Description: The Four Mighty Gods stand tall over southern Osaka, though thankfully for the locals, they tend to keep to their temple. For the second W Bracket quarterfinal, the undefeated, indefatiguable ALICE NAKATA will be squaring off against... well, who is that guy they call "HIT BOT", anyway? They'll be facing off in the wide-open courtyard in the midst of the Shitenno-ji temple complex, surrounded by hundreds of adoring fans. One thing to note, though -- not long after the fight starts, a light rain will erupt out. And possibly lightning and thunder! Plus, there's some weirdo in a tan trenchcoat watching the fight. Maybe he was... queuing up for something and got distracted. Yeah. That's it. Who is that guy, anyway...?
The Shitennoji Temple, roughly 2 PM local time...
Constructed back in 593 AD, the temple boasts (humbly) being the oldest temple that still remains officially administered - a landmark for the Buddhist faith. Out in the open courtyard, it has seen plenty of battle over more recent years as organized fighting leagues keep on the lookout for more and more interesting locales for people to partake in. (Given recent issues with collateral damage, it must have taken a lot of convincing that this would not repeat itself on virtue of the place of battle being wide, open, and largely free of detritus to weaponize or otherwise misuse.)
The sky is a moody gray, though the gathering crowds are in relatively good cheer as if to provide contrast to the weather above - they are moving slowly but surely towards the climax of the tournament, starting with one of the quarterfinals matches.
Then, there is the matter of a guilty pleasure born of whimsy, tomfoolery, and certain people not thinking better of a bad idea until said bad idea has already gained enough traction to continue to be a thing. Case in point...
"HitBoooooot!" Says a pre-recording from an ancient stereo boombox that runs off a low-quality tape cassette, which is completely and totally the voice of Howard Rust, Jr. failing to once again be cognizant about how stupid he sounds even under the generous muffling of old and outdated sound playback technology.
"Um, I didn't write anything else," the tape continues as this 'HitBot' - a man dressed head to toe in HitBit devices that must be so heavy as to be choking and difficult to move about in - stands with hands on their hips and chest puffed out proudly out in the middle of the courtyard, "and I don't have a lot of time until I got to catch the bus to Osaka, so I'm just going to say the name over and over again. You could join in with."
"HitBot!!" The tape says over and over, occasionally with coughs and at least one older female voice - barely audible - yelling something.
Absolutely no one joins in on the chanting. There's a few muffled laughs. The actual 'HitBot' in question seems unfazed by any of this derision and lack of proper fanfare.
Alice is actually early to this match, unlike some of hers.
This is more because of sheer chance and the easy availability of public transit to this location than any particular desire to be punctual. For the match on the boardwalk, she had to walk; for the match in the train station, she had to actually get an intercity train at rush hour and that can be a challenge.
This place, however, is popular. And getting to fight in a temple like this is definitely a step up from random street locales, Alice thinks, in a satisfied way. So this is what fame is like. Maybe if she's lucky there won't be any creepers here - not that she can't handle them if she has to, but come on, who wants their day ruined?
Instead, she has to handle Howard Rust, Jr. This may be worse.
Alice has /one/ Hitbit. It has a couple parts beyond the forehead camera that she's attached to her hat, which she is wearing backwards so she can do that (she's apparently switched to ankle bands as accessories instead of wristbands; they go with her highly American leg warmers or socks or whatever they are, because she's painted them red and blue) but she watches someone loaded down with them with more amusement than anything else.
"It's gonna be hard to have a conversation with /you/," she says, unzipping her jacket to reveal - well, what she normally fights in. Chilly clouds or not, some things don't change, and one of them is Alice's fighting outfit. She wore the bikini top and denim skirt in the snow; a spring day isn't going to stop it. "Oh well! Can't have everything."
She tosses the jacket off to the side, rolling her neck as she moves more into the open area of the courtyard. Alice waits a couple beats as the tape recorder keeps going, and joins in with one of them: "Hitbot!"
...is that a challenge?
Most competitors should have just that /one/ HitBit, which is all that's needed to demonstrate the technology to the world. No one will know why this man convinced technicians on the spot, that fateful day some weeks ago, to see what happens when one just puts on... well, all of them, ever. Someone, maybe multiple someones, are going to be losing their job.
