as she absent-mindedly attempted to scratch the back of her head with the limb that had been injured, Mrs Brennan demonstrated a far more commonly seen aspect of her personality than the angry and determined opponent that she had been in their earlier battle, now resuming the carefree and almost child-like approach with which she tended to take in almost everything outside of fighting. Wriggling her way free from the grip of the swordsman like a child freeing themselves from a parents grip in a playground, Anne rolled her arm over and looked at her wounded arm, frowning at the bloody build up that was accumulating on the piece of apparel which had been wrapped around it.
“Tch. I guess this is ruined… Wonder if any of those guys have some bandages?” Trotting away from the swordsman like a curious little girl, Mrs Brennan pranced down to the limp bodies of the Marine troop and began poking around them, digging in their pockets and packs for a sign of medical supplies. Anne was, of course, no sort of doctor, but she did have enough experience of sea life and the injuries it incurred in order to be able to put simple dressings on her wounds. She might not have been able to ‘cure’ the injuries that the mask-guy had caused her, but Miss Brennan could do a good job of stopping them hampering her any more than they were.

“Oh, yeah, Chloe!” Apparently the recent turn of events and damage to clothing had distracted Anne from the task at hand, the rescue of the young friend whom she had gained a bond and then seen abducted, and the pirate girl absent-mindedly chirped up when she remembered what they were supposed to be doing; saving the damsel in distress. It was perhaps not the most inspiring event to be witnessed, for the young woman who aspired to lead a gang of pirates, to have completely forgotten their current goal, if only temporarily. While the majority of her hair was red, the blonde tips of her tresses apparently had much influence over her character, unfortunately.
“If you’re not on their side, we can’t waste time fighting or chatting, we need to help her… C’mon!” Standing and stuffing a handful of retrieved wound-bindings into her pocket, Anne Brennan dashed through the door of the bar, attempting to wind a dressing around the wound on her waist as she sprinted through the street outside…

[thormundsson]

Ogatai was stunned silent even as a bullet or two bit through the skin on his shoulder. The wounds hurt but the girl's words had him so surprised he barely felt it. She had, in a move that Ogatai could at best describe as foolish, and at worst describe as utterly retarded, decided that he was the bad guy on the virtue of his mask. It she was this prone to make decisions based on looks he was almost certain she was not here by her on plans but rather had been swept here by a moronic and strange reason. The mask he was wearing shifted into a completely blank slate of white, showing no markings or any sort of facial features. It was a fitting look as underneath his mouth was wide open in utter surprise.

If the girl could see what he saw she would have either laughed or gasped. His entire family was racked up around the scene, face after face, person after person, all aligned in a circle staring at the girl, echoing his own feeling that this was possibly one of the simplest persons in the whole world. They looked from one to another and then to the girl, some of them trying to shut their mouths from the whole surprise. After what felt like an hour but was possibly only a few seconds, Ogatai realized he didn't have time to be worrying about this anymore. The girl's laugh and sudden turn to childish behavior was equally stunning but Ogatai could at least accept her sentiment. He doubted he himself would have hesitate to intervene in the fight with the big, club-wielding, guy. Certainly when he thought about it he was a very observant man, capable of picking up the most miniscule detail that any other might have overlooked. But with that came the realization that his outfit and demeanor wasn't exactly that of someone who ran to people's aids. So with all of that in mind he supposed the girl's actions were, well rational was too strong, at least in the right mind.

"I....ammmm...uhhhh....yeah...." Ogatai sort of stuttered out, still trying to grasp the situation. At least the girl wasn't an enemy of his and that helped him immensely. He was going to have to pull himself together and fight off these marines. He had no interest in fighting their higher ups as it was now, the stories of the marine HQ fighters were terrifying, even if only half was true. "Let's get away from here to begin with" He called to the girl who seemed keen on the idea as well, rushing forward over the debris as the two of them tried to escape from the whole scene. It was amazing how, in spite of all the injury they had sustained, the duo could spring to life with such whim and vigor.

