Description: An exhibition match at Pacific High's athletics field turns into (or perhaps was intended, from the start, to be) a short episode in a secret war. Also, a, always, b, be, c, cobbling. (winner: Alan)
Alan R.B., enormous asshole, ultimate harasser, wielder of chi to a frankly legendary level... is a complete unknown. He has never entered a Saturday Night Fight, he has never participated in a fighting league, exhaustive research will reveal a few exhibition fights over a decade ago that were completely unimpressive.
People who find out more never manage to get the word out. They vanish. They go away.
He is also clearly way too old to be here. Though the blonde is unquestionably breathtakingly handsome, he's certainly at least in his late 20s, and putting him in his 30s is not entirely unreasonable. He's dressed in his typical dark colors - black linen slacks with excruciatingly expensive stitching, a matching vest, and a blue silk shirt with cuffs undone pushed artfully up to his elbows to reveal whipcord forearms. Electricity crackles along his skin. He stares out through mostly-transparent grey sunglasses at another nearby man.
He is... well, uniformed is probably accurate. His black pants look off-the-rack, his black boots are utilitarian, and his jacket - worn half-open and loose - is a crisp blue-and-grey number that looks like something out of a modern sci-fi show. His hair is the unmistakeable shade of orange-red that denotes a poor unfortunate ginger, but his face is completely hidden by a gas mask in the same colors as the jacket. He is holding a smartphone that isn't actually available for purchase yet in his hands, one glove off and stuffed in a pocket, angling it toward Alan as he awkwardly jams at the screen.
"Ahhh, jeez," the agent says in a whiny tone. "What is... how d'ya... this is my third day on the job! I'm from Minnesota, we don't got these things there!" Codename Slapchop, he fumbles the phone in his sweaty grip, nearly hurling it to the grass.
"Fuck's sake." The blonde's hand darts out impossibly fast, snatching the phone from the other man's grip. "Home screen. Skype. Video 'the fuck' call. You listening? You looking? If he kills me I'm gonna come back as a big motherfucking S-Class paranat and fuck you 'till you love me. Boom! Big Brown. Why'd they call him Big Brown? What kind of Skype contact name is Big Brown?" Alan shoves the phone back at the man, who bobbles it and finally gets it pointed at the boxer. He adjusts the steel rings on his fingers. "Goddamnit, the other way! Hit the fucking flip button and point the screen at me so I can see this guy! Big Brown. Does he know how fecal that sounds?" Alan stuffs a bluetooth headset onto his right ear - wouldn't do to actually broadcast this shit and leak Illuminati secrets all over the place. "I'll be talking in C-level cipher."
Urien's face fills the phone, the viewscreen on the other end wobbling back and forth. Alan hasn't actually looked over there, and is clearly unaware he's broadcasting yet. "Fuckin' making me take a fuckin' meeting while I'm busy. Maybe I'll ciao-ciao a steamy one in his filing cabinet. There's a Big Brown for ya."
Once again entered into the world of weird matchups made more or less arbitrarily, Satsuki -- that is to say, 'Ginko Himura, perfectly normal kenjutsu practitioner who is in no way suspicious' -- has been dispatched to an exhibition at Pacific High. It's taken her a few moments from the warning to assess the /reason/ for the exhibition, but she thinks she understands it after some thought; Pacific is where the 'East' and 'West' meet, and she -- as a practitioner of an Eastern style -- has been commanded to face this distinctly Western boxer.
She briefly entertains the notion that this is actually part of a long proxy war between her own shadow organization and some other nefarious group that wants to rule the world. This is immediately discarded because that is dumb as hell. More likely they just wanted to see a teenager -- which the brunette definitely is -- beat up someone older as an indication of the superiority of the energy of youth.
When she arrives at the fight, she's very slightly technically late -- which is good, because it gives Alan the time to get his Skype call going. She looks at Slapchop, then at the boxer himself, her gaze neutral to the point of blankness. Whatever is happening between the two of them is of no concern to her; she's here to do the barest minimum possible that isn't directly within the context of the mission.
Clad in a samurai's jinbaori and hakama, she rests her right hand gently on the hilt of her weapon as she steps in. "I am prepared," she says calmly; she expects Alan to make the first move, it seems. Having that little bit of extra information on her opponent before moving is worth a lot to her.