His enthusiasm for the advancement of science and technology can't inherently be faulted, even when this starts to trend in the direction of being another chapter in an extensive list of 'things humanity may learn not to do from this example.'
That anyone else is at all joining in on the pre-recorded chorus of stupidity rightfully (for once!) registers as odd, as though at long last grasping towards a better understanding of 'self-awareness,' as plastic shudders and bends while the one and only 'HitBot' turns their neck...
Huh, now he's wearing HitBits over his eyes. Can he even see? Maybe that's not important right now.
"Oh! You must be my next challenger. Nice to meet you. I'm How-- HitBot! Yep." He seems to be in pretty good cheer, but then again the infamous Rust Jr. is generally a cheerful sort. "I, uh, I would've thought up a made-up crime to accuse you of or something, but if I had to be honest, I think I just like saying the word 'HitBot!' Like one of those poker moms, eh?"
Oh, no.
"Might be inspired to make headway into the greater world of human linguistics," no, no, no, "because technology's really great!"
Meanwhile, over off to the side, the level of stupid has gone beyond patience for the head official on site and he just kind of urges things to move along a good fifteen to twenty seconds earlier.
Someone among the underlings tries to point at some sort of display on a pad - a weather forecast? - but it goes ignored. Maybe it's nothing important...
"I'd like to say, 'let the best HitBot win,' but, pretty sure I'm the only one...?" He strains to bend his elbow enough to scratch at the side of his head that is also covered in HitBits. He at least has shown the same discretion in the previous bout to keep his joints free for sake of some flexibility, but... how far is he really going to take any of this?
The sky grows a little darker.
COMBATSYS: Rust has started a fight here.
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Rust 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Rust activates all his HitBit(tm) livestreaming suites at once!
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-------|
Sometimes, when someone is an inspiration to the world, they're an inspiration as to what to never, ever do. The world needs examples, even if they're bad ones.
Alice isn't sure if Rust Jr falls into that category, but it wouldn't surprise her if HitBot did. How can he see? Maybe those have displays on the inside... nah, she's overthinking it. Maybe he's just kind of crazy. She can believe that. Everyone she's spoken to with regards to Hitbit is a little odd.
"Sure am," she says, brightly. "Alice Nakata! And I hope ALL of you," Alice adds, raising her voice, "are up for a good show! Because I know I am!" She removes her hat briefly, runs her hand through her hair, then plants it right back on - except this time the Hitbit camera she keeps attached to the hat is humming to life.
If Alice has seen the weather forecast (she hasn't) she doesn't let it bother her. Nor does she look up at the darkening sky. She's paying attention to HitBot and the crowd... and possibly not in that order. She grins. She's excited. Though she is momentarily distracted by a disturbance in the crowd, as if people were trying to edge away from someone in it, but she can't see who it is and they're not bothering /her/ so she loses interest fast.
"I don't need to be a HitBot," she says, with a bit of a grin. "But sure, may the best competitor win!"
Alice is ready pretty much as soon as they sound a bell. It's a bit more official than her previous matches, which tended to sound like someone triggering it off a soundboard. She tears forward almost immediately, not giving the weighed-down HitBot a chance to react; she literally rushes him.
Or that's what it starts as. She turns it into a baseball slide about halfway, chi building up on her forward foot as she slides the last couple yards, trying to impact Rust's lower leg with a chi shockwave and her own strong kick!
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata has joined the fight here.
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Alice Nakata
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata activates her HitBit(tm) livestreaming suite!
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Rust with Burn Charge.
- CRAZY Hit! -
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-----==|=------\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
All this, and that dumb HitBot tape is still playing. It starts to take a pitiful turn as the orator is clearly starting to strain their voice, as if the cassette tape itself were begging for the sweet release of death that the concept of obsolescence once promised its ilk.
There's a choking and sputtering noise moments before the chi-laden foot strikes dead-on in the HitBit shell-covered shin, and already the man (if he is a man any more, for he is the HitBot!!) boasts less-than-impressive arm rotation range in a sad, pitiful attempt to maintain his balance as he falls head over heels into the old tape deck player that explodes rather impressively for an innocuous piece of antique tech.
