Description: Lita and the HitBot were supposed to square off near the location a building demolition in Narita. However, another building gets damaged in the process and makes things a little more chaotic than probably would be ideal. [No Contest]
The morning sun rises over Narita, Chiba. Standing atop a pair of sturdy cardboard boxes is a shadowy figure who casts a laughable shadow upon the good paved ground of a local old building scheduled for demolition.
"Sweeter than an apple!" Cries a male voice who does not quite have announcer chops, shouting out to a building that does not hear or care about the sweetness of a fruit. Buildings don't taste.
"Clearer than the most transparent windows!" This claim can be disputed, given there is an unpleasant lumpiness on their person that sort of obscures what their body build ought to be. (Are those tumors?)
"More citizen friendly than... than a penguin!" Beat. "Than... a penguin. Yep. Sounds about right." At last, the morning sun casts a greater light upon the none and never...
"HitBooooot!!"
...Also known as 'Howard Rust, Jr. and the latest bad idea,' it's him, all right, decked out head to toe in HitBits... at least this time he - or maybe someone else - had the better idea to not constrict his joints so much. Despite not ostensibly being anything other than more HitBits, there's a bunch of them arranged in an 'H' shape on his chest. Only his toolbelt remains unobscured, and even that is disputable.
There is no dramatic musical sting. There is laughter from a live audience of HitBit technicians who are unconcerned about just how serious this whole matter may yet go, as the one and only 'HitBot' stands with fists resting against his hips to cast a more heroic figure than his somewhat overweight build has any right to. (If any matter of this can be taken seriously to begin with!)
There is a cape that is weighed down entirely in HitBits. The fabric and coloration is unable to be determined because there is so many. How it doesn't strangle the man outright... well, it makes an assumption that his brain is getting enough oxygen to begin with. There's probably some kind unique medical case going on there.
No explanation remains as to how it manages to flap in the breze, or how he can say all that with a straight face.
"Don't worry! I'm here to..." Beat. "To..."
He scratches his chin. "Tooooooooooo... do... something..."
To do something on the parking lot just in front of the building to be condemned, surrounded by construction vehicles all poised and ready to clear the rubble once there is any to be cleared.
There was no rest for the Lieutenant. After her fight she did massive amounts of investigative work. Asking about the assassin in her previous fight, chasing down leads, and attempting to find out motives... And turning down dates in the process. Lita Luwanda was a busy woman.
Lita, in fact was so busy, she nearly missed the Rumble app's call for arriving to the fight location. If not for a cab line in front of her hotel she might not have made it in time.
When she arrives, she steps out of the cab wearing a brown leather jacket, open revealing her green Delta Red leotard, a leather belt with bandolier that carry her kunai, and olive green B.D.U. pants. The pants and the leather jacket being her concession to the weather in Southtown. On her head, the blonde wears a red beret with a golden triangle on it.
The driver pops the trunk and she pulls the sword out before strapping it onto her back.
She then continues towards the fight site where she has the equipment put on her and that's when she first gets her first sight of Howard Rust Jr. as HitBot.
"Blimey... It's too early for this..."
The special forces weapon specialist does not seem enthused in the least.
For as storied as his younger years are, the one thing that has not waned much - maybe it instead grew - is the aging man's boundless enthusiasm and, something worthy of apology from the fates that are, his seeming lack of self-awareness to how utterly stupid he looks (and, let's be real, is).
It's a cool morning that stands to turn to a temperature that could be regarded as 'lame' if his presence has anything to do with it. He stands with his back turned to Lita upon their humble arrival to the scene of the fight. The cape is still blowing against all matters of rules of physics or common sense.
"Oh! You just got here?" He says, turning around and looking flustered before the Delta Red commando, looking kind of nervous. "Sorry, I would've waited to recite the thing from the beginning if I knew you weren't. So! From the top," he claps his hands together once, putting his hands back on his hips as he steps back atop the cardboard boxes.
