A black vintage sedan was speeding along a dirt road through the forest. The only reason it stayed on the road was due to its living nature along the wheels shifting in real time and the driver’s peak human driving ability. The car eventually left the road to weave through the tree following an invisible trail that only the driver could see.

Eventually the driver reached his destination, a clearing somewhere in the center of a forest. the driver got out of the car showing his monochrome attire. White leather jackets were admittedly douchey, but I think he pulled it off. The entire outfit excluding the silver mask was crafted from an old spacesuit the man had picked up a while back. The outfit insulated the man from the biting cold created by the man’s involuntary absorption of the yin energy produced by the moon.

The man patted his car’s hood and told it, “Thanks bud, but you should probably get some distance from this next part.” The car shifted into a large panther that took off into the woods.

After sending off his transportation the man took in his opponent. The scruffy druid had only tattered jeans and a manic smile on. What concerned the man were the golden clawed gauntlets covering his opponent’s hands. Judging by the fact that they were pristine, his new friend had a friend who took offense at his continuance at drawing breath. A very well-informed friend as the man had only learned of his weakness to gold earlier that day.

_

Maxwell Gradey

“Animal in the sheets, Animal in the streets. He’s just a plain animal”

Grade B

_

The man’s ears barely picked up the druid muttering under his breath, “Speed of the cheetah”

The druid was in his face the next instant with ethereal spotted feline legs surrounding his own. The gauntlet’s claws following right after seeking blood. The man redirected the claws away utilizing the strength granted by a bull shaped ring on his right thumb. The man utilized the opening to brutally headbutt the druid with the horns on his mask wrapped in an aura of aggression.

Another mutter, “Hide of the rhino”

This was followed by the druid’s head forming an ethereal helmet resembling a rhino just before the man’s headbutt landed nullifying it. The two men both jumped back breaking away from one another.

The druid was no worse for wear, while the man had visible wounds showing on both forearms.

The man looked at his injuries, “Pain, how I’ve missed thee. This will be fun.” And with that, the man gained a manic grin of his own followed by a black aura spreading around his person. The aura fed off of the man’s pain and would grow stronger with it.

“Strength of the tiger”

And with that the druid’s armor completely covered his body turning him into an ethereal blue chimera.

The two men reengaged each other. The two men’s physical abilities were roughly equivalent. The druid was a little more durable, but a little weaker. This was of course taking into account that neither man wanted to use “unmanly” abilities. Both wanted this bloody and brutal.

The two men could not be any more different in fighting style. The druid was an animal, all instinct and aggression. The man was a machine: cold, efficient, technical. The only similarity was their inhuman brutality. Neither man had an ounce of empathy or sympathy.

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The druid quickly exposed the man’s weakness, lack of talent. The man fought like a video game character, all combos and textbooks. This meant that he could not react to anything he had not seen before, and the druid fought moment to moment with no real technique.

The man’s body was quickly broken down, exposing bone and a weird little crimson creature in his chest that quickly hid. The man had lost most of his clothing as well. The loss of yin protection caused some ice to form and slowed his movements down.

The man’s fate seemed sealed when out of nowhere he spoke, “I see.”

After that simple statement, the situation suddenly reversed. The man started tearing muscle and cracking bone. You see the problem with machines is that they have no imagination. You tell a machine that if the input is A the output is B, it will remember that forever more. However, you give it an input of C and it will have no idea what to do. That was the problem fighting instinctive fighters, all inputs were Cs.

The thing is that every time you get a C you can create a D.

The druid targets the stomach and face at the same time, kick the exposed side of the arm aiming high.

The druid spears both hands towards the torso, drop and sweep the leg.

Now those Ds create Es, but the man created Fs. This seemed like a revolving door that would grind down both parties, except there were several factors that skewed things towards the man. The man remembered every interaction exactly, while the druid’s instincts remembered vaguely. The man could input exactly what he wanted every time as machine are want to do, the druid’s greatest strength, unpredictability, made such a feat difficult. The druid only had so many different possible actions and every exchange the man learned one. On the other hand, the man had learned every martial art that he could to as high a level as he could. Providing him with many possible responses to the same problem.

Now these reasons could be reversed if the druid’s instincts were strong enough, if they could learn faster and/or better than a machine. It boiled down to the fact that they simply were not. The man had found the underlying algorithm that guided the seeming randomness and exploited it too much before the druid could correct it.

There was little the druid could do before the man ended it by forming claws made of demonic hair at the end of his fingers and proceeding to rip the druid’s heart right out of his chest.

The man put his hand over the corpse of his opponent and drew out blue translucent threads that gathered into a matching chimeric figure the size of an apple. The man chucked it into a gap that opened up into what looked like space before whistling and walking away.

The panther rushed out of the woods and turned back into a car. The man pulled all the remnants of the fight off his body with threads, gathered them up into a ball, and threw it away.

The man then got in his car and drove to get his dinner at the diner he frequented.

Being:

Body:

[Nascent Energy Vampire Progenitor]

Soul Tattoos:

[Celestial Weaving]

[Sand: Tier Three]

[Water: Tier Five]

[Faith: Tier One]

[Holy Water: Tier Three]

[Shadow: Tier Five]

[Necromancy: Tier Five]

[Rot: Tier ErRoR]

Special Abilities:

[Empowerment: Tier Nine]

[Emotional Empowerment: Tier One]

[Emotional Manipulation: Tier One]

Current Equipment:

Head:

[The Black Wasp Jackal’s Face]

[Vampire’s Hunger]

Earrings:

[]

Necklace:

[]

Clothes:

[Idle Hands]

Rings:

[The Mentalism Ring]

[Mena’s Book]

[Petrifying Ring]

[Olivia’s Friendship]

[Brash Ring]

Bracelets:

[]

Shoes:

[Comet Kicks]

Bracelets:

[]

Shoes:

[Comet Kicks]

Armaments:

[Beastly Heart]

[Murder Weapon]

Storage:

[Various Utility Artifacts]

[Various Articles Of Clothing]

[Death Dogtags]

[Leech Muscles]

[Leech Teeth]

[Chimeric Essence]