Would you like to see what it means to have the weight of genius levied against that of a common man? If your curiosity is so peaked, and so yearns to have its thirst slaked, then merely look upon the circumstances of this battle and you will know what it means to fight a true beast of warfare.

Now that he had stopped bleeding, no longer preoccupied with merely dying at some point throughout this battle alone in the shadows and the dust, the heathen could concern himself with greater things. The heathen came to a stand, continuously moving his arms for he would be damned if they suffered even a degree of stiffness when the battle became personal, and began to move. He began to move even as Crimson moved, though they seemed to be taken to opposite directions; there was a certain burning building that he needed to reach, with a certain prize before it that would aid him in his conquest.

Now the second half of the payload, still adhered to the star as if by choice, was unleashed. The first volley almost never killed his foe, at least not any of mention; it was merely used as a ruse. A gambit that would force them either behind a blockade or make them move. Once the first assault wore down the blockade, or made an opponent waste their precious time and energy in their scramble to safety, the second discordant salvo came in to play.

This one almost always did some manner of permanent damage and this particular variation of the morning star in particular, given the single piece of unique metal that floated around in its grasp. And so it lined up, the various facets of its destructive self quivering in anticipation, and it fired. But this time…this time was different, for among the fusillade lay one of four scalpels (still active mind you) that the heathen had let into the world and that his morning star had brought back to him.

So when its sharpened point and edge breached the wall? It exploded, turning the chaos of the assault into something further embraced by entropy.

Would it kill Crimson? Unlikely, but it would add injury to his insult, and these little nicks and imperfections all added up, eventually, into one glorious wound of death.

Back on the ground, the heathen waited patiently, with eyes that never relented in their scrutiny. He rose from his knees to a standing position, his fingertips trailing dirt from the ground they had touched furiously, and his sword’s tip hovered a quarter of an inch above the ground.

Fortunately, Crimson was not in the proximity of the wall upon its inevitable detonation--in fact, he was near the center of the mussed up living room, of the only moderately bombed out residence. It could only be cover to such an extent, though, and when the front wall tumbled inward in a tumultuous fit of dust, debris, and clutter, Crimson held his arm over his face. The only reason he had not been effected was because of the distance. He was simply lucky, in that case. Had he been near the wall, it would have been over.

The dust obscured all behind it, leaving Crimson the perfect opportunity to move undetected. With the commotion of the explosion and the subsequent crumbling and settling of the effected area, it would be difficult--to near impossible--to hear the man's movements, or discern his location based on appearance alone, as looks would have it that he either perished in the detonation or remained within the cover of the dust, where he couldn't be seen--tactically, some of the best cover available, even if it was not particularly cover at all--but not at all used, regardless.

Crimson's location was given away instantly when he fired his weapon, but at the time, it would be meaningless. The heathen was out on the street, visible, open for attack--for a truly awkward and difficult to comprehend attack, a purely technique driven assault--

The crimson glad gunman fired a total of four shots, using a two handed quick-shot technique: one hand manning the handle and trigger, the other taking care of the hammer. Coincidentally, only one of these were actually aimed for the heathen, and that was only for his left leg. Hardly a lethal blow. It was the third shot, anyways--so, why aim for him at such an odd place in the third shot, and why not keep aim on him for each shot, anyways? Crimson had already established himself in this battle as an expert marksman, after all . . .

The first shot was aimed to pass by the heathen, the second to strike the stone of the street right before his foot, the third at his leg, and the fourth and final just six feet ahead of him, aimed for the street itself, rather than the heathen.

And yet, he'd find them lodged within his body if he did nothing to avoid it--or stop them in some way. The effect was simple: ricochet. A shot to the shin, leg (directly aimed), neck, and if he wasn't careful, the heathen would also experience a shot to his back. This was just the first display of Crimson's gun-play, and to make matters worse, he fired off the final two shots whilst within the house, to cover his movement once again, and leave himself presumably undetected by the heathen.

Only the first shot would land purchase, perforating the flesh of his leg like a nail through tissue paper, but leaving the man unflinching and unwavering; by the time that pain ripped through his nerves, the heathen was already allowing his body do what it may, and thus the final piece of the puzzle was firmly fitted into place.

He fitted the tip of his blade against the very center piece of the grand tapestry he had carved onto the ground when this battle first began. It sank an inch into the ground without abeyance, so keen was its edge, and the vibrations that had been so subtle as to be unnoticeable up till now…ceased completely. By that time, the other bullets had reached him but unfortunately, by that time, he was protected; as they encroached on the periphery of the spell-circle, they were jettisoned elsewhere and the heathen was left untouched.