"Sweeter than an apple!"
Lita should probably just smack him in the face, or something. (One of the higher-ups of the HitBit company is already saying 'start the fight, I can't take another minute of this.')
COMBATSYS: Rust has started a fight here.
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Rust 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Lita has joined the fight here.
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Rust 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Lita
The sword wielding commando almost as a reflex finds her hand touching her forehead with a most pained expression on her face and the most epic of silent facepalms. She finds herself muttering again. "Not only is it too early for this, there's not enough alcohol in the world for me to deal with this."
It looks like the audience can't take much more of this either. Most of the crowd are either rubbing temples, pinching the bridges of their noses, mirroring Lita's own facepalm, or letting out long suffering sighs. Someone shouts(possibly someone in contact with one of those higher ups), "HAJIME!"
Lita, having had experience with some Japanese martial arts here and there is triggered on a subconscious level by the shout and she readily obliges, going from facepalm to applying fist to face in the form of a straight punch in a fraction of a second, answering the prayers of the spectators and the HitBit execs.
COMBATSYS: Lita successfully hits Rust with Fierce Strike.
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Rust 0/-------/-----==|-------\-------\0 Lita
"Clearer than the most transparent windooowwwwfff!" The HitBot comically flops off the cardboard boxes they stand upon as Lita just walks up and slugs him in the face in mid-recital of this awful superhero credo schtick thing he has going. With all the cameras and other monitoring equipment on his person, viewers at home can enjoy watching him get slugged in the face from more angles than channels that cable TV has to offer!
As well as loud, screechy, unfiltered feedback when he hits the dusty, grime-filled parking lot. Oops.
"We're starting? Daww, you didn't get to hear the whole thing!" He seems more apologetic than disappointed, as though assuming Lita would be of the character that would enjoy sitting down and hearing this slop. It takes him a moment to pull himself up to a standing position, no doubt the fault of the weight of all that equipment he's got on him... perhaps that could be useful to use against him.
For all the bumbling and stumbling this man does, is sure to do, and will likely continue to do so, the draw of the pipe from its toolbelt and HitBit-covered prison is remarkably smooth.
"Uh, truth be told, I hadn't thought of a battle cry yet, either," he says as he lurches forward with a backhand swing of the pipe by his left hand which somehow simultaneously makes a dramatic cape swing, "so, uh, sorry about that. I kind of only came up with it all a few days ago!"
COMBATSYS: Rust successfully hits Lita with Power Strike.
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Rust 0/-------/----===|===----\-------\0 Lita
"Sorry. They said begin, and then I reacted."
Though truth be told, she's only partly sorry. Sorry that she hit them when they weren't ready but not sorry she stopped that creedo in its tracks. As she watches Rust slowly work his way back to his feet, she takes her stance, wondering the the entire time, how someone could allow themselves impair themselves that much and look that stupid at the same time. She finds herself reaching three conclusions. Either the man was stupid, the man was not taking her seriously, or the man was a stupid man who wasn't taking her seriously.
Her eyes move to HitBot's cape and she begins plotting how she could use his incredibly bad fashion sense against him. That's when the pipe comes in connects with her jaw, sending her spinning before she falls to her knees.
"Ok."
She then rises to her feet with her teeth clenched before she reaches for one of her kunai and sends it flying right for the inside of the elbow since that's one of the few spots left exposed from the HitBit armor Rust Jr. is wearing.
COMBATSYS: Rust auto-guards Lita's Kunai Throw.
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Rust 0/-------/----===|===----\-------\0 Lita
Drawing back the pipe from the over-committed backhand swing, he stands taller, prouder, and... dumber. "Oh, don't worry," he smiles, a trickle of blood barely visible going from past his lip, "I'm sure we can make this work out, since, super hero and all that."
He flexes the arm that Lita has her eyes on stabbing in some form or another, and the kunai is let fly to pierce the soft(?) flesh between rigid, well-made HitBits.
