Limitless Path

"What's all this about?" the human asked.

"Sorry, let me handle this," Val immediately said, signaling to her team to back off. A signal that was seen and promptly ignored, or rather, ignored by the usual suspects. She resisted frowning even slightly, but internally was yelling curses at the hotheads she was stuck with for the length of this PR nightmare.

"Ya look proper strong, like," Andryn started. "Ya care for a spar?"

"Kron, huh? You know a Baelvyr, by chance?" Elizabeth asked. Immediately, Val got a bad premonition, confirmed after a moment when she did a quick search which, apparently, Andryn was still too drunk, or too lazy, to do.

"I think my great, great-times-ten grandfather's older brother was named Baelvyr. Been a while since the family heard from ‘em, though; don't think he's still around," Andryn answered.

"Enough yappin', are we gonna fight or not?" D, their resident demon musclehead, asked.

Val didn't even bother trying to intervene. It really was a damned if you do, damned if you don't type scenario, where if she intervened it would make the group look dysfunctional when the boys ignored her, or she could stay quiet and let the boys run rampant, making them look like a bunch of petty thugs. She had found that it was a lot better for them if she sat back and then did damage control later. It always looked worse when she tried to intervene and other members of the group still did whatever they wanted.

"Just you?" asked the young woman, and Val was just realizing how young she was, with a raised brow.

"I'm more than enough," D snapped, leaping forward towards Elizabeth. The woman didn't move, even as D unsheathed his massive greathammer and swung it at her, sending a small spike of worry racing up Val's long spine. In the next instant, however, she found her eyes widening, a reaction even she was powerless to control, as the woman D had decided to attack turned into little more than a blur, even to Val's much enhanced sight. The next thing anybody from her group knew, D was hurtling backwards with enough force he would fly past Val and wind up landing somewhere in the middle of the press pool. Val took three quick steps to the side and reached out with one of her exceptionally long arms, snagging D out of the air as he hurtled by. She was once again shocked, as she had to activate her singular buffing skill in a split second to not be hurled off her feet.

When she went to set him back on the ground, she was shocked to find a massive fist imprint in the front of his solid mana steel chestplate. She knew the quality of the materials and craftsmanship that went into the young demon's armor, making it genuinely shocking that a single punch from the mysterious young woman had dented it to such a degree. D sputtered and hacked for a second, taking a staggering step before regaining his equilibrium, his fighting spirit burning but a decided note of caution in his gaze. He moved forward slowly, the woman not having moved from where she had wound up after delivering the blow.

"Maybe, just maybe, we might need more than one," D said, gripping the haft of his greathammer hard enough that his knuckles cracked. Both Cal, their dragon representative, and Andryn chuckled and flexed, cracking their necks and knuckles and getting ready to join in.

"I don't care," the woman said just as Val was about to interject. "You can all try it, if you want."

"Arrogance!" Cal bellowed, Val barely resisting rolling her eyes. If any of the nine of them had no wiggle room when talking about overblown arrogance, it was the young dragon.

Cal had charged forward as soon as he yelled, unslinging the massive ultra greatsword he wielded and attempting to cleave the young woman in half. Shockingly, his blade was met with a blade in return, the woman also wielding a greatsword. Considering she had just demonstrated she was quite expert with her fists, the fact that she was a skilled swordswoman was rather surprising. She deflected Cal's slash with no effort, sliding her smaller, though still rather large, blade along the flat of Cal's to throw his strike off course. She didn't retaliate with another swing, but instead, before her deflection was even completed, lashed out with a kick, the amount of force her body possessed stunning everyone watching. The single sidekick lifted Cal's massive frame off the ground, sending the humanoid dragon tumbling into the side of the mountain.

