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Stella     Stella is always exactly on time, which is yet another way to tell how perfectly boring her mindset must be. Or perhaps less boring and more entirely too task-focused, seeking to excel in everything thrust upon her.

    The MECC stage awaits, like an open-air holodeck that's yet to turn on, surrounded by countless seats and cameras, screens showing audiences from every corner of the Multiverse, and countless security measures to ensure the crowd's relative safety, not to mention the fighters', the Shrine's systems taking scan after scan in preparation for the end.

    Stella enters without a word, unarmed, wearing the usual clothes she does; her skin and dress shimmer unnaturally, like crystal trying to appear as tissue and textile but not quite managing it entirely.

    Still as a statue, she waits for her first opponent, not entirely sure about the process. She sees signal lights and presumes they'll indicate the start, but it's still her first time in the Shrine, much less in a tournament.

    The arena has yet to configure itself into anything interesting.
Riku Riku is early, which is a testament to how much he's been looking forward to this. A way to see how he really matches up against the other combatants in the Multiverse without the usual problems of just walking up to someone and yelling 'FIGHT MEEEEEEE'.

Really, who even does that? He's not THAT much of a tryhard. The silver-haired teen walks up onto the stage and looks around at the cheerying crowds, paying them about as much mind as Stella does. Which is to say, basically none. "So. You're the opponent, huh? All right. Name's Riku. Let's see if I can give you a good fight."

He snaps his fingers, and darkness rolls over his body, replacing his casuals with the purple, tight suit emblazoned with that black heart. He flicks his hand out, and the bat-wing blade manifests, his Heartbrand flicking through the air as he sets into a battle stance. "Let's do this."

Almost as if on cue, the holographics flash, replacing the arena with a rumbling quake zone, the ground churning and hurling large, flat hunks of stone upwards in a seemingly endless cascade. This doesn't stop Riku at all, the teen lunging up and bouncing off of the tilting and spinning chunks as he rebounds past Stella with a high-speed rushing attack!
Stella     "I am Stella," she answers, monotone and almost expresionless. "I look forward to learning from your strength."

    As Riku readies himself, the signals change, and the arena with it. There's ground everywhere, now! Stella shifts slightly, taking in the information through eyes and feet both. That's convenient. Being surrounded by her element might come in handy.

    Not that it'll help with the fact Riku's evidently a LOT faster than she is. It's effortless for the edgy teen to rush in to strike her, though he finds her skin and clothes to have the durability of a heavy steel wall. Nicks and cracks left behind by his attack seem to patch themselves up just as quickly as they appeared, prismatic crystals filling the gaps and eventually regaining the color of what they're trying to emulate. Skin, clothes, other details.

    She turns to face Riku, blades of the same raw, rainbow-y crystal bursting out of her wrists and settling into her hands.

    "Very well. Break yourself upon my body."

    She lunges forward to slice with both blades, but her timing is such that a large boulder crashes into the ground behind Riku as she advances. She seems to have accute awareness of how the earth is moving!
Riku Riku slashes into Stella, and the Soul Eater barely carves into Stella's dense body. "Gggh!" He emits as he hears and feels what he's cutting into, and he flips away, trying to stop the inevitable counterstrike. The armblades slash out, and Riku pauses for a moment, feeling the boulder crash behind him. That moment of hesitation gets Stella what she needs to strike past his parry, putting a cut into him... But he leaps /upwards/, preventing the slash from cutting deeply into him. Unlike her, his wound doesn't close, blood beginning to stain his purple suit. "You're not kidding. The hell are you /made/ of?" He latches onto another flat chunk of stone, hanging off of it as it lazily rotates around its center of gravity in the air. Soon he vanishes from sight, the platform blocking sight. It flips back... And he's gone, a gaping hole of darkness in his place.

A moment later there is a rush of air behind Stella as Riku drives Soul Eater forward, hunting for a critical point.
Stella     "It was called Starmetal, since it fell from the sky. That is why they named me Stella," she explains, perfectly honest. "I have yet to encounter some that is not part fo me. Perhaps I am unique. I do not know." She'd like to find out, one day, but it's on the back of her mind at best.

    Riku teleports. She has no way to predict or counter that, except to wait for him to strike. Luckily, he does.

    Soul Eater plunges into Stella's body, deeper than the last strike. Cracks spread from the impact, but before he can capitalize on it, growths of crystal are already trying to patch the wound up, and if he's not quick enough, to trap his sword into her body.

    She doesn't turn to face Riku, either way - instead one of her legs lifts, and then slams hard into the ground. The earth rumbles, and blades of crystal erupt all around her, trying to impale Riku.

    "You use a sword. Are you a knight?" Only then does she turn her head to look at Riku, as if the question mattered.
Riku Riku stabs, but not hard enough to bring her down. The irregular blade carves deep, but not deep enough. Riku moves, but not fast enough to bring it out. The crystals stab out, and he is forced to leap backwards before he is skewered, leaving his blade inside Stella as they tear into him. He gasps, skidding along the unstable ground as it rips up around him, continuing to force him to move to keep level. He grits his teeth through the pain of the wounds, forcing himself to keep going despite the simple, but brutal strikes that have landed on him.