Lying prone for a moment as though to take in this moment, the HitBot moans and wails but one word to convey the sorrow of it all.
"Shucks!" He laughs. Such angst! Such tragedy! Now this is officially a superhero origin story.
It is with the clean draw of a long pipe-shaped length of HitBit-covered something-or-another that he thrusts one end to the courtyard stone to rescue himself up with a stumble that does not look the very least battle-ready.
It's looking less and less likely he really can see out of there, as the hefty backhand swing that follows does not come even close to her. He overcommits to it so hard that he starts to stumble over in her direction that when he thrusts the HitBit-covered thing that's probably a pipe as support again into the ground.
Incidentally, that might be her foot he's about to rest it on.
One spectator walks out into the open with their palm outstretched, turned upward, looking towards the sky. They look down to the two of them, then back up to the sky, and frowns.
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata blocks Rust's Random Strike.
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-----==|==-----\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
Alice rocketed a little faster and further than she might have been expecting, but she can't complain about the results! Even if it does leave her a little bit out of place. She's not sure how it happened, though... maybe she needs more practice with that one.
Pressing her heel against the courtyard stone, Alice pushes herself backwards slightly to halt her forward motion, then vault up to her feet like the most acrobatic of fighters just in time to see the tape deck player finish its explosion. "Awesome," she declares, to nobody in particular.
Upon her feet again, her toes are a tempting target for Rust. Alice doesn't really bother to step away from the wild, inaccurate backhand swing; she sways backwards instead, bending her body steeply backwards before straightening. This leaves her feet in place to be used as a pipe support.
Alice /does/ take a step back, then - but more importantly, she kicks at the pipe as it descends so that it misses her toes by an inch. It hurts her foot a little bit, she didn't aim her kick very well, but she doesn't get a broken toe out of it, so it's a net plus anyhow.
Alice turns her first kick against the pipe into a higher kick, aimed at Rust's midsection. She hops as she does it so she can use the impact to push herself backwards, clear some distance; she can sure get her legs up high when she wants to, and that's a pretty solid kick. "Did you have to decorate your... pipe? Most guys would just leave it bare, I bet."
She still isn't paying attention to the weather, even as it darkens and threatens to start dripping. Actually, it has; just a speck or two. Alice hasn't noticed. It's not intense enough for her to have.
COMBATSYS: Rust dodges Alice Nakata's Strong Kick.
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-----==|==-----\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
The defending kick is something of a two-edged sword (or maybe a two-edged sole) - it successfully bats aside the pipe, but it takes its wielder with them. Say what one will about however much brain damage this man must have, but for being visibly out of shape (when he's not covered head to toe in cutting edge electronic sensor equipment times some triple digit number), he sure does move reasonably well for the added encumbrance.
Sometimes it seems more like something else, perhaps the fickleness of fate, that sees him move and twirl and otherwise sway about in a manner that might be skillful if he could really see her clearly.
"Well, I'm HitBot!" He says with a smile. IT should be a positive confirmation that they have not yet made small enough HitBit merchandise over one's teeth. Or tongue. "It's like some sort of dress code, something like which. Always got to be ready for action! For the call, and--"
He draws back his left arm - the hand that holds the pipe - resting it against the bumpy and uenven mass of tech that has amassed upon his forearm, straining against how far he can even really bend his arm inward as he seems to turn about-face to Alice...? He'd be looking right at her if he took the stupid things off his face....
"--you know, hit with it! HitBot. No hifs, hands, or huts!" The hitbit-covered pipe-like weapon slides awkwardly and bumpily against his forearm, dulling the momentum and direction of that famous thrust.
Even if met with physical limitation, at the heart of the matter, there's still an end of piping(?) coming in around face level.
A technician really, really starts to tug the head official's arm, repeating a single syllable that's drowned out by some other chatter. The head official appears completely disinterested.
The sound of a light rain patters about the courtyard, leaving little translucent bumps against the human body and exposed technology alike.
...Exposed technology? Uh...
COMBATSYS: Rust successfully hits Alice Nakata with Weakened Exacting Measurement.
Grazing Hit
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
Honestly, Alice is having trouble telling much about Rust Jr beyond the veritable swarm of Hitbits he's decided to wear. This may be his ultimate goal. It's a decent... well, disguise might not be the word, but it's hard to look past the power of HitBot.