Through pure luck, nothing else, the kunai ends up caught pincered between two bits of plastic, stopping it cold right where it would have poked him. He never appears to notice this, as it clatters onto the asphalt with hardly a sound.
"Come to think of it, I'm not sure what super powers a HitBot would have. Getting hit a lot doesn't... sound right?" Is he experiencing a rare bit of reconsideration and self-doubt?! "Maybe 'hit' like... hits... on a webpage?"
He snaps the fingers on his right hand. "I got it! The powerrrr, toooo..."
For all his vocal pauses and cramp-inducing straining of his intellect, he at least commits to suddenly thrusting his right palm outward like a deadly weaponized high five around Lita's face.
"Click a link with every strike!!" He declares with a big, confident, goofy grin that would seem just fine on the pages of a low rent comic book from many, many decades ago. (They didn't have internet way back then, so this analogy is even dumber for it.)
COMBATSYS: Rust successfully hits Lita with Drywall Palm.
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Rust 0/-------/----===|=====--\-------\0 Lita
The stupid... It's too much for her.
Her aim was perfect, but he had just had to flex at just that moment to catch the kunai right between the HitBits(That didn't sound right, did it?). When he goes on about what he HitBot's powers ought to be, she has difficulty processing the insanity coming from the pipe-wielder's lips. She's so completely dazed that she can't even put up an adequate defense against the subsequent palm being applied to face and is sent stumbling backwards.
She tries to shake off both the hits and the HitBot's chatter and then she goes charging in attempting to snatch his cape and pulling it over his face before violently shaking him and slamming a few knees into him.
Maybe if she can rattle his cage a bit it might at least keep him from aggravating both her and the audience who doesn't seem to mind that she's using heel tactics to make it stop.
COMBATSYS: Rust dodges Lita's Savage Combo.
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Rust 0/-------/----===|=====--\-------\0 Lita
"Hm, wait... nope, that doesn't sound very super hero-y at all," he says as the palm smashes into her, "sorry, that's terrible. You deserve better than that!"
He turns away from her just as she's charging in. Nothing stops her from grabbing onto the inflexible, heavy, semi-disposable electronic-buried piece of fabric. He just happens to be walking away from her at about the same pace she's trying to wrap the stupid cape over his big dumb head, because he's running a little bit closer to the condemned building where a few boxes are already stacked.
"Wait, wait, I got it," he says, not even turning back to her, "the HitBot is compatible with a large... variety of weapons, via some kinda... port? USB? Maybe I could call it CAB, since I wasn't born in the sta--"
This is technically the part where Lita really does succeed in tossing his cape over his head as he starts to lift up the box to see what's inside. It's heavy enough that it has the desired effect of knocking him over, vulnerable, if largely unharmed in that act itself.
The problem is that now he's flipping a hefty box behind himself, filled with who knows what matter of goods. Tools? Delicate sensor equipment? Another box?
Maybe a nice crate full of hot, piping tea to drink off all the stupid going on here.
A HitBit technician knows that this is starting to go beyond the pale and is already moving to remove another box or two away from the two of them.
COMBATSYS: Lita dodges Rust's Large Thrown Object.
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Rust 0/-------/-----==|=====--\-------\0 Lita
Lita finds herself frowning as she grabs the cape and then has tries to chase him with it only to find it snatched from her finger tips as the HitBot falls away from her with her hands suddenly (if unwillingly) free, she reaches for the huge sword on her back and hitting the quick release latch on it to free it from its sheath.
That's when that box goes flying at her. Her eyes widen and then she dives as if a grenade went flying fo her. She goes into a roll and rapidly rises to her feet. She then charges in performing a couple of slashes before taking a step back and holding the point of her sword out towards him.
COMBATSYS: Lita successfully hits Rust with Heavy Strike.