In a weird moment he saw a man crawl from underneath a broken table that had been destroyed in the progress of the fight. The man wore not outfit a marine would wear and he had this thuggish air around him, despite the obvious wounds and bleeding scars. He looked tough but so did most people Ogatai met. It suddenly dawned on him that this must have been the man that the girl had clogged on the head as she entered the bar. He was most likely an accomplice of the huge club fighter, and so probably knew where he was hiding out. With a quick motion he let one of his swords ring back into it's scabbard and turned his run slightly towards the right so as to pass over the man. With a fluid motion he jumped in a circle, and when he felt the man's clothes beneath his fingers he yanked him along for the ride. The confused man shouted in panic as he was ripped from his resting place to join the swordsman in his escape.

"Come on this way, girl, I think we can have a chat with this fellow and find out where they took the waitress!" He shouted as he leaped up onto a stack of barrels and then again up to the nearest roof, vanishing from the marine's sights. He almost keeled over when he landed, his wounded body wasn't ready for this amount of work. The girl's punch had really smarted. He swung back to make sure the girl had joined him, shouting at her as he did. "You might just be alright with me, even if you are a blithering idiot" he said as his mask twitched into a hideous grin.

At least they had a lead to find the missing waitress...

[EriChar]

“RAHHHHHH!!!!” Sprinting down the near-pitch black street outside the broken bar, Anne Brennan bayed loudly with a raging battle cry, the stupor with which her battle and crash landing afflicted her having now apparently passed by. Wounds still stinging with pain, despite having been dressed, the loudness and rowdiness of her behaviour was motivated by a need to stay her discomfort; something to take her mind off the throbbing agony that emanated from the woman’s arm and waist.
“COME BACK HERE, BASTARDS!!!” Howling at the top of her lungs, there was no question of the pirate’s spirit for battle, but perhaps what one might observe to be lacking was intelligence. Not simply in terms of her own quotient pertaining to intellect, which perhaps was on the humble side, but currently Mrs Brennan was also lacking in direction; despite the bluster with which she was sweeping the dark streets, Anne had no idea where Chloe was, or even in which direction her abductors had absconded with her in. Getting knocked through a wall had not been a good start in the rescue attempt, and then mistakenly battling a fellow rescuer while the real ‘bad guys’ were gifted with ample escape time; it had to be observed that Anne was indeed more suited to the life of a pirate than that of a heroine.
“Where the hell are you?!?!” After several minutes of hurried rushing around, Anne had ducked around all of the backstreets and alleyways around the bar, but to no avail; finding herself having dashed around the surroundings of the tavern but not discovered any sort of sign which would indicate where Chloe or her kidnappers had disappeared to.

“Huh, what was that?” Ear twitching into reception, the target of Anne’s focus moved to the swordsman with whom she had so recently been battling, who had beckoned for her attention briefly before disappearing up the side of a building, and onto the rooftop above it.
“Ah, good thinking, maybe we can see them if we get higher?” Flashing a thumbs-up to the climbing samurai, Anne followed suit, scaling the side of the building with climbing skills which had been well developed since her childhood. Thanks to the benefits of a self-taught technique which she had dubbed ‘Lightning Climb’, Mrs Brennan was more than capable of dashing up the side of the structure without the user of her arms, something for which the arm of hers which had been battered in the recent battle was quite thankful for; whilst it retained some of its motion despite being slashed and bound, it was by no means a comfortable exercise to employ the wounded limb in any manner other than rest, giving the pirate woman what was essentially a crippled limb, for the time being.

“Whaa, tired out from that little climb, huh masky?” Finding that her improvised companion had been buckled to a temporary exhaustion by the climb, the pirate girl offered him the sympathy of a seasoned nurse, conveying playful competition rather than kindness, as it seemed more the appropriate response to someone whose life you had been aiming to rob away only a handful of minutes previously. Anne Brennan might have been a bit dim in most circumstance, but she was not so lacking in illumination that she couldn’t tell that he too was suffering a little from the effect of their battle, but that didn’t stop her getting a few licks of her own in at the ailing sight of the mask-wearing man.
“Ha ha, I suppose you did take quite a wallop from me…” Scratching the back of her head with her usual pout, Anne was rather relaxed despite the urgency of her situation; a habit which she’s picked up from her husband, Jim Brennan, due to his rather unperturbed approach to even the direst of circumstance.
“Here, maybe these can help?” Digging around in her pocket for a second, the relaxed wife pulled from the clothing pouch what remained of the medical supplies which she had filched from the fallen Marines, offering them to her identity-concealed ally in an attempt to make up for the fact that the vast majority of his injuries had been inflicted by her.