As is, she's not sure that the wearer of all that doesn't practice with padded armour, or /something/, to be as good with the bulky equipment as he is - well, okay, an individual Hitbit setup isn't that bulky, but they add up! Maybe he was a football player or something. That would make sense, right?
Though, she supposes, football players don't normally use pipes. That's something.
"Well, come on and hit with your bit!" Alice grins, showing teeth right back - she's having fun, and that's what matters to her in these fights, when they're actually happening. Victory is great, but at the time, she just wants to have a good time.
Rust obliges. The blow comes at Alice's face, and she sidesteps to try to avoid it - but she puts her foot on an uneven bit of stone, made suddenly wet by the skies opening up in rain. It's admittedly light, to start, and the stone isn't that slick yet, but she wasn't expecting it at all and that makes a difference. Plus, her leg moved faster than she was expecting, hitting the ground early and hard...
The effect is that she doesn't sidestep properly, but stumbles, taking a glancing blow to the shoulder that sends her stumbling even further down. That stung; she felt it. Alice turns the abortive defense into an offense, though; she drops all the way to the ground, planting her hands and vaulting /upward/ in a two-footed kick, spinning her body as she basically drills upward. "RISING... DRILL!"
What, you think she'd call it a tackle? That would be derivative. Also, it's not a tackle.
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Rust with Rising Drill.
- CRAZY Hit! -
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Rust [E] 0/-------/--=====|====---\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
The man is - well, maybe was, now more infamous - famous for his handiwork with tools in battle and in their original, intended context. Maybe being weighed down isn't that big a problem for him, normally... but even with this caveat it really does stretch suspension of disbelief.
Ooh, speaking of stretching, this is a good part!
The Rising Drill finds little problem connecting with his face. Well, more like the neck. In the neck.
That's because those spinning feet, one of them, somehow manage to get inside the formidable plated(?) armor of the mighty HitBot, and things take a more dangerous but undeniably comical turn as the statistical readout and multiple camera machine-man gags and chokes pathetically as he's whipped around in her grasp - taken leave of his senses by the impact, and now being strangled as an added bonus.
The spinning gives enough force to hurl him across the courtyard where he lands on his upper back. His body is a bit too stiff to really tumble properly, sliding a discomforting distance.
Someone tall in a trenchcoat ambles away from the shadows nearby, casting a glance with an oddly-colored eye. Hm?
"Oooogh. Still sore now. Ooooof." The HitBot moans almost pathetically as he kicks his feet back up. One of the caught HitBit things now litters the ground not that far from wherever Alice lands from the Rising Ta-- Drill. A lot from his upper back look a touch, um, shall we say...
Exposed.
"Right. Nope. Neck's fine. Not snapping off." This is not the greatest worry of the officials who are now in a visible state of panic, as the HitBot reaches down with his right hand into his toolbelt - wait, that's a toolbelt? Around his waist? That looked like just more HitBits, as he draws out things that are probably tools but are wrapped so heavily in HitBits that they may well just be HitBits alone - taking them expertly(?) between his fingers with deft dexterity...
"Whoop!" Even without his eyes being visible, there's movement in his forehead suggesting they totally are as wide as humans can achieve. Sparks start to fly where delicate electronics are exposed.
"Gkk!" He suddenly strikes a pose? Ballerina pirouette? His back arches. At some point he does a headstand.
He's back upright a moment later.
"I'm okay! Don't think I dislocated anyth--" His right hand suddenly jerks forward with a twitch and the horrible pop of a joint, hurling everything he was holding - maybe they were screwdrivers, going by the shape? - flying almost perfectly in Alice's direction, at a rather dangerous speed.
Outside of the bizarre physical movements, that is actually rather close to the platonic ideal of a multiple kunai-esque weapon fling...!
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata parries Rust's Tools For The Job!!
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-======|=======\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
Alice follows professional fighting, but it's a recent thing; the last few years, mostly. Five or ten years ago when Howard Rust (Jr.) was more well known, she wasn't paying attention to anyone but Terry all that much. She knows a bit about him, but not as much as she'd know about some other people. And that's when he's not being HitBot.