He leaned further on the pommel of his blade, pressing it down, down, down into the ground until all that was left was a hilt sticking up from the earth, begging to be handled. Around him light up a coruscating parade of violent violet hues. An incoherent breeze gripped the ends of his hair and tousled it mercilessly. And then….and then the ground suffered a deep trench; then a garish slash carved itself along the side of a building; then a tree somewhere in the distance was felled.

The haphazard dealings of death, though erratic, would not remain so for long; as the heathen’s mind grew more focused, so would his assail. Feasibly, it should take him a matter of moments to find Crimson’s location. If not from the trajectory of the bullet (even tracing back from where it originally ricochets), if not by the sound of the gun, if not by the very smell of his unnatural life, then something would give him away. Something, anything, movement on any level, a breath too hard, a step misplaced; that would seal it.

A cascade of ethereal swords, of unparalleled sharpeness, would cascade against him as rain. At the end of the day, one man would be left standing, and one man would be cubed.
--------
Blade Barrier: Using the haste spell-circle as a framework and the power of his sword (which has been progressively increasing throughout the battle through absorbing blood), the heathen adjusted the circle and empowered it by stabbing his sword into the center of it. Unfocused, the blade barrier protects the user with ethereal slashes; focused, he can extend the slashes to reach across a distance.

Crimson noticed that something was wrong when his left arm had been sliced. A gash in his metal bicep had torn through completely, from surface to internal mechanisms, and through the next surface. Of course, this prompted him to hurry, and rightly so. If there were more than just one, he was going to need to be on the run to avoid that. Unfortunately, this also meant that loading his weapon was going to be increasingly difficult, as the mechanisms inevitably controlling some of his fingers were heavily damaged during this. He was going to need some repair after this, that much was for sure.

Without hesitation after the first blow, Crimson rolled to the left as quickly as he could muster, practically throwing himself half-way across the hallway. Getting on his feet was quick enough, and once he was, he was on the run again. As a majority of his limbs were mechanical and controlled by inner mechanisms merged with his nervous system, he could run marathons without growing tired. He needed not blood to fuel his limbs, just the will to move them.

Fortunately, this attack was no more deadly than the heathen's last attack, and it functioned just the same. Rather than a straightforward stabbing, it was a rain of blades from above. The attack was simple enough to predict, and once he was on the move, it was his primary thought.

Although he was utilizing the same tactic as before, running like hell to avoid inevitable death, Crimson had it slightly different. The heathen was in clear view, after all. Even if he couldn't land a hit with a bullet, this rain of blades--which he could barely outrun--looked menacing enough when he first glanced back. The gunman burst through a front door, littering splinters and wood behind and before him, but he paid no attention to it: the heathen was in view, and by God, he wasn't going to stop running until he was safe. The structure he had been within was the neighboring building of that which he had hid out in during the last attack.

Or until the heathen was struck down.

Crimson continued to sprint, his legs kicking off of the ground with each step, a means of sending him forward at an incredibly fast pace. There was no other way he'd have outrun the magic--but that was inconsequential after a moment. He was creating a lag, a trail of blades falling behind him, just like the trail of metals that tore up the structures earlier. He was rushing towards the heathen, as well, and once he was within four feet of the man, he jumped ahead, intending to narrowly slide by him, and the presumed spell circle, without touching either, but leaving both to the fate of the heathen's own attack.

And if all else failed, there was a lag, so he could start running again if need be, but firstly, he had his gun trained on the center of the heathen's body. If the attack were to stop once it either struck him or came close, then he wasn't going to be avoiding a bullet at close to point-blank range.

No, not quite.

The two tactics had certain parallels, they echoed each others foundations, but there were vast differences between them. The attack that had come earlier had taken a fraction of the effort and thought that the blade barrier had. It was something that he summoned innately, whereas this was something that he needed to outsource. First he laid the foundation for it near the beginning of the fight, then he was forced to feed his blade his very blood to empower it. He had to leave his brainchild, for a moment, but upon his return he was diligent, altering the base structure and allowing for it to adopt a new piece of the puzzle. The sword itself became the key, both the source of power and the dynamic blueprint from which the attack would follow.

He still held the key. It was still in the lock, and so he controlled it. This was not a meaningless barrage of ethereal slashes, sent haphazardly with the hopeful aim of ending this battle once and for all. No, this was a focused attack, a closing gambit that the heathen meant to use to win. This was not a ‘let’s see if this works’, this was a ‘this man is going to die, right now’.

The heathen conditioned his initiative. It was important to keep Crimson on the move. He knew that if he stopped pressing the attack for a moment, just a moment, the gunman would be allowed to think, and thought was a dangerous thing with men of their caliber. So as Crimson leapt around and ran, the blades continued to chase him, but never seemed to strike. No no no. Crimson was running at him, it seemed, and so that was when he would sweep the rug out from under him.