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Rust 0/-------/-======|======-\-------\0 Lita
There is something immensely entertaining about watching this goofball get beaten down several times with that humongous sword. With the interesting sounds it makes striking against all the plastic covering him, thanks to that cape ending up over his head... entirely new sound effects are born.
Poff!!
Foop!
Werb!
Xzcb! (?????)
As Lita withdraws to point the sword at him, he lays in a seated position for a few precious seconds. Head movement can only be estimated from under the cape. With the violent back-and-forth thrashing, he might be just shaking his head out as he flops the super-heavy cape back over his back.
"That's a good idea," he says, snapping his fingers and pointing at her. "HitBot... just... hits really hard!" Now that we're past the brainstorming session of this unholy nonsensical mess, perhaps we can get to the part where this is a fight and not quite a series of physical humor set pieces - this is Howard Rust, Jr., after all, who was famous for his ninja-esque movements. Weighed down as he is, it's tough to imagine him being able to express much of that...
But, writing those words tempts fate as he helps himself up and breaks away from Lita to hop towards the side of an inactive bulldozer, clutching onto its side. "So, right, the hitting hard part," he says, "kinda like what you just did, yep. Something like that--"
He takes off in a great big leap, spinning through the air like a bulbous piece of discarded consumer electronics as he holds the pipe in both hands into a deadly vertical buzzsaw-like whirl towards a woman whom better make good on being ready for his next approach.
He doesn't seem to consider what his exit strategy (i.e. landing) is.
COMBATSYS: Rust successfully hits Lita with Intercepting Strike.
-* WILD HIT! *-
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Rust 0/-------/-======|=======\===----\1 Lita
When Howard Rust Jr. takes to the air, Lita intellectually knows she doesn't want to be there and that she should move but she can't help but stare frozen in horror at this incoming rotund pipe smasher. She'll need to talk to therapist at some point, and it won't be about the missions she's taken on for Queen and Country. It will be about this terrifying moment right before she gets smashed in the skull by the pipe.
Lita Luwanda is immediately dropped to the ground. For a few moments her vision goes completely white. Her ears ring and for a moment, nausea washes over her.
And then she stands up clutching her forhead as blood begins to run down the middle of her forehead and down the tip of her nose before she tries to gather herself back together.
She then comes barreling in slashing across the waist then diagonally from shoulder to hip then bringing a final slash upwards before holding the blade above her in the air. Her hands are shaking as she tries to calm herself down.
COMBATSYS: Rust blocks Lita's Triple Slash.
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Rust 0/-------/=======|=======\===----\1 Lita
Such reactions are normal, before someone like this guy. The way that the lines sometimes blur as to whether he is acting out of lack of truly thinking his situation through, out of the arrogance of experience and simply being used to things the general populace isn't, or when the actual experience and skill he has shines through in spite of his lower level of fitness in recent years as his rough adjustment to a regular mundane life as a loving father and husband.
Neither look too rosy coming out of that combination, as he bounces on his upper back against the ground while the pipe pokes into his own chest, and both Lita and Howard are left looking like a train might've come by and given them a gentle 100mph massage to the skull. His HitBit-armored costume does a lot to hide the vast majority of bruises and wounds from easy view, aside from the bit of blood coming just over one of his eyes.
Lita recovers first and takes back the pace of the battle with a variety of powerful strikes that a simple worn length of piping doesn't seem like it could, or should, withstand. The defense is workable, but clumsy. He's still on the seat of his pants as he moves back, the shaken commando holding that blade above... is something coming next?
Tumbling back into another crouch, his free hand goes to his toolbelt to withdraw three screwdrivers (they are, yes, all wrapped up in HitBit merch), drawing an arm back to prepare for the thr--
An explosion rings out. It's loud, it's surprisingly violent for what should be a controlled demolition, and it's eye-catching.
Rust Jr. stops what he does to cheer, perhaps caught up in the excitement of just watching a live building demolition.
