Lola hurled her foot, raising it high above her head before bringing it down with hammering force as she slammed it against the ground before her; donning a combative fighting stance, Lola stared down Temperance with an unwavering fighting spirit. Her eyes were filled with a reserved blaze, her body exuded shimmering shiny silver mana(wavey-looking energy) and it surged from her with destructive power. The eruption of mana was a sight for the eyes, leaving Temperance with bated breath and slightly blinded by the intensity of the mana's luminosity.
"And to think she's only using two tails," Temperance murmured, shielding his eyes against the blinding intensity of Lola's mana. Lola couldn't contain her rising arrogance, the visual reaction Temperance gave her and the apprehensive tension she sensed from him fueling her already conceited demeanour. With a contentious sparkle to her grin, Lola let out an amused sigh as she flexed her two exposed kitsune tails which, despite being purely fur, somehow made a cracking sound with every flex she did.
"To beyond with it, if you can land an impressive move on me I'll concede, and just for fun, I won't use any of my... totally intentionally chosen abilities until a whole five minutes have passed," Lola stated, affirming her statement with a slick flick of her tails to waft away the surging mana encasing her. Her tails danced behind her, waving in tune with her heart as it pounded in her chest as she added to her prior statement with, "And to spice things up if you can entertain me for ten minutes, I'll even throw in a whole smackeroo.".
Temperance paused at her additional statement; the shock brought a tremor of apprehension to the guy, who found it hard to believe Lola actually said something so outlandish as his face turned slightly red. Lola, noticing the guy's strange reaction, tilted her head with a puzzled look on her face, conveying to Temperance that she had no clue about the meaning behind what she said.
"Is money not to your liking?" Lola asked confusedly. She turned her head, rotating it so far it almost went upside down, her face deeply filled with bewilderment. Wondering what could be the cause, a hint of revelation came to Lola, her eyes slightly lightening. She couldn't hold back her curiosity any longer, hopping over to Temperance again as she continued, saying, "You're not saying Kimmi-Ka...". Temperance felt what little composure he had left go up in smoke.
Before he could even make a response, Temperance felt a burst of throbbing pain pierce through his left arm, forcing him into a daze, and drowning out any other sensation and only leaving a chaotically spontaneous wave of dread as it overtook him.
His eyes were glued to the floor, unmoving as he clasped his head to steel himself. His mind spiralled, his body staggering and growing increasingly heavy as he felt his insides go awry.
He threw his tails to the floor, stabilizing himself with them as the uncontrollable feeling of the world spinning became too overwhelming. He fell to his knees, and the thumping of his heart reached unnatural levels of speed as the world slinked away from him and was replaced by darkness encroaching and surrounding him.
He felt the darkness claw at his arms, digging directly into his soul like a calculating surgeon and suffocating him with their authority over him. As the darkness clinging to him took on the form of heavy-duty chains, their grip tightening and constricting Temperance with every passing second. With their grip on him secure, Temperance felt his legs sinking into the darkness.
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The vortex of shadows enveloped his legs, numbing the feeling in them amidst the frigid storm of stinging slashes seeping into his bones. It was like being stabbed over and over from all directions, and he couldn't help himself from grimacing; the pain itself wasn't the cause of his reaction but the image of a rundown temple blind sighting him, forcing a sinking feeling in him.
As he slumped his head, sighing in contempt, the searing pain coursing through his arm, a reminder of his past, Temperance's right arm slowly turned void-black from activating his dotoma mark with its blank spot turning red. As he involuntarily tensed up his arm from the chains coiling around his left arm, Temperance coiled his fingers up, forcing them into a fist before he socked himself in the face. A tsunami of red keither smashed through his soul, obliterating all the darkness around him, and voiding all the numbness in him as the dotoma reverted to its keitherless mode.
Glaring directly at a window, Lola angrily murmured for a bit, throwing up fake punches towards something. But when she heard Temperance's self-punch, her angry demeanour swiftly converted from rage to overwhelming conceited smugness before turning around and disrespectfully waving her tails at her prior target of aggression. She eventually stopped her taunting, placing her hands on her hips and pushing her hand into her back, forcing a click in her back as she fixed her posture.
"So, ya ready to quit pulling on my tails or do you plan on having another edgy episode?" Lola asked crassly, which made Temperance shiver at how calmly she referred to him almost losing control. But despite her tactlessness, Temperance felt a strange comfort from her words, nearly as if she understood it better than he did.
"With a remark like that, it makes me think you're either obnoxiously insensitive or are making light of something to be insensitive," Temperance retorted, his usual snarky self returning as the last bits of the freezing darkness dissipated. Lola snickered a cheeky response, finding Temperance's retort equally amusing as she finished concocting the battle strategy in her head.
"Who knows, but I don't think you should be worrying about such silly things now. After all...," Lola retorted, her voice oozing a sinisterly delightful energy. Although not immediately apparent, Temperance quickly learned the meaning behind Lola's words as he watched her emit green keither from her tails, the ferocity of the keither increasing in intensity with her growing ear-to-ear grin.
"... It's been five minutes!" Lola bellowed, her body seemingly bursting at the seam as crack-like keither veins sprawled all over. Lola threw her head back, a manic laughter exploding from within her very core. As the droves of green keither gushed out her tails, the pink of her tails was stained with the keither's colour, and one by one her tails sprouted back to reality.
With a drop of sweat running down his head, Temperance reluctantly raised his head and deflatedly sighed, watching the surging keither tower high behind Lola. A tsunami, a monsoon even, the only comparison Temperance could describe the sight before him as the surging mass that was Lola's green keither pervaded across Lola's half of the arena.
Outside the energy grid, Kannachi sat on the bench, utterly still and unfazed. Her face remained perfectly neutral as she slowly rocked to her left and fell onto her side, her body retaining its position only with a new orientation before her soul started floating out of her.