Crimson jumped, and so, ended his life. Mid-air, where he had no more ground to push off of and exercise his agility, the heathen stole his breath away. The blade barrier unleashed a fusillade of vectors that shore through the air like rice paper, humming in delight of their keenness, and yearning to slice the man to ribbons. He was close, less than five feet away, coming straight at him and, for the sake of emphasizing, mid-air.

After this, the blade barrier’s power was naturally spent, but it would not matter. One had no need to defend oneself against a dead man.

It all occurred in flashes, split second moments, giving thought a minimal opportunity, and reaction purely null. There was no reason for the heathen to believe that his attack had failed. For all intents and purposes, he had every right to presume that he was successful. After all, he'd feel blood splattered upon his cheek, a telltale sign of injury, and under the circumstances, any sort of injury attained from his attack would have led the injured to death--no, there would've been no injury. Only death.

That was just it, though: Crimson, at full sprint, was faster. Faster than the heathen's full sprint, and faster than his magic, which was far from an instantaneous burst. As it was, the attack had been launched whilst Crimson was in mid-jump, but the attack was undershot--or, rather, Crimson had narrowly overshot the area of attack. There was no poor aim on the heathen's part; in fact, he was doing just as any normal person with such abilities would have. A normal person would have been cut to ribbons.

And it just so happened that the heathen wasn't fighting a normal human being. This was no fault of his--he was just outmatched in one particular respect, and either had not seen the extent of such, or failed to notice . . .

One, two. Two shots, fired without hesitation, in such succession that there was no more than a tenth of a second between expulsions of ammunition. Whether or not it was the heathen's own blood that splattered upon his cheek or Crimson's own was variable. Crimson was bleeding, but not in excess--but the heathen? He who had presumed that his opponent was dead, with no reason to feel his assumptions incorrect, what of his fate? One to the back of the head, one to the shoulder, nearly point blank range--only six feet of distance between the firearm and the body . . .

Of course, his attempts weren't completely in vain. Crimson's left leg was torn to pieces, now just scraps of metal with limited movement, still in form, but slow. He wasn't going to be running with any particular speed anymore, but he was still going to be walking out of this dead city. The truth of the matter was that, when Crimson overshot the attack, only his left leg had been in range to suffer damage, and not for long enough to be torn completely to shreds. The very fact that he had been cut upon the hip was luck on the heathen's part.

He was temporarily disabled, just for this moment, and had expelled every shot he had available, but that didn't matter. He had more ammunition, and could reload if provided the opportunity, but it was unlikely. One had no need to defend oneself against a dead man.

The eyes of an everyman were capable of tracking speeds far, far greater than they were capable of generating; their minds, a bubbling pot of nerves, neurons, and synapses were capable of generating the proper response in time to most things, the only limiting factor being the chemical and electrical reactions that govern the body.

Now put yourself in the mind of someone like this heathen. His was a mind focused and sharpened in the calefactive crucible of warfare. His mind was a tool, sharp and rough and heavy, that had known the scent of war the very first day it was introduced to him. As Crimson’s body was not the body of a normal man, the heathen’s mind was not the mind of a normal man.

And in controlling the barrier, the limitations of his body were non-existent. This did not matter. Crimson was a unique facsimile of life. He was resilient and agile; had he just one or the other, he would have died long ago.

The assumption of victory was often the precursor to failure. His demeanor towards battle could be outlined throughout the length of their bout. In all he had done, but it the scalpels or either end of his morning star salvo, he had not shown arrogance. As a rule of thumb, he always assumed his foe to be smart, clever, cunning, rational, and clear of mind, body, and spirit.

He never assumed a victory unless his enemy was on the ground before him, dead and eviscerated. Blood? A red cloak. Nothing more, nothing less. A portend, perhaps, but nothing concrete. He did not see the gunman before him, dead and eviscerated; he saw only red, and that was not enough.

What did a gunman do when he had a clear shot, an unshakable bead, on his target? What did a swordsman do when he had a clear swing, unimpeded by armor or opposing weapon, on his foe? He shot. He swung.

His mind crackled profusely, dwindling away the vast amounts of energy in his body. He had no time to structure his power, no time to synergize or optimize. He had only the time necessary for a thought, for a reactionary and instinctual defense that erected a static, white-noise, skin-tight barrier. The bullets struck the isolated, one-man magnetosphere and ricocheted into the sky at awkward angles. At this proximity, Crimson himself might feel an influence pressing him back.

His brain was throbbing, his skin was pale, and his stance was feeble. When he turned to face Crimson, he cried red tears.

“How much of you is machine?”

