Duties and Dreams

[pepsi]

With a dumb smile on her face Bellatrix watched the villager escape. Not even the tomato juice running down her face could distract her from her pride, then, seeing as she successfully attracted the Witch to come investigate.

After all, that was her plan: force the Witch to close the distance by trapping her in the same room as herself.
Back on Gaea Step, she would do this all the time when hunting the creatures that inhabit the wild landscape. She would lure in the monster and when the time was ripe - whack! - she'd come out of hiding and hit the bugger square on the head.
And she had mastered the art of charging her attack, while standing so incredibly still she became invisible to the eye.

"We've done the kitchen and the pantry now, so..."

Bellatrix jumped out from behind the counter, swinging her weapon above her head: a helm-splitting attack, aimed at the Witch - but strangely enough, the weapon faced the wrong way. Where the edge should have been was the dull side. "Gotcha!" she screamed, proud that she'd let the Witch come this close.
An attack like that would surely have left a dent in whatever it met - be it the floor or someone's bones.

-- NAME // Bellatrix Damasco

-- CLASS // E

-- TECHS USED // None.

[Jade]

"Gotcha!

Rhyme tilted her head back to fix the overbearing swordswoman with the evil eye out from beneath the wide brim of her hat - and the broom that had been resting on her shoulder suddenly flicked around, coming up in an arc to meet the side of the huge blade bearing down on the scrawny woman.

Where the bristles made contact, the blade was pushed, just as the pan that had been launched skyward had before. The blade's arc went wide, and instead of smashing the Witch, it crashed into and mostly destroyed the table of produce beside the Witch. "So, you've 'got me', huh? Sorry, but... Nah."

The diminutive woman bounded up onto the blade, and then up further onto the broken table - until she was high enough to once again look down on Bellatrix. Once she was there, she suddenly leaned in, such that the wide brim of her hat was pressed against the swordswoman's forehead, and at least made an attempt to bop Bella's nose with one finger.

"A big brute like you can't even touch me."

[pepsi]

The plan was perfect. Lure the Witch in, close the distance, then strike. It was the simplest, and yet most effective, plan that Bellatrix could cook up.
In spite of that, it failed completely. Even from up close, the Witch saw the attack coming and sidestepped it like the most natural thing in the world. The full weight of Agito came crashing down on the wooden floor, sending splinters in every direction and making the walls of the small house shake.
The Witch, nonchalantly, hopped on a shelf to close the height gap between the two. And then, she had the gall to say...

"A big brute like you can't even touch me."

Bella didn't like being called "a brute". It dumbed down everything she stood for: a warrior's pride, her strength, her vitality.
She felt a familiar flame spark inside.

Ever since she was a little child, Bella had a little problem. She was reckless, and she would often get herself into trouble. But when things didn't go her way, when she'd get upset over something, she would gradually lose her cheerful personality.
She would really become what she disliked. A "brute".

She pushed that flame back down, hoping to extinguish it. Her expression had already hardened, and the little touch on the nose didn't help.
"Stop calling me that" she said, under her breath. "If you haven't noticed, I'm not trying to be serious." Her hands' grip on the blade tightened, telegraphing an incoming attack. "I want..."

Another shave, this time horizontally aligned as to break through whatever the Witch had below her feet. "... Answers! And you are giving me none!"

-- NAME // Bellatrix Damasco

-- CLASS // E

-- TECHS USED // None.

[Jade]

Rhyme leaned back after bopping Bella's nose and flipped her broom around in lazy circles without any obvious aim. "Y'know, I'd been hoping that was the case, because it was either that or a really bad attempt at being serious," she responded.

The swipe of that oversized blade certainly broke the table the Witch had been standing on - but it didn't cut her down to size either. The spinning broom stopped and Rhyme simply held it, seemingly standing on nothing for a moment before her other hand also took the broom's handle and she positioned herself so she was sitting atop the implement. "I don't know what your aim here is, and quite frankly, I don't care. You came in swinging, and that means it's my job to send you packing like every other idiot who comes here once in a blue moon, thinking this sleepy little place would be a great hideout for them and their group. So, if you want answers...!"