COMBATSYS: Satsuki has started a fight here.
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Satsuki 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Alan has joined the fight here.
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Alan 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Satsuki
COMBATSYS: Slapchop has joined the fight here.
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Alan 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
Satsuki arrives, walking through one section of the crowd and into Alan's field of view. The man's eyes click almost audibly toward him, a light flickering inside them as he openly lets them roam her up and down, a predatory sneer cutting across his face. He hooks his thumbs to his belt and lifts one leg, tapping an expensive leather toe into the heel of the other shoe. "Awww, you're breakin' my heart! What's with all those clothes? Did you hear this was a school zone and get all concerned with destorying innocence? You should see the shit these kids watch on Saturday the fuck morning."
His tongue darts out, flicks across his lips, and his head suddenly leans away from his earbud, a flat expression dropping onto his face like an old man harangued by a haggish wife. He gives a sidelong glance to the phone - and a double-take. His first time seeing Urien outside of a few pictures of him looking stoic in a suit and the man's wearing a dishrag! At least he's got the body to pull it off. "Well, hello sailor." He's looking right at the phone, clearly not speaking to Satsuki. "That old man Trask smoking apart in the corner? Didn't like him anyway, I don't trust a man who drinks Coors."
His arms suddenly blur, the man digging out a Combat Cigarette, a red rolled paper with leaves of a darker blood red and threads of black. The cigarette case snaps closed and back in his pocket before it can be clearly seen, smoke curling around his head, the cigarette lit with no lighter. Alan shifts into a loose stance, once again looking at Satsuki and sneering, hands up. Boxing. He goes up on the balls of his feet.
"Sorry, doll, I have to make this quick. I hate multitasking." He then dissolves, a thin trail of crackling lightning on the ground connecting the actual Alan several feet to the side to the afterimage, and he lunges forward at incredible speed. Lightning trails past his hand as he swings for Satsuki's face, Slapchop squawking in dismay as he tries to keep the man in the phone's view.
"I don't know, some little samurai chick. I don't think she goes to /this/ school, she's too... traditional." Alan, if he gets past Satsuki, is already spun around to face her so he can try and look at her from the other angle. "Fucking hakama pants! How can I tell how nice your ass is in that bullshit?! Anyway if I was gonna be zeroed out I think I'd've managed it a while ago. You don't see people with as much juice as me everyday and you know it!"
COMBATSYS: Alan successfully hits Satsuki with Storm Front.
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Alan 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
"... This is the uniform of... a school of kenjutsu," comes the reply, a little mystified at Alan's question. She doesn't get offended or upset, though, like he might expect; if anything, her tone is closest to that of someone who has just been dumped unceremoniously in a foreign country. Her dull expression actually seems to become /more/ blank.
Despite the fact that it's almost certainly a total accident, what puts Satsuki on edge -- more than /anything/ -- is being called 'doll.' Does he know? /Is/ this some sort of conspiracy angle? Satsuki -- well, 'Ginko Himura' -- doesn't know. Her whole body on edge after hearing /that/, gaze rests basically everywhere /but/ his fists -- the cigarette, the phone... everything else, and that costs her dearly when he dissolves forward and plows his fist into her.
It just about bowls her over, though she manages to shift onto her back foot just enough that it's not /quite/ a problem; she merely spins around three times, clutching at her face with her other hand in an attempt to massage the pain out of it. For a little while, she stays like that; his words roll off of her.
"... Unnecessary," she says, after a moment. After a second, she murmurs a few numbers to herself quietly, under her breath; it almost certainly sounds like garbage text.
It is possible that someone else in the conference call, however, may recognize it as... Alan's blood pressure? ... Seriously?
It is then that she moves forward -- or, well, backward, after Alan's dashing blow -- and finally begins her offense. Her feet glow with indigo light as she ducks low and then hurls herself forward; she goes flying forward, body twirling as her feet drill forward ahead of her, carrying that strange indigo glow with them.
COMBATSYS: Satsuki successfully hits Alan with Spiral Arrow.