Andryn was up next, having close with her in the second it took her to send Cal on his merry way. The massive ogre had his heavy gauntlets and greaves equipped and moved in swiftly to send several jabs at the woman. Elizabeth dodged them with a near-contemptuous ease, her figure moving fast enough that she was little more than a blur. Andryn finished with a front snap kick, a powerful and speedy move that often caught foes by surprise, but the woman reacted without the least bit of hesitation. She swayed slightly to the side as Andryn's leg was still moving forward, grabbing the ogre by the ankle and knee just as his limb was reaching full extension, her own sword having disappeared back to wherever she kept it stored. Val felt her eyes bug out once again as the woman pivoted on her rear leg and twisted her hips, lifting Andryn off his feet with a precise throw, swinging the eight-foot, eight hundred pound mass of muscle and fat over her head with a whistling sound that stop abruptly as Andryn's face met the stone of the rocky escarpment with a loud *Crunch*.

D was back on the attack before the throw had completed, swinging at Elizabeth like a baseball homerun champion, grunting in surprise as the woman spun around the strike and sent his hammer far off course with a slash from her greatsword. She returned the blade in a stunningly quick backslash to parry a chop from Cal, who had pulled himself out of the mountainside and rejoined the fight, before lashing out behind herself and knocking another kick from Andryn away. Val couldn't stop herself from rubbing her eyes, not believing what she was seeing, watching as their three largest team members, with the most points in STR and END, were tossed around like children. She heard Victoria audibly gasp when Elizabeth grabbed Andyrn's arm and Cal's wrist and swung both into the air after failed strikes, smashing them together with a noise like a bomb going off in a blacksmith's shop.

The most infuriating thing about it all was the wolf woman simply stood back, near where Storm was now standing, hands on her hip and her head occasionally shaking at a poor strike from one of the boys. The human woman of their pair was going one-versus-three with the boys without any help from her companion and was making it look easy. Val nearly cheered when D got a strike in, though it was only a glancing blow, and Val's merriment turned to a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach as she watched the hit from the massive greathammer not even make the girl flinch.

"Just what kind of monster is she?!" Val hissed, not expecting a reply, but surprisingly getting one from Tyrael.

"She is at my level," he said in his mellifluous, stoic voice.

Val twisted her head slowly to stare at the Ancient Human before asking, "Just what do you mean by that?"

"I do not know about her other skills, though I have some suspicions, but she is certainly an Expert in Swords," he replied calmly.

"No way. She looks like she's barely twenty! And I haven't heard of her before! I know all the young prodigies in the galaxy," Val snapped back in response.

"You know the publicly discussed prodigies and up-and-comers," Tyrael retorted with a slight frown. "Even in a weaker galaxy like ours, there are untold depths. Never discount the hidden masters or, in this case, quiet prodigies that may lurk in the shadows."

While they had spoken, the battle hadn't suddenly started going better for the three boys, if the fact Cal was once again embedded in the mountainside and Andryn was hurtling through the air while flailing all his limbs were any indication. D was the only one who wasn't doing absolutely terrible, and that was mainly due to his chest piece getting caved in having given him a little initial caution. That bit of caution wasn't really enough to overcome his fiery nature, nor to save him from getting totally clobbered by Elizabeth as she slid inside his guard and then punched his torso more than thirty times in one second. Val could hear the snapping and shattering of the parts of his armor, and ribcage, from where she stood at the back, wincing slightly as the young woman kicked him so hard he lost a grip on his hammer, the demon and the weapon sailing off at somewhat different angles.

"Should we stop this?" Tyrael asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

"I don't think we need to interfere," Val replied with a very slight sigh, pointing at the fight, which was in its final stages.

Elizabeth had intercepted a final charge from Cal, smashing the dragon man's guts so hard bile spewed out of his mouth before lifting him off the ground and slamming him back down with the force of a falling meteor. She didn't leave him there, however, as she spun around him and kicked him with a sweeping motion, the strike carrying monumental amounts of force, lifting Cal out of the crater she had slammed him into. His free flight was canceled early when he slammed into a charging Andryn, lifting the massive ogre off the ground and hurtling them both back into the mountainside. Elizabeth followed up, causing Val to hiccup slightly as she suppressed another gasp, for the girl seemed to teleport to where the two boys had landed, but Val sensed no mana fluctuations. That meant the young woman had simply moved that quickly, so fast she left an afterimage at her starting point. She had already demonstrated overwhelming speed and strength, but the difference between being able to lean or slide to the side quickly and being able to launch oneself across the terrain at horrific speeds was a fairly large gap.