The little Witch drifted lazily back through the air, her hat practically grazing the small store's ceiling - and then she dropped from the air and landed on her feet as gracefully as a cat, holding the broom she'd been sitting on like a staff. A moment later, she dashed forward, swinging the implement around at speed with the intent that the bristles would make contact with Bellatrix's body.

"Then come back when you've learned not to make a mess of peoples' sh*t!"

And if her swing connected, the power of her Witchcraft would send the warrior crashing out the front of the store, through the wooden wall.

[pepsi]

Bella's swing broke the table, but did not destabilise the Witch nearly as much. Indeed, she hopped on to one of her brooms - which seemed to appear really out of nowhere - and reconfirmed with straight conviction that she was not giving any answer, especially not to Bellatrix.
And before Bella could make sense of the situation, the bristles of that broom made contact.

"Then come back when you've learned not to make a mess of peoples' sh*t!"

In a flash, Bella felt an unstoppable push that swept her away. Her body crashed through the wooden wall, flied across the street, and smashed against a stone wall on the other side; the rocks falling over and covering her body concealed her presence. Agito, her large sword, stuck out from the pile of rubble like the gravestone for a warrior's burial.

A few things should be known about Bellatrix Damasco.

She was never one to fit in with the other kids her age. Be it because of her weird tail, that nobody could figure out whence it came from, or be it because she seemed to be hyperactive at all times, or be it because she always ended up hurting the other kids, Bella always stuck out like a sore thumb.
Even after she became a Hunter back in Gaea Step, at a very tender age, she had the tendency to destroy things and hurt others simply because she couldn't control her raw strength.
It didn't help that she would be mocked for it. Being called a brute, a dimwit, and generally being regarded as being able to do more harm than good; it all hurt her, quite a lot.
She thought she didn't have to deal with it once she was out of Gaea Step, but there she was.

And the Witch wasn't wrong either. What did she do, when she wanted to attract her attention? She destroyed a bunch of things.

As a matter of fact, Bella couldn't think of herself as anything other than a calamity. And that fire burning inside her was fueled by rage, by sadness, and grew stronger every time she thought of herself as such.
And because she was forced to come to terms with her calamitous existance, on that day, under that pile of rubble, she gave up for just a moment.

A hand emerged from the stone pile, knocking some of the rubble away. Soon, the rest of her body surfaced as well, but one could tell that whoever emerged from that burial had left Bellatrix Damasco well behind.
Her eyes white, her fangs even more prominent than they were before, Bella's face hardened into an uncharacteristically angered expression. She plucked the sword out of its resting spot, panting heavily, like an animal.

As if she had forgotten that the Witch was even there, she turned around to face at the rest of the wall that crumbled; one-handed, she swung her sword against it. The impact propagated through the entire surface, shattering every rock on its path, disintegrating what was once a solid rock wall.
She didn't even wait to watch the wall crumble before her on one side, that she swung again hitting the other side, the one that was still standing; and it was standing no more.

"RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

She roared, and lost her battle to keep that fire contained.

-- NAME // Bellatrix Damasco

-- CLASS // E

-- TECHS USED // None.

[Jade]

Rhyme dropped out of the air from her full-body swing, landing without grace onto her feet. The broom she held jerked up and back to keep her from falling forward, pulling the tiny young woman back up to her full and unimpressive height so that she could smugly admire her handiwork. A person-sized (and roughly shaped) hole had been left in the store's wall, and a trail of dust roughly marked the air through which the big brute had flown.

The little Witch flipped her broom about to rest on her shoulder as she stepped up, planted one foot on the splintered wood, and raised her free hand up to her face. The large brim of her hat was pushed aside as she mimed keeping the sun out of her eyes, peering out after where her opponent had gone, smirking all the while. "Probably broke a few bones," she said, mostly to herself, and then leaned back a bit; her hand moved down to hold her chin as she made a mockery of a thoughtful expression. "At least two ribs on her left side, maybe a fractured forearm... 'Course, she was a hardheaded one. Hopefully we at least cracked that."

She hopped out of the building through the hole in the wall just in time for the bellowing roar ripped through the relative quiet of the now seemingly abandoned village, sending birds flying from the nearby trees.

"RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

"Tch, or not..." Rhyme responded, more to herself than the brute while she stuck her pinky finger into her one ear and spun it about. "Maybe she'll have blown her vocal chords out..."

