Perform, etc. versus crabs

You’re not finished there, either. You draw upon the blood you shed even as the crab's body dissolves, pulling it into a ribbon and maintaining it with your skill. Then you twirl, whipping the blood over the other pools before letting it drop, a crimson invitation for their occupants to come out and play.

All right… well you’ll let the Dance have its head, if it really wants to do this. It’ll be a good test, at least.

You have only a single point of Beauty but you burn it anyway. The crab's echo gives away its location a split second before it rises above the water, letting you home in even as you move. It’s more your own speed than the Beauty that leaves the nearest crab no time to fully clear the water before your charge impales it, the tip of your sword going in through its tiny mouth and out the back of its shell before the water has a chance to finish falling from its body. You pull up, lifting the crab as it’s impaled, then flick it from your sword. The crab turns to dust as it flies away, but the blood within is in the grip of your skill and that spears out towards the third crab. You twirl the tip of your sword to properly hook the ribbon around the third crab's pincer, then pull sharply and stand your ground as the crab flies towards you, impaling it like its brother.

Burning Beauty again you leap, the speed and force enough to shoot you backwards, flying over another crab that was trying to circle around behind you. You shift your center of gravity while you’re directly over the crab, pulling yourself into a backflip and diverting your momentum down. When you land on the shell of the crab you have enough force to drive the monster's legs out from under it and crack its shell under your bare heels.

You bend your legs, letting the momentum of your torso bleed into a folding motion as you sink immediately into a crouch, letting the weight and momentum of your upper body and blade do the work of driving your sword through the crab's shell, neatly from top to bottom, like some sort of oversize novelty skewer.

The skirts of your dress billow around on a wind summoned by Perform, dancing and fluttering, white petals contrasting with the scarlet fountain of blood you draw forth. You don’t use the blood straight away, instead somehow… catching it? You find yourself rolling your shoulders, controlling the ribbon not with your limbs, but with your torso. You didn’t know that was possible? It’s a… simple yet deceptively complex internal swirling of your waist, core and shoulders to churn the ribbon into a swirling maelstrom that wraps tightly around your body, almost armor, of a sort. It whips your skirts into a frenzy, red dancing around white without ever quite mixing. Then, maintaining the maelstrom, you step forward slowly, facing the final two crabs and finishing them with a single, showy, lazy horizontal slice. Their blood joins the maelstrom, refreshing it, enlarging it.

You turn to regard the octopus sitting in the final pool and you throw your sword at it, pulling the blood from around your body back into a ribbon as you throw.

The sword pierces the octopus's body, then the ribbon wraps around the hilt of your sword and you tug on it, pulling your sword back towards you in a tumbling arc that lets you catch it from the air.

The Dance ends, the blood splatters to the ground, and you pause, as if for applause.

After a moment, Blair obliges. Rayne, Roger and Brian follow suit a bit less enthusiastically. Robyn looks on with mild annoyance.

13: A dance of sin