Alice's legs have always been her strong offensive point and she puts them to work with that rising kick that sends Rust flying. She flips at the apex of her jump, landing on her feet with a grin, pausing only a split-second to adjust her hat - now that she's actually getting rained on, she wants to pull it down a little to keep her eyes clear. Water starts to plaster her short hair down, what's exposed of it anyhow.
Fortunately, a lot of Alice's outfit (inasmuch as it /is/ an outfit) is water-resistant because it started life as a swimsuit. The skirt, not really, though - and the leg warmers, not at all. They're starting to soak up water, right next to the Hitbit parts, as she strides toward Rust's landing zone. That's probably not great.
It hasn't stopped her, though. She has way fewer Hitbits on than Rust, and they're less open to the sky, and /hers/ aren't sparking (at this point). "Hey, you might want to ditch some of those," she says, though she doesn't drop out of her combat positioning to do it -
And a moment later she's glad for that, when he whips the tools at her. She's not that far away, and her first reaction is a decent one most of the time; she jumps, whirling her entire body through a complete revolution as she extends both legs. Her first foot knocks away the wrapped screwdrivers, scattering them every which way. One of them goes almost straight up, in fact; another couple skip off the stone courtyard, and one comes close to the tall guy, who Alice doesn't recognize but seems vaguely familiar anyway. Don't worry, she'll place him eventually.
But her /second/ foot comes, with intense speed, in a whirling kick right at Rust. In fact, she's moving so fast her leg appears to blur as she spins around and strikes in a diagonal blow, a highly practiced maneuver that impacts with significant force! If it impacts, anyhow.
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Rust with Thundercrack Kick EX.
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Rust [E] 1/------=/=======|=======\-------\1 [E] Alice Nakata
With all of these things on him that must have been calculating so much data, sharing so much video feed, and who knows what else, Alice probably has the right of it with that idea - some of them must be running hot to begin with thanks to the sheer number of these things probably blocking off such important concepts like... ventilation.
When Alice starts showing off the impressive legwork, it's impossible not to take notice about how the HitBot seems to move much more smoothly than he usually does, to the tune of some very weird-sounding grunts as he executes a graceful, even perfect backflip away while his legs bend back maybe further than they ought to in his advancing age.
It's not quite far enough to get away. It's just far enough that she tags him in the upper back, ejecting him into one of the pillars of the shade where he bounces off and hits the ground into a three-point stance far more smoothly than the impact should suggest. He's bleeding out the side of his mouth.
"Hah...! Nope, nope, just fine. Always been this warm!" He says. It's kind of hard to divoce the thought that his words and his actions are a touch disjointed. There's a heaviness in his voice that suggests... pain, fatigue, all sorts of things, but his body's moving like he's just fresh off an early morning warm-up, leaping up to a fighting pose even as his head lulls a bit to the side dazedly.
"Just a sec! Gotta catch my breath." His left arm draws back sharply, the HitBit-covered likely-a-pipe scraping up sparks against the wet stone as he goes to a lower crouch that blatantly tells the beginning of some big, huge, great attack of some kind. The exact opposite of breath-catching.
Especially as his right hand now firmly grasps what can be assumed to be the relative hilt of the thing, and suddenly swings upwards in a wide, dangerous, spinning arc.
"Whooohahahahahaaaaaaaaow, ow, ow, ow," the spin rotates almost faster than the human eye can catch, a blur of HitBit casing and specs of reflective camera lenses as it seems his intent is to carry Alice up, up, up into the vortex of pain...
Even if she gets away or slips out, there's the matter of a dangerous, followed-up diving strike, HitBit-encrusted pipe-analogue that goes down so quick it might embed itself into the ground like a very determined arrow.
COMBATSYS: Rust successfully hits Alice Nakata with Concrete Jungle.
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Rust [E] 0/-------/-------|=======\=====--\1 [E] Alice Nakata
Ventilation, overheating, getting water all over the place... Alice can think of three or four reasons Rust might want to take some of the Hitbits off (the fourth is, of course, because he actually does look pretty silly).
She touches down after her spinning kick. That seems to have been all her, or at least mostly her; she practiced that one for ages, so it's no surprise she's good at it. Her sodden leg warmers are definitely starting to drip into the Hitbits, though she either isn't aware or considers it way less of a threat than HitBot. After all, /she's/ not cosplaying an android. Or... whatever.