[pepsi]

Bellatrix was blind. Losing control over her emotions meant that she was nearly unresponsive to external stimuli except for the strongest: pain, strong smells, loud noises. With Agito in her hands, in that berserker-like state, she was...

... the embodiment of ruin and everything she hated about herself.

Another brash motion, this time causing Agito to fall down vertically onto the stone pavement; the brick road was split in two, and a rift was opened that reached from her feet to the other side of the road. The crevice walked up a building, permanently compromising its structural integrity.

Bella's raven hair projected shade on her face, hiding her expression and concealing her eyes. Panting heavily like a predator after a fight, she murmured: "I..."
Suddenly, her gaze locked onto the Witch. She rested Agito on her shoulder, and started charging towards her. Mailposts, benches and fences couldn't restrain her and were trampled in her frenzied run.

Under her breath, she declared: "... I hunt."

An obvious, frontal attack towards the Witch; when she finally reached close enough Bellatrix attempted to take yet another swing at her - downwards, so that even if she would dodge, the ground would split once more and cause more havoc.

-- NAME // Bellatrix Damasco

-- CLASS // E

-- TECHS USED // None.

[Jade]

Rhyme flicked the little bit of earwax and gunk off her pinky's nail in a quick motion, rushing the fingertip over the pad of her thumb, all the while keeping her eye on the big brute.

Perhaps as an attempt at intimidation, the great big sword Bellatrix was swinging around slammed into the ground and caused a rift to open in the earth, reaching far beyond the blade's point of entry. Rhyme trailed it for a second with her eyes, but put Bella back in her sights long before it traveled past her and up a nearby building's wall - the sound of it was enough to keep tabs on it, she didn't need her eyes to tell her what was happening. The Witch's face betrayed just exactly how unimpressed she was by the display, however; her expression remained unchanged, even a little bored, as the attacker picked her blade up and charged again.

"Come on, can't you get some new material?" The broom resting on her shoulder bounced - once, twice, thrice, counting the earth-shaking stomps of Bellatrix's approach. The problem with an all-out frontal attack, of course, was that one could see it coming a mile away. As the blade bore down on her, Rhyme's broomstick swung around, connecting with the side of the blade and pushing it subtly out of the way, such that it would miss even the brim of the Witch's wide hat by an inch or so.

Rhyme tilted her head up, and even though she was shorter, her smug expression gave the impression of looking down on her opponent. "I'll give you points for causing destruction, at least. Unfortunately, if I let you keep at it much longer, they'll probably expect me to help with the rebuilding, so... Buzz off, yeah?"

The broom twirled around suddenly, becoming more a brown circle around her hand than a singular object - and then came around to smack into Bellatrix's chest, aiming to send her hurtling away toward the island's shores if not into the water proper.

[pepsi]

There was no other way it could've ended: she was simply in the worst possible matchup. A melee fighter going up against someone who can easily put distance and take the offensive from that distance - there was only one possible outcome.

At the peak of her swing, Bella was ready to descend upon the Witch with her extremely heavy sword.
As she felt the first bristles brush against her chest, she instinctively brought the weapon down; the sword fell, but not on the Witch, rather the broom. It split the broom clean off the handle, sending wooden splinters in every direction.

Bella's body, inevitably affected by the witch's magic, was just swept away. She felt an unstoppable force pushing her back, stronger and stronger, as she accelerated backwards and upwards; in a moment, the witch and the street and the houses shrank in front of her eyes as she got sent hurling through the air.
The last thing she heard was glass shattering as she was forced through a window, and the last thing she saw was a large bookshelf full of books caving in on top of her.

Bella's weapon, still keeping its momentum from the downswing, fell on the ground and split it apart - it lodged itself in the crack, almost up to the handle. Removing that would've been a headache, and it would sooner become a permanent feature of the land.

-- NAME // Bellatrix Damasco

-- CLASS // E

-- TECHS USED // None.

[Jade]

Rhyme didn't even bother watching where her opponent flew off to - she huffed as her splintered broom connected and swept Bellatrix away, only to drop the broken implement a moment later. All of the girl's bravado and smug air vanished in the quiet following the removal of the problem, leaving a scowl on her half-obscured face. Another fresh broom was manufactured from thin air, grasped in one hand; she mounted it and silently zoomed up and out of town, directly into the skies overhead.