"Not quite." He replies. "I'm called a Heartbrand." Without his sword, however, it seems like he's without a weapon... "I fight with the power of my Heart."

At that, his shadow pools around him, moving and distorting... And then the ground under Stella erupts as a large, dark, clawed fist punches upwards below the woman, trying to launch her into the air. "It has its benefits."

It doesn't stop there, as Riku clenches a hand, dark fire erupting there as he hurls the bolt at Stella, leaping away as dark form fully emerges, a huge black thing with glowing yellow eyes and a hollow chest, bound around in white bandages. It seems to be connected to Riku through trailing shadow, which results in strange effects as it rushes out to follow up the magical assault with a double-fisted axehandle punch to drive her right back down into the ground!

"Good name." He says, amidst the attack. "I've never seen anything like you before. Closest thing would be golems, I guess, but that's like comparing a toy car to racecar."
Stella     "I see," she replies, not sure she understands if that makes him technically a knight or not. But as the shadows twist, she considers: "You appear more like a dark knight than that. Is it because the human heart has darkness in it?" It would make sense.

    But knowing does nothing to help her. She's launched into the air, Riku's blade still lodged into her back. She's slammed down, hard, cracks spreading across her whole body as she impacts the ground again. One of her arms shatters off outright, and her speech is distorted from the cracks crawling up her throat and face.

    "Golem is the correct term. My having a mind was not planned. It is inconvenient, sometimes." Mostly because she doesn't get people and their weird uses of language. 'Slang'. Ugh.

    Her regeneration seems slowed; whether because of the energy expended so far, or because of the cracks being so spread out, it seems her body is struggling to keep up with the damage. But it's working, best it can.

    Remaining grounded, Stella doesn't seem to move to attack Riku. Instead, the blades that had spiked up and out of the ground are starting to glow orange and black, the reflections of his shadows and his flames still lingering in some of them.

    The blades launch out of the ground like rockets for Riku, elementally infused with fire and darkness both.
Riku "Yeah. We have all kinds of things inside. Doesn't matter what people think, you just gotta be who you are."

The burning spikes crack off and rush at him. There's no way he can dodge something like this, it's too spread out. There's only one choice. He hurls a hand out, the Eidolon melting into dozens of tendrils of shadow and rushing out to meet the spikes. The spikes stab into the darkness, parting it like water, splitting it and scattering it into motes along the way as they rush in towards Riku unerringly. He stands there, trusting in his power, his will...

It's enough. Barely. The spikes slow... And then stop as they pierce into him. His jaw clenches, eyes closing as the shadow congeals around the spikes buried an inch into his body in multiple locations. If he keeps fighting like this, he's going to lose. He needs to kick this up a notch. For a moment, he grips his head, muttering, before he shakes his head as if to clear it.

His eyes open again, his gaze steady once more. "DARKNESS!" He yells, dragging the spikes out and sweeping them around him in a multitude of hanging purple crystalline spires. "COME ON!"

At that, the spikes are propelled forward at high speed, turned to skewer Stella herself in a ring around where the Soul Eater still is stuck into her!
Stella     The dark spires pierce Stella, freeing the Soul Eater from her body! And shattering her body into two halves outright, the golem still lying on the ground like a pile of broken crystal. She looks up at Riku, still unusually emotionless. Maybe she doesn't feel pain? Or not in the same way as people do, anyway.

    "That monster. Is it you, too? Or do you share your body with another being? That must be feel odd, if so." She can barely comprehend her own mind, nevermind the idea of multiple in one body.

    Growths of crystal burst out of her shattered body, reattaching her legs and one arm in a crude fashion. Enough to stand, at any rate, however unstable she looks like she would be.

    Another blade reforms in her only hand, jagged and spiked instead of sharp. She hurls it for Riku, without any fancy toss or shout.

    If the blade pierces Riku, it suddenly explodes into awful crystal shrapnel in every direction. If it misses, it does that anyway, just without the added threat of exploding directly against his body.

    Another blade forms in her hand to replace that one, anticipating Riku will want his sword back and might come into melee for it.
Riku Riku isn't sure why Stella is fine with lying there shattered on the ground for a moment, but he'll take what he can get. This fight has pushed him farther than anything he's experienced so far. "Do you even have a Heart?" He wonders aloud as he listens to that emotionless response. He doesn't expect an answer, there's more to deal with. "It's complicated." He replies to her questions, however. "Nothing you need to worry about." She reassembles herself, however, and things get right back to business.

He's ready when the blade is hurled, however. Behind her, the Soul Eater vanishes in a wave of darkness, only to reform in his hand as he reincorporates it. With a spinning motion, he neatly parries the hurled blade, knocking it aside. This doesn't keep him from getting shrapnel-blasted, but it does mean it doesn't do it INSIDE him. Small bonuses. He is hurles to one side, sharp bits of crystal punched into his body... But he's still intact enough to move, his superhuman endurance and will still driving him onward despite the obvious damage.

