Mind Crush [Training|Closed]

[The Bearer of Bad News]

Indomitable Soul
Rank: "B"
Skill: Supplementary
Effect: User's physical toughness translates into greater mental resilience.
Special: ---
Drawback: ---
Description: Where others cave into Chakra effects that alter their minds, the user stands resolute. Whenever the user makes a Will save against mind-affecting or fear techniques, the user can roll 2d20 and use the higher of the 2 die rolls.
Limit: Must learn from Universal Miscellaneous. Must know Iron Will.

[0|50]


Schatzi Rutherford, Takigakure Chuunin. It had a nice ring to it really. But there were some things missing. She was an illusionist, and yet had only a rudimentary resistance to illusion. Time to fix that. She performed a soul split, who stared her down as victoria. Victoria began channeling the raw perception energies of compulsion. She laid hands upon Schatzi's temples, and began attempting to invade her other half's mind. In this battle of chakra and thought, the real world was no longer relevant, and so they both permitted it to slip from their attentions.

There was an initial rush of aggression, a command to end one's own life. Of course it wasn't successful, it was never meant to be. It was a probe, doubling as shock value. A test to see just how strong her mental defenses were. Next was something simpler. Be afraid. The command slipped past Schatzi's guard, just a tiny bit exploiting a crack in her armor, and she felt the panic well. She immediately walled off that area with an intense focus, which left her mind vulnerable to an attack from a different angle. Cluck like a chicken.

She couldn't react fast enough, and was dominated. She immediately bawked loudly, though the pair's only awareness of this fact was through reading each other's thoughts. But with Schatzi's defense eroded now in trying to negate the effect against her mind, Victoria was able to come slamming back in hard. Kill yourself. The edict was difficult to resist, but she was still able to deflect the demands of her other half. Troublesome indeed, the girl's basic defense was good.

But there was a key flaw. Her attention simply could not be everywhere at once. Victoria began a blitz of issued orders. Laughter, tears, pain, pleasure. Every time Schatzi's focus shifted to address a new assault, Victoria offered three more. It was a battle of sheer numbers, and every once in a while something slipped through and the girl was forced to obey. Each time that happened, her overall defensive abilities were stripped away little by little.

Once one in three commands carried true, and Schatzi's mind was a quivering shell of its former resilience, Victoria issued her command again. Kill yourself. She repeated it, pushing, driving it with greater and greater force as Schatzi's mind shrank away from the dominating presence until it had no other resort but to comply with its demands. Her body reached down to the waist to draw out her biggest knife, placed it against the side of her neck, and drew across hard. There was no blood, but a moment after the head was detached from the body, Victoria howled in pain and the corpse of Schatzi vanished, transferring the memory f death to the remaining woman.

[The Bearer of Bad News]

[??/50]

After a short time resting to recover from the spiritual trauma she had inflicted on herself, Schatzi as Victoria duplicated the soul split once again. Placing her hands on the sides of the smaller body's head, they began their mental duel once more. This time instead of compulsions the battle would be one of phantasms, dreams made reality in the eyes of the mind. Nightmares come to life. The battle for one side to dominate the other raged once again.

This time, however, Schatzi fought back. Even as Victoria stuck with the figures of ghostly knights, Schatzi consumed them all with a dreamlike dragon of sound and fury. When the great beast made its march against Victoria, it was defeated with the dream of a mighty sorcerer, whose magic pierced the reptile's form and reshaped it to a sheep. That sheep however charged and grew into a giant ram to slam into the sorcerer's frail body and crush it.

Such was only the tip of the conflict, the obvious tricks which shimmered even in the real world. More was happening beneath the surface as they played on each other's emotions. Fear, lust, anger, sorrow. They dueled for what felt like a long time, neither side being able to gain an upper hand, as each illusion cast was countered by one with some kind of advantage. It was clear that Schatzi was focusing on raw power, which in many cases Victoria was able to beat back with precision strikes or circumvent with sheer numbers.

Both tactics were equally viable, either crushing through all defenses or else finding a weak point through pure quantity of attacks before slipping through the crack with a precise and powerful blow. But seeing as how they were in essence each other, they were largely able to predict each other's patterns, or even sometimes mimic them. The shadows of chaos twirled about the pair in a dangerous dance that a smart outsider would do well to steer well away from.

In truth not much time passed, for the perception of time relative to its objective passage was easily distorted when one's attention was occupied, but it was clear that such a duel could not end in a draw. They would continue until a clear winner was determined. Who that would be became clear in a moment as Victoria cried out again, her hands jumping from Schatzis to her own as if they could combat the sudden pounding ache that consumed her. This time she had been beaten back.

[The Bearer of Bad News]

[??/50]

Another rest period for them both. The mental strain of the exercises was harsh, and so they couldn't continue indefinitely. Once they were confident in continuing, they resumed the usual position, and began another clash, this time centered around the idea of patterns. Although pattern perception techniques were normally visible to everyone, here the raw energies were being passed back and forth between their minds. This at least was a fairly lighthearted exchange compared to earlier.

