"I'll crack you like an egg!" Heidi swore viciously, not even paying attention to what the little man had to say. Her indiscriminate swings continued to batter the landscape, whipping up water and pebbles and whole hunks of earth as she waded, unfazed, through the agonized stream towards her target. She took absolutely no notice of the tag of cloth that wrapped around her sword, just as she had taken no notice of Gresian's continued taunting. She had eyes only for him, and those golden eyes were fill with murderous hatred. There was next to no technique in the way she wielded her blade. For as easy as it was for her to maneuver its colossal weight, she'd plainly made no effort to ever learn grace or control in her swings. Yet what she lacked in technique, she more than compensated for with awe inspiring destructive might and stamina. That was why it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise when, as the tip of her blade grew heavier, Heidi barely seemed to notice. Her sword was already ludicrously unbalanced, immensely weighted to suit her unbelievable strength, so a bit more at the tip was hardly enough to through her off balance. If anything, it rendered her swings even more destructive, though it was hard to tell beside the already expansive carnage she'd wrought on the stream bed and surrounding banks.

With all that said, it wasn't like Heidi was making any especial efforts to keep Gresian at bay either, and she'd certainly made nothing if not wholly incidental attempts to prevent him from getting closer. Her sole interest was obviously his destruction, with anything even resembling defense barely seeming to factor. In fact, she barely fought like a trained huntress at all. Her lack of technique and her complete disregard for her own safety were not the sort of things huntress' could afford. Perhaps that would be an invitation to Gresian, or perhaps it should have served as a warning.

As the smaller man charged in, Heidi was in the process of reversing her grip on her sword, in order to bring its one brutal cutting edge to bare against the nimble rogue. She was amazingly quick, for how obviously unwieldy her weapon was, but not so quick as to deny him his chance to counter attack. As things stood, she was wide open when he made his attempt, with only savage yet impotent fury to counter the swing of his blade. She didn't even attempt to get clear either, and instead continued to try and swing her sword, focused only on cleaving him in two. When his sword bit into her leg, a snarl rose up from Heidi the likes of which no animal could hope to produce, and it grew into a cry a profound rage as the rogue's blade slid up her body, cutting her all the way from knee to shoulder in one deft swing. Beside that slice, the fire and bullets hardly seemed important, and Heidi staggered back as she finally swung her own sword, too late to harm the vaulting rogue. 

Orthus bit into the ground on the other side of Heidi, sinking a good foot into the damp earth following her failed horizontal slash. She gasped sharply, her tank top hanging loose about her chest, cut in two by a diagonal slice up the center. There had been no expression of aura to answer his attack, no effort to repel his blow, and while her clothes had been too wet to catch alight, both top and shorts were ruined in the exchange. Blood seeped through her shredded khaki's, staining the sodden fabric red, while the tank top itself held on by only one remaining shoulder strap. A ragged sound escaped from Heidi's lips, as she reached her burnt hand up and touched the perfectly straight slice that cross her stomach, and she seemed to marvel at the sight of red on her fingers. It should have been a killing blow, plain and simple. Between the six shots, the fire and the uninterrupted diagonal cut, all without any aura to get in the way, Heidi should have been dead on her feet. Now was when Gresian would realize his error, however. He had assumed she was like everyone else. That she was weak and that she was fragile. That, in this world made faberge world, she too was made of cheap gilt, prone to crack beneath the first sign of abuse. That she could ever be a victim. Straightening up, she let him see what his sword could do to her. Malicious, golden eyes sought his as she turned to face him, her shredded clothes and underclothes betraying his perfectly clean cut where it connected knee to shoulder, the wound welling with blood. Yet not even half so deep as it should have been. So too had the six shots he'd fired into her done little more than sting her, leaving welts and dots of blood in their passing, before bursting across her impossibly hard flesh.

Reaching up, Heidi wound her hand around her tattered tank top and yanked the garment off as easily as peeling off a bandage, before tossing the ruined fabric into the stream at her feet. Her chest was crossed with similar marks to the red slash he'd cut into her, all of them long since healed and standing out white on her deeply tanned skin. Her muscles rippled beneath her skin, straining the badly damaged sports bra that valiantly preserved her modesty, unaffected by the cut he'd made.
"That the best you got, little man?" She asked him, almost sounding disappointed. Raising her hand, the one he'd surrounded in fire, she tore off the half burned strip of cloth and spat it into the burbling stream to reveal fingers that, though they had been wreathed in flame, were only faintly pinkened by the treatment. She tested those fingers, then casually took hold of her sword, which still stood impaled in the ground beside her. Then, with almost perfunctory effort, she scooped the blade up, along with half a gallon of water and half the earth surrounding it, and flicked it all at Gresian in a tidal wave of muck and stone. At the same time, she brought her sword over her head and lunged at where he had been standing, taking a huge cleaving swing at the spot, through the screen of water and mud she'd hurled.


Gresian