As Val was still contemplating just how the young woman was moving so fast the object of her fascination slammed into Cal, Val and Tyrael both wincing heavily as they watched Cal's chest piece cave in like old tissue paper. The young woman then pivoted on her heel, spinning around to snap the back of her other boot into Cal's side, sending the man flying off to the side, looking like an old, broken ragdoll. Elizabeth didn't stop there, however, continuing the spinning motion, she planted the foot she had just kicked with and twisted a full three hundred and sixty degrees again, bringing her left leg around now before pushing off her right and slamming her left heel into Andryn's huge gut so hard cracks spiderwebbed up the mountain for nearly thirty feet. The ogre puked a massive wash of beer and liquor outward in a fountain, which Elizabeth adroitly dodged, before his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, unable to even slump forward as he was embedded too deeply within the rock face.

The young woman then slowly stretched, twisting her neck and causing many of her joints to pop before looking directly at Val and asking, "Who's next?"

"I think we've had quite enough for one day," Val replied tersely. "If you'll allow us to treat our battered companions?"

"Sure, no problem," Elizabeth said with a shrug.

Val then waved to Victoria and her several servants, all of them, the angel included, possessing quite good external healing skills. The four got to work, first retrieving D from where he had flown, the tall demon cursing and mumbling protests as they brought him over to sit in the area where the fight had just taken place. They then found Cal and brought him back, the dragon unable to cuss as he was also unconscious from that final kick. Lastly, Blue Wave and Alexandria worked together while Victoria started her not so tender ministrations, the two slowly prying Andryn out of where he was embedded in the rock face. Val and Tyrael, in the meantime, approached the two young women.

"Apologies for the rough start and late introductions," Val said, giving a small, perfectly angled bow. "I am Vallenna Sanguinia. This is one of my companions in the Young Scions, Tyrael Orion."

"Nice to meet you," the human replied. "I'm Beth and this is Blood."

"Beth is it? I had seen your full name through Identify, but I will remember that," Val said with a shallow nod. "If you wouldn't mind telling me, what is it exactly you and your companion are doing out here?"

"Yeah, not much," the girl, Beth, said with another shrug. "We're trying to sort out the whole weird trade union thing with the governor, but we're stalled with bureaucrats and paperwork. We have another meeting in…uh, four days? I kinda lost track of time. We've been under the mountains trying to find anything interesting."

"Under the mountains?" Val asked, making sure to modulate her tone to one of mild surprise and interest, seeing as how the reporters were swarming them.

"Yeah, it's pretty lucrative down there. Dangerous, though; we had to run from a level three-fifty at one point," Beth answered with a firm nod.

Before Val could say anything else, one of the reporters, several of whom had been standing just to the side from the start of their conversation, cut in. "Miss Elizabeth; Red Avery, New Stellar Times. Can you tell us what faction you're from?"

He thrust a mic in the girl's face, which she frowned at before answering. Val also tensed a little, knowing that this young woman was strong enough to give three of them a run for their money, and if she was upset by the reporter's questions, there might not be much the Young Scions could do to stop her from tearing a few of them limb-from-limb. "If you want to know what faction I'm from, I'm here doing some work for the Lord of Traversal, but we're members of the CRA."

Val's eyebrows climbed slightly at the mention of Mortaine, that old reprobate, though she quickly got her expression back under control. They climbed a little bit again when both Beth and Blood produced CRA emblems, and Silver ones at that, meaning they were full official members and not just the hangers-on that bought Coppers only to indulge in a little fighting. This all seemed to set the reporters off into a tizzy, as they started peppering the two with questions, and Val was interested to hear which ones the girls, mainly Beth, answered, and which of them they artfully dodged.

If I had five, no, hell, if I had three others like her, this Young Scion group might actually be bearable, thought Val wistfully.