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Alan 0/-------/---====|=====--\-------\0 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
"Hey Fred," says the blonde abruptly, "if you don't wanna get your eye poked out, don't go into the gym teacher's office during lunch break. I mean, dressing like that, yer fuckin' gagging for it." He lifts his fist and blows on it, excess sparks drifting off like dust. Alan then grimaces, and gives the phone a somewhat unimpressed look. "That's a pretty broad portfolio and a little bit outta my wheelhouse. You sure about that, boss?"
Satsuki then abruptly commands his attention. She jukes back and comes in, Alan going back up on the balls of his feet. "Hey, I know how they roll around here. Sex that uniform up a bit. Let's get some thigh cutouts, a tighter top. Or are you just..." He stage whispers, "...a bit undeveloped?" He frowns exaggeratedly and mimes passing a hand up and down his chest in a straight vertical.
The trash talk costs him. He tries to move forward past Satsuki, but she connects quite sublimely with his ankle with a flash of indigo light. His momentum retains and for a single glorious moment he takes majestic flight, passing over Satsuki, eyes narrowed. He's seen /that/ move in the files.
...then he impacts face-first on the grass, taking it all on his hands and the tips of his toes. He slides forward on the wet manicured field before pushing up and flipping back to his stance. A couple steps and he's back in balance, palms stained green but his fine clothes otherwise unmarred. "Whoa-HOH! That wasn't chi, you little minx!" His grin turns into a shark's. "Kitty's got /those/ kind of claws!" The boxer glances meaningfully phoneward JUST in time for the image of the bronze nudist on it to tumble end-over-end. He sighs. At least the audio is clean.
"Strength and results, huh." Alan didn't end up too far away from Satsuki - a couple flowing steps bring him back in range. He takes a deep breath and drops his stance for a half-second - and electricity starts roaring out around him, pouring from his eyes and mouth, spiralling from his skin, his clothes whipping about as if in a storm. Thunder roars. The process takes a heartbeat. He snaps back into his stance, left arm whipping about in a sharp arc, snapping down at the bridge of Satsuki's nose.
The stepped-up game doesn't seem to keep him from talking. His voice has a deep bass reverb in it now, however: "Don't rough up a client without me gettin' a crack at 'er, Fred. You know how I feel about twosies."
COMBATSYS: Alan successfully hits Satsuki with Hook Punch.
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Alan 0/-------/-======|=======\=------\1 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
Perhaps the most baffling thing about Satsuki -- again, sorry, 'Ginko Himura' -- is that what would usually get a rise out of an opponent does /nothing/ to her; she doesn't even really register the suggestions beyond a measured, neutral, "I will take your suggestions under advisement," as she returns to a full standing position.
Satsuki realizes that she needs to be /away/ from Alan when she sees him erupting with the energy of a god; this visceral sense that she should get away ends up costing her, as she tries to dive backward and ends up just taking the whole punch on the nose. There's a shower of blood from it that only gets worse as she breathes harshly out -- the type that in a boxing match would probably end a round, if not a match... but this isn't boxing, and accordingly, she has no cutman to retreat to and no stoppage in sight.
As she whips her head around in an attempt to clear it, some of that blood gets on Slapchop, who probably hates it.
Already starting to sway back and forth as she tries to hang on to her rapidly diminishing chances, she brings one hand up to her mouth and nose, trying to at least /control/ the flow of blood from that busted-open nose if not actually stop it. It's her legs, then, that she aggresses with; as she presses in close to Alan, she comes up into a lightning-fast, indigo-wreathed hop that spikes down into an immediate kick at Alan's shoulders, designed to totally bust open his guard. At the apex of her jump, she announces with as much force as she can through the forearm over her mouth, "Target locked!" He's already recognized her energy as 'not the energy of the world' -- she needs to end this before the fighter can totally pick apart who she really is.
COMBATSYS: Satsuki successfully hits Alan with Cannon Slasher.
- Power hit! -
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Alan 0/-------/-======|=------\-------\0 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
Only once Satsuki lands does she at last draw her blade, with one firm hand. This isn't the /optimal/ situation for this particular maneuver -- she would REALLY like to have two on it -- but she has more pressing concerns than strictly optimal weapon performance at the moment. The first thing to hit Alan isn't actually the blade -- no, it's the /pommel/, which lances out on the draw to smack him dead center in the chest. She'd usually do this lower -- to try to knock the wind out of him -- but keeping Alan off balance is much more important.