"This isn't over." He says, black waves of energy drawing in around him, absorbed as the arena begins to darken subtly from him drawing on such a level of energy... "THIS IS JUST GETTING STARTED!" He backflips, plunging down into another yawning portal of darkness...

And then he emerges from one side, slashing past her almost in a mimicry of how this fight began. However, he falls into another portal, momentum carrying him on as he vanishes... And repeates the attack from another angle, portals beginning to erupt all around her as he continues to slash and batter against her, trying to overwhelm her massive defenses and regenerative powers with relentless strikes!
Stella     "No. I do not have heart," Stella responds, indicating with a head motion the gaping hole in her chest from Riku freeing his blade. "I do not have a liver, lungs, brain, stomach..." And so she drones on, listing the full contents of a human body until Riku goes on the offensive again and shuts her up, at least for the duration of his relentless strikes.

    His blade bounces off her body the first few times; progressively it begins chipping into the regenerating crystal, more and more, until a lucky strike shatters one of her legs.

    She remains upright, balanced awkwardly.

    As Riku comes in with another blow, she suddenly thrusts her sword, trying to clip his chest or, failing that, at least his good sword hand, even if that means she has to trade a chunk of her body in the exchange.

    The regeneration seems to be picking back up, at least. Her good leg and arm are just about pristine again, and the broken arm is starting to grow back on, clumps of crystal crunching themselves into a stump.

    "I find most things complicated to begin with. I do not really understand how one can fight with their heart, for example."

    Maybe if your body was made of explosives you could like... lob it at someone. Right?
Riku The endless slashing keeps going and going for a while until the counterattack comes. She slashes into him, clipping him and dropping him to the ground, sending him skidding and gasping as he works to regain some energy and assess if he's about to bleed out from that one or not. He looks like a patchwork of cuts, each one sapping his strength and energy as he grimaces and tries to pull himself together. "That's not what I meant." He replies. "Metaphorical."

He doesn't have much breath to spare on talking, however, instead turning and this time, hurling his blade forward. It's not just on his own strength though, as the Eidolon surges forward, propelling the Soul Eater to stab right into Stella once more. Riku isn't done there, however, putting his energy into launching upwards, rebounding on one of the tumbling platforms, and launching himself downwards at Stella with a triangle kick designed to plow right into and through the golem with a descending strike, his foot aimed right for the pommel of his own weapon that should be buried right in her once again!
Stella     "Metaphorical. I see. I am still having trouble with that," she admits, because it's true, and Staren and Seifer know best how true it is.

    The Eidolon helps Riku thrust forward, and it's more power than Stella can contend with. Twice over her grounds her and drives his sword into her, breaking her body apart into individual limbs. Crystal shards fly in every direction, and there's not much the golem can do from her position under Riku and as a pile of debris.

    Well, not much except regenerate.

    Her body in such a critical state, it's like the crystal she's made of goes into overdrive. Jagged crystals surge out of every limb like a field of spikes, making Riku's position over Stella an incredible liability. The crystal grows at an absurd rate, almost explosively so, until the limbs have reassembled into a single large crystal, which progressively chips and shatters itself.

    From it emerges Stella, relatively whole again. Her body is still cracked and discolored, but she has all of her limbs, which isn't something she could say for most of the fight.

    And what's left of the overgrown crystal shatters into a storm of sharp blades.
Riku Riku's bold move turns out to be a mistake. He kicks down into the storm of crystal, but isn't able to win through.

By the time it passes, he hits thr ground in a sodden thump, bleeding from a lot of places he really shouldn't be. His purple suit boils off of him, leaving him in his casual clothes once more... And he slaps the unstable ground. "Enough. I give. You win this one." He groans. "You hit like a truck made of fiberglass."
Stella     Without the pressure of more and more incoming attacks, Stella's body finally starts patching itself up properly. The cracks, eventually, disappear, and the prismatic crystal that makes up her core takes up the coloration of her clothes and her skin again, though like before, there's that shimmer to her that she just can't get rid of.

    Knowing her manners, she heads towards Riku and extends a hand to help him up. "What are you giving? And I do not believe I hit like a truck, I lack the wheels and mobility to do so."

    At least she knows what a truck is.
Riku There is a moment of silence, and Riku takes the hand, letting her help him up. He's going to be hurting from that for a bit until the simulated damage is wiped out. "... It's... a figure of speech." He says. "... Maybe you should come to Luna Nova Magical Academy sometime. Talk to my teacher. Maybe she'll be interested in you." He says. "Even if you're an accident, good things can come from it."
Stella     "I would be fine with this. I need more experience to acquire more power. That is why I am fighting in this tournament," Stella explains, simply.

    "As long as your teacher is powerful, perhaps I can learn something from her. You are powerful, so she must be." That's usually how that works.