Crimson was out of bullets, and he had not reloaded. He wasn't going to, either. The battle was over. The only way for them to continue would be to physically beat each-other with their bare hands, and the heathen did not seem like the type zealous enough to attempt that which he knew was impossible. Crimson, whose arms were crafted out of metal, moved his limbs at an unnatural pace, and by the nature of their construction, an unnatural strength.

It was unclear if either of the two men truly "won" over the other. Crimson drew the most blood, comparatively, but the heathen did an equal amount of damage to Crimson's false limbs.

"Human appearance is superficial," replied Crimson, "Even though I've a beaten heart and working lungs, they are nothing more than the hammer of a gun."

Though the gun was not loaded, it was held out and aimed at the heathen's head as if he were going to fire at him. Crimson stared down the line of fire, focused upon his opponent's forehead, and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked and the chamber turned, but nothing.

"I am like this firearm, like your sword. Not a soldier, but a weapon for the times. Only a machine or a tool can truly be a weapon of war, even if it is the means to end wars."

He was not clear with his suggestion, but the heathen was an intelligent man--more than enough to infer the gunman's insinuations. Though there were only parts of him that were truly mechanical, as seen by the fact that his shoulder was bleeding, Crimson disregarded his biology as a living being--as an individual. He had wants and desires, like all living beings, but like a weapon, his wants and desires were subordinate to the reality which he established for himself: mechanical in body, mind, and soul.

His breathing had grown ragged, the exhaustion of his body finally catching up with his conscious mind. He had done a lot of running around and jumping, but adrenaline had allowed him to ignore the repercussions of his actions. Now that he had time to rest, he was paying the debt he owed.

“You’re barely a man at all.”

His voice was raspy, throat parched and the strength was steadily flowing from his legs. In a matter of moments, the only thing that kept him standing was the sheer iron of his will. Jittery fingers found their strength in grasping the hilt of his blade; with a strained effort, he managed to uproot it from the ground and the magic in the air, still throbbing with the vestiges of its structured paradigm, finally died down to a distant hum. Dust dripped from Edge’s tapered end like water.

“I came here to fight a man.”

His skin was snow-white, his eyes were losing their luster, and parts of his clothing were caked in blood. But there was something in his demeanor. Something subtly malignant, hidden in the invisible layers of the air, that threatened death if he was pushed to some incomprehensible edge.

“Not a machine. If I wanted to fight a machine, I’d fight a soldier. You’re just a tool. Sorry pal, it’s not for me. You have a nice day, y’hear?”

With his free hand, the heathen saluted and gave the man a wink; the other hand busied itself with sliding his blade into its lacquered home.

“You ever get yourself a proper heart, pal, you come find me and we’ll continue this.”

The distance soon engulfed every inch of the white-haired destroyer.

And they left destruction in their wake.

A tool. To most, it would have come off as an indecent and offensive remark, but to Crimson, it rang with truth. He was a tool--a tool of war. A biological weapon, and nothing more. He completed the tasks he was meant to, then he went off the charts, completely dormant. Whether he slept or not was inconsequential; all that mattered to him during those times was the wait. He sat in wait for the next purpose he was to fulfill, and when the time came for him to unleash the judgment of the times upon the warring creatures not native to their world, he dressed, gathered his weapons, and left without hesitation. A weapon only hesitates with its wielder, and Crimson's "wielder" was a man with few scruples.

But that did not necessarily mean that he could find no heart. It was, in fact, the sole purpose for his survival--his reason to live, at the very least, during the encounter of the gunman and the heathen. He had not a heart of his own, but he could--it may take time, but it was possible. It was not wrong, either--no matter how improper it seemed. It was not wrong for him, who had a biological heart, to find feelings in, with, and for a woman who lacked a biological heart. For that vital organ she lacked, she made up for in every possible way. While he felt nothing, she felt everything.

She'd have been sad if Crimson never came back. It was not just because of their partnership, either. "Crimson"--Prez O'Connor, reconnaissance specialist, and Sade, engineering specialist. She made him what he was, quite literally; she progressively upgraded his arms and legs for better strength and reaction time, custom designed his weapons, and made each shell of ammunition with her own two hands. She made him who he was, and he was more than just a partner to her.

The wish for her to not be saddened by his death ensured his return. Imagine, then, what would happen were he to return those feelings in full--or understand and admit them for any to hear . . . he would not only return alive with a 100% success ratio, he'd be unscathed.

With his back to the heathen, and vice versa, Crimson stood up straight. "Someday, perhaps I will. On that day, I shall be the death of you."

And then, with a shaky, broken leg of metallic construct, he set off. This battle was over, and until the time came for him to fulfill that purpose with the heathen, the lost battlefield would go forgotten. An "eternal" conclusion-- endless until a theoretical moment-- and one day, he would give it an end.