Finishing the draw with a flourish, Satsuki then comes in for a full-on slash across his midsection with the katana. As it lances out, it's wreathed in the same indigo light that her feet have been for her earlier attacks -- still bearing 'those kind of claws,' evidently, with her blade out.
Sheathing it after the maneuver, Satsuki /finally/ moves her arm away from her mouth, taking a ragged breath.
There's nothing that bugs Alan more than when someone just doesn't give him anything. After the cracking blow, the boxer's mouth slides into a thin line, lip quirking up. His eyes are cold and cruel. "Sorry about your nose. Good luck getting a date to frost out - I think I did 'im a favor." Another notch of cutting edge in his voice. "Fuckin' late bloomer," he gripes, hands up, shifting back.
Slapchop's head clicks back, blood splashing on the camera and himself. "Aw, fer chrissakes!" he laments.
Alan R.B.'s eyes narrow as he studies the girl's movements, tongue probing the inside of his lip. Though a shitbird, he takes aspects of his job seriously, and carefully studies files when in transit, in line, or in the bathroom. People spend a lot of their time in those places. If his life had never gone to fighting, he would've been an academic and a comedian, a philosopher of the new age. As it is now...
His boss's rumbling voice commands half of his attention. "I always know what I'm talkin' about. A. B. C. A, always, B, be, C, closing, cobbling, Always Be Cobbling." He doesn't look at the phone, gaze locked on Satsuki, charging in, his guard's too loose - he misjudges her speed and gets knocked wide open and /caught./
The right file clicks into place in his mind. The Illuminati, masters of information. If she had focused more on her swordplay and less on her techniques... "Not quite the Killer Bee, are you?" he hisses low, inaudible to the crowd. "What a co-fucking-inkydink."
He doesn't have the time to regain his balance, and eats the pommel, blowing his guard wide-open. The slice lays open his chest and burns away a line of his clothes, blood and sparks shooting out of the wound like stage pyros. Alan staggers away, more red pulsing out of his mouth. He lifts his hand to the wound and snarls, "This shirt cost more than this school's entire lunch budget!"
Beat. He looks to the side, distracted. He busts out laughing, and then stops abruptly, hissing in pain. "God damn it, Fred." He glares at the phone as though the pain were /his/ fault, not Satsuki's.
Then he's gone again, but easy to track, a trail of chi, a line of blood, a wall of thunder and lightning and blurring color crossing the distance back to Satsuki in an instant. When he's clear, he has turned around, his back to the girl. "Your body is wide open," he mocks, whether that's true or not.
Alan spins on his heel, still moving forward, transferring even more momentum into his right hand. The rings on his hand focus the chi into four blinding white spots, a blow-back ripping hats off the gathered crowd. Thunder splits the air. Everything pounds right for Satsuki's forehead, a blow so wide-open it's almost insulting... but the sheer /speed/ of his approach gives it that extra zest.
COMBATSYS: Satsuki blocks Alan's Haymaker Punch EX.
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Alan 0/-------/=======|====---\-------\0 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
Even though she /technically/ manages to get the big, flat, red gauntlets under her sleeves between that trailing chi and herself, Satsuki still ends up in a position she /really/ doesn't want to be in; her body might as well be wide open for all the good it does. His blow doesn't pierce through that guard -- but the force he brings to bear is such that it might as well, the natural energy clashing with the very /unnatural/ power within Satsuki and leaving her in agony.
She crumples under the strike for a moment... and really processes what he said, as she struggles to get back to her feet. 'Killer Bee.' He knows. That changes everything about this exhibition match; she doesn't think she can kill him, but she /has/ to discourage him. His handlers absolutely must perceive Shadaloo as a threat -- there is no other acceptable outcome. Her eyes flutter shut for a moment as Alan laughs at the phone, and she tries to find something inside of her to contend with... /this/.