“Oh, who’s this guy…? Your friend?” Noticing that the two of them weren’t the only ones upon the roof in the moonlight, Anne peered through the luminosity that was cast by the lunar object in the sky at the figure who had accompanied ‘Masky’ to the rooftop, her head tilting as she scanned over the details of the other man.
Huh, haven’t I…? There was something about the new face and even the other’s body and clothing that made Miss Brennan feel that this person was not entirely unfamiliar; she had seen this person before somewhere, and quickly the woman’s brain caught up with that sense of acquaintance.

“Ah, I remember you!” Anne’s mental time rewinding, the pirate woman recalled where she had seen this not-so-new face again; when she’d burst into the bar before to rescue Chloe, this greasy and now dust and debris-caked fool had been trying to wrestle her away again, which had earned him a hard punch from Anne in her defence. Mrs Brennan had assumed that all the kidnappers had fled whilst the fight between herself and the mysterious masked swordsman, so it was to her, something of a lucky break to find one of them now relaxing on the roof in the moonlight, the girl not realizing that he had been brought up to the top of the tiles by her new companion.

“Why’re you on the roof?! Ah, wait, more importantly… What did you do with Chloe?” Seeing a chance to seek Chloe in a way that wasn’t running and breaking down doors at random, with her good and functional arm, the pirate girl hoisted the captured would-be kidnapper up by his collar and glowered at him as best as she could; though her face was more attuned to that cute habitual pouting than shows of intimidation.
“Damnit… Tell meeeeee where she issssss!!!” You might have expected that a hardened pirate would have at their disposal far crueller means of information extraction than the meagre methods that Anne had at her disposal, but that didn’t mean that the Pirate Mrs’s measures weren’t effective.

“Uuugh… Alright, I’ll tell you, just stop shaking me! I’m gonna be sick!” Waggling her victim back and forth violently, like one might to create a cocktail, Mrs Brennan’s method of quite literally shaking the information from her seemed to prove effective, and so she dumped him down on the roof in front of her.

“C’mon then, get on with it…” Continuing with her rather vulgar methodology of torture, Anne Brennan now raised her heel high above the crotch of her tossed torture victim, ensuring that the man was not reconsidering her decision to the spill the secrets which the woman wished to hear.

“Gah, the docks! We take the girls to a warehouse on the docks!” Whimpering as he sung like the proverbial canary, the stool pigeon scurried away from Anne in fear as those beans were spilled, but apparently forgot that he was being interrogated on a roof. With a yelp, the man tipped himself off the side of the structure that Anne and the Mask-guy were standing on, plummeting to the floor with a scream that was deserving of the name ‘Willhelm’, which was unlikely to be his actual moniker.

“I guess that’s all we’ll get out of him, then… TO THE DOCKS!” Wasting no great amount of time in lamenting the fate of their informant, Anne thrust her arm in front of her into a defined, jabbing point, as the pirate girl set her eyes in the direction of the docks which lay beyond the landscape of the town. Dashing off at high speed, Anne Brennan knew that there was no time to lose; too much had already been wasted in her rather botched rescue attempt…

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Lightning Climb
A skill developed in her early teens for aiding her free running skills, which can come in quite handy in many situations. Using experiences and the strength of her legs, from a dash Anne can leap up against vertical surfaces and in a sort of ‘zigzag’ pattern, is capable of climbing them. In her teens Anne could only use this ability to gain the height needed to climb a tall wall or single story building, but thanks to the increases strength she has from her training in combat, Anne can now scale several stories with ease thanks to this ability.