Alice finally realizes, while Rust is 'catching his breath', where she saw the big guy before. He was where the crowd was thinning out when she got here, like nobody wanted to be associated with him. "Hey!" she says, possibly calling to the trenchcoated man.
It's hard to tell, because she is interrupted by realizing Rust isn't really catching his breath but preparing. Preparing for... what, she doesn't immediately place, but she knows it's not good. She backs off, bringing one leg up and balancing on the other as if she was going to defend herself with it. "Crap - "
And, honestly, it probably would have worked aside from Rust's astounding speed and rotation. /That/ is enough to bring him in and bring her up into the whirlwind; she feels herself losing her balance, then her footing entirely, and then there's a diving blow that she can't think of how to possibly get out of the way of.
Alice, at least, does not get embedded into the ground. She hits it and rolls, end over end; she makes five complete rotations before she manages to stop, and she's too dizzy to actually get up for a couple seconds afterwards. She shakes her head to try to clear it, then immediately wishes she hadn't because that only makes the spinning worse. At least she's retained her hat... somehow. It's kind of askew.
"All right," she mumbles, forcing herself upright. "Let's see how you handle this one!" She's abruptly holding something in her hands, but not something physical; a building blob of reddish energy that swells to about the size of a basketball. She makes a short hop and tosses it back at Rust, as if she was shooting for the net way down the court.
It doesn't hit Rust. It hits the ground about a foot in front of him and sinks inward, a ripple of red marking its passage - before a gigantic /plume/ of chi erupts from the ground, rising upward at an angle towards the so-called HitBot! It doesn't actually mess up the ground, at least - there are no broken rocks and chunks of stone, and she's not going to get charged for temple courtyard repair - but it certainly looks like it should, as the plume 'erupts' for about three seconds before sinking downward, vanishing.
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Rust with Buster Shoot.
? Strange Hit! ?
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Rust [E] 0/-------/---====|=====--\-------\0 [E] Alice Nakata
It so happens that the HitBit-clad thing that is probably a pipe underneath but has since lost its identity to the BRAND NAME that it can't be declared quite as that yet, and the HitBot expresses surprising grace in the flexibility of their legs in which to start trying to yank the thing out, holding a low crouching profile to the ground as though anticipating return fire like a truly skilled master assassin!
That... that is what he is, right? Kind of? Maybe? There's 'Construction-Inspired Ninjitsu' as his official listed fighting style, but, he hasn't looked that on the ball in a long, long time...
He's not even looking up to where she winds up the shot - but then again, can he? - tugging and pulling and otherwise struggling to get the pipe-like thing out of the little neat hole it's made in the courtyard. When he does...
The plume dunks the court(yard), and his entire body aligns with the direction of the burst as such that it might have played some miniscule role in blunting its force, but 'blunting' might be giving the HitBot far too much credit.
After all, in the end he still gets bounced back further up into the air. The latent static electricity building in the air, a few sparks still dance across the HitBot's frame...
Is that smoke? Why, yes it is, it becomes much more pronounced as he hits the ground one more time with much less grace and elegance, and far more the oafish man presented in the beginning as he slides against his upper back, legs kicked up into the air...
They start wriggling violently, followed by increasingly less muffled yelling.
"AaaaaaahhothothothothothothothotHOTHOTHOTHOTHTOTHOTTOH, oops, sorry, HOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOTHOT--"
The chanting reaches a fever pitch as even his incredible tolerance for pain (or just plain ignorance?) is at long last passed, and his fingers exercise some of that storied dexterity in failing to really get much of it off. He has intricately layered HitBit arrangements in such a way that it would be very difficult to efficiently and effectively get them off.
Several of the devices in question detonate from the stressful environment of his own ill-thought design. His right arm violently jerks in a way that one such battery blows off its casing at a truly dangerous velocity somewhere in Alice's direction.
In the aftermath, there's one last violent plume of smoke as the HitBot - nope, good ol' Howard Rust, Jr. - stands visibly exhausted, cartoonishly covered in soot, and has his voluminous head of black (purple?) hair drape across his head under the rain that washes it clean, hiding his face anew. What exposed flesh there is is bruised and bloodied.