Since there was little risk involved this time, as a resisted move just meant that the other would be able to see through it, they were free to get very, very illustrative. Everything was passed between them from the innocuous to the downright lewd, rendered in the most exacting level of detail which can only be acheived through intimate knowledge of the subject matter. Chuckles were exchanged all around, but in order to really test themselves they had to get a bit more serious.

The images intensified and became more abstract, suddenly everything was covered in seemingly random splotches of color and light. The mayhem of the mind was all consuming and incredibly distracting. But that was kind of the point. Every once in a while whole one was focused on interpreting some new insane image the other would try to sneak in a power from another discipline. Often the attention was so absorbed as for the party in question to have not even noticed.

Sometimes it caught on though, and they found themselves performing all manner of strange gyrations and feeling a gamut of emotion over time as well as in the midst of a hurricane of sights and sounds. There was not any sort of rhyme or reason to it, it was simple unadulterated chaos of the mind. Onlookers would see two women in the throes of what could only have been a sort of deterioration of the psyche, a madness most profound even.

And still the silliness continued on, perhaps into infinity as much as they were able to tell. As timeless beings anyway time had little meaning to them in the grand scheme. It was really only of any use for scheduling issues, and today their schedule was wisely wide open. Perhaps once they finished driving each other literally insane they might find something else to do. More likely they would be here for quite some time, attacking and defending invisibly.

[The Bearer of Bad News]

[??/50]

Once again the pair was back to casting phantasms against one another as before, but this time there was a twist. No longer confining there battle to the space between minds, they now began to move in random patterns, running and jumping as they cast, in order to increase the level of distraction which would inhibit their resilience against each of the illusions summoned. In so doing, successful resistance would train the mind better than remaining stationary.

The reason they did so now instead of from the beginning was a simple one. Their psyche was not yet hardened enough at the time. So it was only in practicing under more lenient conditions that they could adequately prepare for harder ones. And now the battle took place for real, with creatures of various strength and number charging each caster, some to be dodged at the last moment, most to be intercepted by the other side. But no matter how fast they were, always they were struck at least every so often.

Every time an illusion made contact, it prompted an automatic defense - either it worked or it didn't. But because they were so distracted, more often than not it worked. Each time there was pain, and each time they fought through it to harden their defenses. Gradually they became too hurt and tired to dodge effectively no matter how hard they tried, and were hit more and more often. Most were shrugged off by now, made ineffective by the intensity of the mental conditioning. Most, but not all.

Eventually as always a clear winner would have to be determined, and that point was beginning to draw near. The creatures became less numerous and less various in shape. Less believable as a whole, instead being masses of psychic energy being thrown back and forth in some deranged tennis match. Indeed, rather than expend the energy to create more illusions, they began to simply deflect one back and forth until one or the other failed and tasted pain.

Both were down to their knees now, incapable of moving more than the amount it took to bat aside the mass of chakra which moved between them. Schatzi seemed to have more energy left over for now, as she was the one who created new masses when one of them was hit, but it was still very much anyone's game. The "creature" that was really more of a blob descended on her when Victoria batted it aside, and when fangs bit into flesh, she vanished. The pain of death flowing into her caused Victoria!Schatzi to pass out for a while. She needed the rest anyway.

[The Bearer of Bad News]

[??/50]


When she awoke, Schatzi was far from refreshed. Her head hurt. She was at her limits, or at least close enough that continuing would be difficult. She forced herself anyway. The soul split she formed now was likely to be her last for a while. The effort of tearing her soul apart was becoming too much. The two squared off, and again began the struggle for mental superiority. Mind control and fear were the names of the game here as always.

Though it was sluggish, the two moved to try and maintain line of sight against the other while avoiding it against themselves. Compelling forces streamed into each other's mind whenever they were in sight, fading when they managed to move away. And so it was that the final battle raged was one more of mobility than force, not that either party had much of wither remaining to work with. Certainly they would not be able to keep up for long.

That was fine though. Probably they wouldn't need to repeat this grueling exercise again in the future if they could keep at it right now. Here in their exhausted state was when the mind was at its most vulnerable. If they could guard themselves from intrusion now, they would be able to do so when well rested as well. The primary edict being used by both combatants right now was simple: Halt. It was easy enough to tell when one was being targeted - involuntarily, their movement would slow down. Whoever stopped first lost.

But that was only the first part of the contest. Schatzi was if nothing else completely lacking in any sort of conscience. This would end in death one way or another. It was simply too hard anymore to do so while the victim was still moving. So they hammered away at each other's mind, each demanding that the other be the first to yield. Such a contest they held, that their individual will held up so long. It was very impressive. Even in a rested state, before this training they would certainly have buckled before now.

The strain of this stubbornness was proving to take a far greater toll than anticipated though. The pair of them were moving at a crawling pace now, though neither was willing to give in. In the end, they weren't capable of maintaining both the physical and the mental labors, and collapsed in front of each other. Victoria reached out with her knife, aiming to finish her other self, but couldn't raise it high enough to land a deathblow. And then she vanished, dismissed by Schatzi for their souls to merge again. She hadn't been sure she could actually survive another "death".

[She of the Mighty Bow-Gun]

Learned