A beam falls apart around a very small nearby building, its bulk tearing away the corrugated sheeting of... is that a storage building? That looks like an accident. That one wasn't scheduled for demol--
Another explosion - a few in very rapid succession, louder and flashier than the other before, spreading the damage further.
A few officials look confused, even shaken. Some are running further back, as though afraid that this might start a domino effect of some other buildings nearby. Nothing else happens, but the scare remains for those on the ground.
"Huh, thought they said only that one was going to go down," Rust Jr. muses to himself as he keeps the screwdrivers held close by, circling Lita, "that would've been a great super hero-y place to drop the gloves at--"
Let us be glad for a moment that he didn't somehow think of, nor try to, convince anyone to be in the middle of a condemned building scheduled for demolition.
COMBATSYS: Rust focuses on his next action.
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Rust 0/-------/=======|=======\===----\1 Lita
With sword held abovce, Lita watches the HitBit clad human being carefully readying herself for whatever was coming her way. She sees him draw three screwdrivers and she wonders if that's his version of kunai.
She isn't given much time to muse that however when an explosion rings out. Dealing with the madness that is Howard Rust Jr. was not something Lita Luwanda was trained for. Explosions, though not exactly her explertise was at least somewhat closer to her wheelhouse. The explosion was way more violent than it should've been. That beam should not be falling towards that other building and when it does, it tears into it triggering multiple explosions.
Lita sheathes her sword moving towards the entrance of the other build before moving to take cover behind a car which while it wasn't an ideal barrier, it was the best she had.
When the explosion subsides she completely abandons the fight and goes inside looking for survivors.
COMBATSYS: Lita takes no action.
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Rust 0/-------/=======|=======\===----\1 Lita
Were there people in there? If the demolition was scheduled, it ought to stand to reason that almost no one outside of demolitions technicians and other engineers would be present nearby - but it is a universal agreement that this is a strange, even suspicious occurrence.
The fight officials are already chattering amongst one another about what to do - keep rolling? Keep going? While internal debate rages, Lita runs forward to the site of the place that should not have been demolished. The site that should not have exploded. Those were explosions, of something planted in that smaller building nearby.
When the guys in charge look back to discuss whether to keep going or call things off, neither of the two fighters are there...
"Didn't look too shabby from the outside," Jr. comments from standing atop a street light. Wait, when did he get up there? He balances precariously on one foot, right hand over his eyes as if to better survey the blasted building, "no worse than any of the others here!"
Lita rushes inside to look for survivors, and he stands there looking the picture of the sorest thumb there is, decked out in consumer electronics, worse fashion sense in spite of largely being covered IN consumer electronics, and a bunch of people yelling at him from below.
"I get it!" He snaps his fingers. "An explosive hobbyist! Probably stored a bunch of bombs somewhere all safe like, and then.... bam! That's... that's life."
This amazing bit of deductive reasoning made, what's next to come out of his mouth?
"Be right with!" He calls out to Lita as he slides down the street light (more like falls on his butt), being yelled at by HitBit tech crews that they really don't want to risk this stuff being damaged, walk away, fight's over--
"HitBot awaaaaaay!" More like 'HitBot iiiiiin,' as he follows behind Lita.
Do they just mark it as no contest, shrug, and continue to yell about potential breaches of contract? Either way, the mystery of the building that should not have been demolished captures the fears, curiosity, imagination, and - thanks to wearing a whole lot of HitBits - the eyes of many, many viewers.
Probably not a good thing...
COMBATSYS: Rust takes no action.
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Rust 0/-------/=======|=======\===----\1 Lita
Lita pulls out a mini flashlight and begins to search the wreckage for survivors. Everything was quiet. It didn't look or sound too good for anyone if they were still in the building. However the more she saw, the less she liked it. There were multiple scorch marks in locations where there probably shouldn't be and...