Slowly wheeling around, Satsuki stays just barely outside her sword's credible reach. The space is the most important thing -- she needs that space to even react to Alan. The quandary of what to do strikes her -- and within moments, so does the answer. The time to even pretend to be 'Ginko Himura' is over; the hakama-clad Doll has to use everything she has. The crowd won't know it, after all -- and if /he/ knows... what's the point in hiding it? As she often does in moments of intense pressure, she turns her focus deep inside herself...
... and once again, finds 'him.'
She's too pressured, however, to act on those impulses in the way she usually does -- to really give in completely to that dark intent behind her. There's just too much stacked against her, and she's getting too worn out; her body can't sustain that kind of offense. Instead, she locks eyes with Alan, lashing out and slightly up with her blade.
A wave of indigo lashes out all around her; usually, when she brings this force to bear, it's a tiny thing, designed to discourage the particularly jumpy or aggressive. Just to harry the opponent -- to make them second-guess their offense. Not so, here; the energy spreads out far enough to potentially engulf the boxer /entirely/, rather than merely lash out at him. A sense of existential dread rolls off of her in waves; in the front row of the crowd, people who had once been cheering the intensity of the action find themselves struck mute with horror.
At the exact middle of the slashing motion, Satsuki smiles. The smile suits her face poorly -- not the small, pleasant smile one might expect of a Japanese teenager, nor the gregarious, pleasant near-laugh of a master fighter. This is a monster's smile -- broad, all-encompassing, every tooth on display.
By the time the maneuver ends, one way or another... the smile, too, has passed.
COMBATSYS: Alan overcomes Psycho Slash from Satsuki with Thunder Storm.
- Power hit! -
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Alan 0/-------/-------|====---\-------\0 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
--- In the Pacific Stadium bathroom ---
"Awh, hey, c'mon babe, it's just a kiss--" Brad Paisley, an underclassman quarterback who has risen to some degree of High School Fame despite his idiot last name, is unsuccessfully convincing Misty Delacroix to make out with him in the bathroom, because it's just a weird thing to do. The girl twists her lips, frowning, and is about to answer when--
The bathroom stall immediately behind Brad glows a frankly warm shade of yellow, accompanied by evaporating woodchips and the occasional cherry blossom. Immediately after the Special Effects, Frederick Blazer kicks the stall open, a bowl of takoyaki in one hand, a cigarette in his mouth.
The kids are staring at him, incredulously -- he returns the favor.
"What. You ain't never seen takoyaki? It's like, octopus shit, but fried, and they put mayo or somethin' on it. It's really damn good. Give it a try someti- ah JESUS, ARE WE- really?" He is *disgusted*. "A bathroom, for Chrissakes." He hands the takoyaki to a *very confused* Brad and Misty, and storms on out.
"Keep the food, I ain't eatin' toilet snacks."
---
Blazer eventually sidles into the fight's audience, scooting next to Slapchop and taking a seat. He manages to get here *just* in time to watch Alan launch some garbage at Satsuki. Slapchop looks... maybe six times at Frederick, visible by his made-huge-by-gasmask eyes, but says nothing.
"Five grand says R.B. eats shit at the end of the fight," Frederick asides to Slapchop.
Alan hears the static crack of the man on the other end of his skype call ending it violently, and plucks the bluetooth out of his ear, holding it casually between two fingers. Now Satsuki has /all/ of his attention. His smile is cold, eyes threatening. This isn't quite the Alan R.B. she walked up to who ran his mouth like someone on stage. "Oooooh, you didn't like that," he jeers, power spiralling around him, atomizing his blood even as it drips out of the gash on his chest. He watches her with stormcloud eyes as she carefully measures the space.
Slapchop squeaks, "Uh!" He looks at his phone, now showing CALL ENDED: Big Brown has ended the contact. "Uh!" He shakes it, tries lamely to wipe the blood off the screen. "Is, uh. Are we gonna die?"
"Shut the fuck up, new meat," Alan responds without even looking at him. He drops his stance, watching. "Look at you, girl. Bad day fuckin' L.A.. You're a fuckin' punk, your cult of personality's gonna blow up like a pipebomb as soon as the higher powers in the world get tired of you."
The blonde tosses the bluetooth headset from hand to hand, the shark's smile on display, waiting. Waiting. The aura of power around him begins to break down, coiling around his arms. The smoke curling around his head is visible once again, the fire-smelling herbs having somehow survived the storm.