---

Some time later...

A bookish girl sat over woman who had come crashing into the town's library with some concern on her face. Some minor lacerations and glass embedded in the woman's skin from her crash had been removed and dressed, but it was really just the very basics of first aid - anything more would need to be done by a proper doctor with access to the proper materials, and unfortunately for this woman, it was the island's doctor that she'd pissed off. "Really, Rhyme, what's gotten into you today...?" Wren sighed, placing a fresh cool, damp towel over the large woman's forehead.

It wasn't the first time she'd asked the silent question to herself since this stranger came careening on in, or that she'd stopped to stare out the window in her bedroom, where she'd pulled the strange woman and laid her properly on her bed, that provided a view of that lonely hut up on the cliff jutting out over the ocean. Wren sat there, simply staring up toward where her friend had shut herself away, and then shook her head and turned her attention back to her "patient". There was only so much she could do here, but at the same time, she'd feel bad about just leaving the woman laying there...

[pepsi]

Bellatrix Damasco had taken more than just "a hit" in her life. She was a Hunter of the Guild, she was used to fighting on a daily basis against huge towering animals many times her size; she found herself on the verge of death multiple times, her only saving grace having dutiful wardens carry her away when the fight overwhelmed her.
Nobody ever managed to throw her that far, but compared to her usual hunts the damage done to her body was pretty minimal.

The woman suddenly sat up, rubbing her face to wipe off the blood. "Argh" she grunted, "I really lost the plot this time."

"And where the hell's my weapon?..." she mumbled to herself, looking around. All she saw was a bunch of books, lots of dust in the air, and unorganized piles of half-torn books and pages around her location. That was most definitely not where she was just a moment ago, as she was certain she was in the middle of a road with her back against a wall. And by the time she woke up again, she was... in a library?

It took her several seconds to notice the other person in the room. She vocalized her surprise: "Huh? You're not the witch" she said, pointing out the obvious, "where did she go? Where am I?"

-- NAME // Bellatrix Damasco

-- CLASS // E

-- TECHS USED // None.

[Jade]

<sup>As her large "patient" came to, Wren scurried back and did her best to seem small, without just fleeing the room entirely. She sat on her knees and let the stranger get her bearings without interruption - at least until her gaze met Bellatrix's.

"Oh, well-" Wren shuffled back up to her feet and gave the stranger a quick bow of her head. "You're right, I'm not. And, uh, let's... I'll answer your questions the best that I can."

She moved closer to Bellatrix, there on the edge of her bed, and pointed to the window - or rather, what was visible through it. The odd-shaped hut positioned near the top of a hill that suddenly fell away into a precarious cliff was visible from the right angle. "The Witch - Rhyme - probably went back up to her home, right up there. And as for where you are..."

Wren stepped back, adjusted her glasses, and put on her best customer service smile. "Welcome to the Sybil Cross local library! I'm Wren, and I live here with my grandmother. Rhyme, um... Kinda... Knocked you into the building. Why were you two fighting, anyway?"</sup>

[pepsi]

Bella scratched her head. She understood that she wasn't in the street anymore, but the exact dynamics of how she managed to end up in a library were unclear in her mind. She squeezed a memory out of her confused little brain, and for a brief moment, she saw herself getting hit head-on by one of those brooms the witch could manipulate. Bella remembered breaking one into two a moment after being swept off her feet, and then the memory faded to black.

The muscular girl turned to the woman, who introduced herself as Wren. "What do you mean, why?" Bellatrix asked. "They told me the witch is kind of evil. She poisoned the previous witch, and took her place." As she explained, Bella started dusting off her clothes and rummaging books and paper from all around in search of her weapon. "They say she doesn't help the people in need... I hate that!"
Hands on her hips, scouting around the room for her sword, she continued: "I wanted to knock some sense into her! But she surprised me with her magic."

The memory hit her soon after. She let go of the weapon a moment before being touched by the broom; the sword must've been exactly in the same place where they had fought. She nodded, and sighed. There was no point in looking around, and actually it might have been more productive to help Wren clean up - she was the reason the window had a gaping hole and at least three shelves worth of books were spread all over the library. "I'm sorry about the mess..."

-- NAME // Bellatrix Damasco

-- TECHS USED // None.