Her train of thought is interrupted by the HitBot announcing that he's coming in as well. If her current opponent was Daniel Little, an Interpol Agent, she'd be okay with it. Her current opponent was a lunatic and she was quite certain would mess things up. She wasn't certain she was in any condition to stop him. She could at least do some damage control.
"Stay behind me and don't touch anything unless I tell you to."
She then moves around taking pictures with her cellphone. She wasn't a forensics expert but there was something about this she didn't like and if she couldn't figure it out, she could at the very least pass it along to someone who could. Eventually there's a load of pictures of documents both in tact and partially damaged, scorch marks and various other pieces of damage. In addition, something that Lita Luwanda had absolutely forgotten in her search, that the HitBits also captured everything she saw.
When she explores a bit more she then finds four bodies sprawled from a nearby explosion. She turns to her opponent.
"Help me get these bodies out!"
She then then proceeds to start moving out a body, grunting with the effort.
COMBATSYS: Lita has left the fight here.
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Rust 0/-------/=======|
The good news for everyone involved is that if he's not complying, he at least has not fathomed any dangerous, stupid, or outright crazy impulse that would be in line with anything other than 'stay behind' and 'don't touch anything.' Maybe this can be considered, for once, compliance with common sense... that's still a very, very big maybe. Lita's suspicions and worries are plenty reasonable.
The man's eyes seem to be following the ceiling, rather than the ground - or the groaning bodies - or maybe the scorch marks that should be of interest to a keen detective's eye (HitBot is canonically probably not a great detective).
"Alive?" He asks for clarification on what should be obvious? Of course any law-abiding (or at least well-meaning) citizen would want to help them get out alive! He still faces upwards, but now he's holding that pipe of his vertically, resting it up against his right forearm which is bent inwards above him... it's as strange as it looks, and exactly as useless to the act of moving bodies as it seems--
A piece of ceiling breaks off and tumbles down upon the lot of them, addressed efficiently and virtually effortlessly with an upwards thrust that sees it bounce off to the right, rolling to a stop near an overturned potted plant.
"Whoop! Worst of it, right there," he says as he paces about the structurally unsound building, looking back down at level to where Lita is helping remove the bodies, then back up, then down.
His actual help in moving bodies comes around the point that Lita's already identified and started helping carry them out, maybe once he was confident there wasn't anything else about to fall upon them or whatever other crazy criteria there is by this man and whatever sort of reasoning he subscribes to.
"Sorry for keeping you waiting on that with... 's not my first collapse," he apologizes off-handedly, "That all you saw, miss?"
COMBATSYS: Rust has ended the fight here.
At first Lita was wondering about what the delay was and that's when the special forces soldier hears stirring above. She tenses up, ready to launch both herself and the body she had in a fireman's carry out of the way. The falling piece of ceiling never makes contact and she finds herself grateful the HitBot decided to follow since had no idea that it was coming down.
Her voice takes on an incredulous tone as she looks at the HitBit laden pipe wielder. "Not your first collapse? Do I even want to know?" She glances back at the bodies and then turns to her current ally. "These are the only ones here."
With Howard Rust Jr.'s help, they leave the damaged but still mostly standing structure with all of them outside. When the paramedics arrive on the scene, one of the four was in a coma, two were in critical condition and one finally came to and was available for questioning.
When she gets a free moment, she pulls out her cellphone. "Hello, Agent Little. I had a bit of a problem at my fight. They did a demolition and there was an explosion in a neighboring building that wasn't supposed to take damage. I'm no forensic expert but the situation feels a bit too dodgy to be some type of accident. Could you make sure someone can get here and keep an eye on the scene so someone can check it out?"
She pauses, nodding almost unconsciously at what could be heard on the phone. "I'll text you the address."
The other end of the phone conversation can be found in Daniel Jack Investigates: The Carnival of Terror!
Log created on 11:11:08 02/02/2016 by Lita, and last modified on 10:07:44 02/05/2016.