There.
Alan's hand flicks out and the little dongle dissolves in the indigo blaze. The force slams into him and washes around... and does /nothing./ Dread only affects those who allow themselves to hope.
His hands snap up in an X across his chest and all of the chi focuses into two orbs sitting in the middle of his palms. "Thunder..." He snaps them across, snapping his fingers with a pair of deafening cracks. Gouts of lightning chi hammer into the wave of Psycho Power, creating a crackling yellow-and-indigo vortex that sits for a moment as though it's about to simply cancel out... but his hands come up a second time, cross over a third and finally end pointing forward, a trio of paired booms. The electricity hammers over and over into the vortex and finally hurls the whole thing /back/ at the girl.
"STOOOOORM!"
---
Slapchop jumps nervously at Fred and drops the phone in the grass, scrubbing at his ginger hair with one hand. "I don't... I mean... I got a couple hundred I guess." He shoves his hand into his pocket and comes up with a plastic baggie, a tube of Mentos, and several wadded twenties.
COMBATSYS: Alan successfully hits Satsuki with Thunder Storm.
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Alan 0/-------/-------|=======\==-----\1 Satsuki
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
Satsuki's brain shuts down the instant she sees the vortex; no line of inquiry that she can mount actually indicates a chance of evasion or survival. Their energy comes together, swirling back at her -- and she just lets it, because she knows she can do nothing else. There's a faint sizzle, and the shooting of sparks as the electricity conducts through her, into her blade, and out into the air around them, the chi devastating her whole body.
Pacific, at the very least, has good sports medics; they take the field in short order, doing their best to tend to the fallen fighter. Satsuki lies completely still, unmoving; the cruel intent has almost totally evaporated from her, replaced with... nothing. She doesn't even really 'feel' like she has the energy of a living being; she's breathing, but those with that instinctive sense of the energy of existence find... emptiness.
Occasionally, she sputters; for the most part, though, she's content to let the on-site medics treat her, or more to the point, can't do anything about it. One of them -- assuming he goes unmolested -- tries to get her off the athletics field itself, in the interest of giving her marginally better treatment.
COMBATSYS: Satsuki takes no action.
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Alan 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Slapchop
COMBATSYS: Satsuki can no longer fight.
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Alan 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Slapchop
"Shit, Slapchop, pull it together." Frederick frowns at the youth next to him, and looks back to the fight at large. His eyes widen when he sees the flare of Psycho Power-- and his expression *crashes* when a golden glow and resultant blowback set his bangs to dancing and his beard to fluttering in the breeze.
"..." He stands, but not before dropping a wad of hundred dollar bills into Slapchop's open hand. He makes his way back out of the fight *before* Alan can see that he's even been there.
One day, just one day, he's gonna see that guy eat it. And that'll be the day..!!
When the tremendous waves of color and light fade, Alan is standing there, his mantle of overwhelming power spent, the crackle on his skin reduced to its normal shimmer. Aside from the gash ripping his clothes and the blood running down his body, he appears... infuriatingly unruffled, controlling the pain, remnants of the power he just wielded flowing between his hands in dwindling rivulets.
Alan makes no attempt to hassle the on-site medics, but does reach up to pluck the nearly-done cigarette from his mouth. He turns away smoothly, though the motion sends lances of pain through him, and tosses the butt casually over his shoulder. The ember - the smoke of the Charon's Finger smelling curiously like fire and brimstone - lands in the folds of Satsuki's top, causing a brief flurry as the nurses swat it out. He glances toward Slapchop.
Slapchop is staring at the doubled money in his hands, more than he's seen in his life. Next week he'll realize how much of an idiot he's being right now, but living in the moment, you know.
Alan clucks his tongue, clicking open his cigarette case to retrieve another smoke to dull the pain as he starts strolling off the field. New orders, new intelligence... and he'll need new /clothes./ He pulls his own cell phone out of his pocket, sending Fred a simple text.
-nnnnnnnnnnnnnailed it
COMBATSYS: Alan has left the fight here.
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Slapchop 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Slapchop has ended the fight here.
Log created on 03:58:47 12/07/2014 by Satsuki, and last modified on 11:19:17 12/07/2014.