"Okay, that... that wasn't my best idea..."
Now's the time to stop him before he gets any more.
COMBATSYS: Rust successfully hits Alice Nakata with Battery Malfunction.
* Attack Of Opportunity! *
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Rust [E] 0/-------/--=====|=======\-------\1 [E] Alice Nakata
Alice is mentally thinking of Rust's primary weapon as the PipeBit, so brand identity is at least working half in its favour.
When Alice's plume of chi clears, there's no sign of where it went in and erupted out of - but /before/ it explodes, Rust has the instant of warning he needs to do some construction work. It still throws him, but a little is better than nothing, right?
She doesn't blame him for getting the HitBits off. She actually gives him a few moments to start clearing them before she advances; she's not trying to be unsporting so much as taking advantage of a momentary weakness. Or so she thinks.
A battery gets lobbed at her. It might have been accidental? Alice honestly can't tell, but it's going so fast that she doesn't realize it's going to hit her until it does. It bounces (literally) off her forehead, drops down, bounces again off her chest - and explodes.
When it clears. /Alice/ is as sooty as Rust is, at least in a limited range. Her face is a little smoke-blackened, but it's mostly her upper chest that is black - and her bikini top, which makes her eyes narrow. It's still there, just a little crispy around the edges and covered in ash that is now starting to run in the rain.
"You had better not have wrecked my top!" Alice yells, as she finishes her approach. It's not too much further - especially because her method of approach is 'a flying kick', aimed more at Rust's shoulder than anywhere else. If she hits, it might knock him off balance, because she uses the moment of impact to push off, sending herself even higher and passing overhead, a sudden evasion that might catch him by surprise as she ends up past him and behind.
From up here she gets a good view of the giant in the trenchcoat, just for an instant as she spins to keep her eyes on Rust. Is he wearing a /mask/? she thinks to herself. He /is/ another creeper!
COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Rust with High Heel.
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Rust [E] 1/-------/=======|=======\=------\1 [E] Alice Nakata
The movements of the strange man in the trenchcoat suddenly take a backseat to the collective panic the relevant officials are having over the recent display of their marketed technology going haywaire on camera! A PR disaster! Whose idea was it to let that idiot go so far with those things?!
"Eh? Your top?" Asks the ex-HitBot as he shakily brushes the hair out of his face as if to get a good look at the latest misadventure. "So--"
The striking leg goes a bit past the intended shoulder and gets him in the chest to a spray of saliva, a bit of blood, and a lovingly stretched-out pronunciation of the letter 'r,' flipping him further back across the rain-soaked stone of the courtyard maybe a bit further than Alice might have first imagined or planned in her skillful maneuver to position herself behind him...
She's poised to actually land on TOP of him and really take the wind out of his sails, if she so chooses, as he lies prone, dazed, dehydrated, and maybe in need of a good visit to the burn ward. Rather than abruptly cut the feed, at least they can declare Alice the winner and then hurriedly run off to figure out their damage control in the wake of this.
COMBATSYS: Rust takes no action.
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Alice Nakata [E] 1/------=/=======|
COMBATSYS: Rust can no longer fight.
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Alice Nakata [E] 1/------=/=======|
Alice Nakata's top is still there. It's just blackened. She has no idea if ash stains, but the char marks probably don't come out.
Alice's own Hitbit attachments spark once as she jumps, but compared to what Rust has been subject to all fight, it's barely noticable. It's certainly not comparable, especially because it only happened the once. Okay, or maybe twice - but nobody was likely to notice the first at all given it happened when she was busy being in a cloud of smoke.
Alice chooses not to land on top of Rust, or at least to hop off as soon as it seems like he's not going to get back up. She prods him with a foot, which is half a kick she decided not to follow through on at all and half checking to make sure he's not dead.
She's willing to take a declared victory to get him to the hospital (and her back to her jacket; now that the fight's over, the rain is a little chilly and unpleasant). Even if victory celebrations were... shorter than she was hoping for. Well, she supposes there's still one more round.
But who was that giant man in the trench coat? SHE MAY NEVER KNOW. And that annoys her. It's like he was staring!
Log created on 18:38:34 02/09/2016 by Alice Nakata, and last modified on 10:48:15 02/10/2016.