Match of the Millennium

Description: Hey Colin! Yes Ryan? When I ask you about the greatest American sport, what do you think of? Well I think of hockey! Noooo not Hockey you think of baseball. Well no Ryan, I think we are gonna have to agree to disagree, by agreeing to have Real American Alice Nakata face Pseudo-American Hockey Star Brett to determine the real sport! In order to best decide the best, we will be taking place in a super-sports stadium set up right in the midsts of the Ancient City of Petra! That’s right! There is an ice rink AND a baseball diamond set up just for this purpose! MURICA!

[BRETT]
The 4th of July was a date at all Americans knew by heart. ONe would assume so, considering how often it tended to be hammered home from age 1 on for most kids who grew up in the US. And for later arrivals?...well, it gets hammered home in other ways sometimes. So it's a date that most Americans look forward to and plan ways to celebrate that iconic date.

...not many would expect to be celebrating it in an ancient city in the MIddle East. And yet here, Saturday Night Fights was, a hastily built super-arena built amongst the ruins of the ancient city of Petra. And here Brett Neuer was, displaced American twice displaced, managing to get involved in something ridiculous like this on a vacation he originally planned to use to visit home. And god...how he missed it right now.

No, not because he missed his family, though that was indeed a god part of it. But...lord, who thought to try and put hockey in the middle of Jordan? Yeah, the arena was well covered enough that the ice didn't melt, giving Brett plenty of chances to use proper skates on the ice hockey rink that was plopped in the middle of a baseball field, for...whatever reason. But the absurdity was not something the young Minnesotan would let go too easily as he adjusted his gloves and pads.

"This is ridiculous..." he fretted anxiously, looking around at the diverse crowd already looking forward to the strange, strange fight. Somehow he felt like he was eventually going to regret using proper ice skates...but organizers neglected to mention the part where ice was not the only part of the fighting space...

[ALICE NAKATA]
Alice may live in Japan, but she still celebrates the Fourth of July... in her heart. How can she turn down fireworks, patriotism, and patriotism-styled fireworks? To say nothing of anything else that happened to be part of the celebration. She likes the grilled hot dogs.

And this year she's celebrating it somewhere new. Somewhere in the Middle East, or nearby (Alice is a little vague on exactly where Petra is), which is fine, but there's just one catch: they picked her to play a GREAT AMERICAN SPORT. This is also, in theory, fine with Alice, because she likes sports and plays pretty well.

The catch is that Alice usually plays basketball, not baseball.

Alice doesn't really like baseball. It's slow and often boring and doesn't have the street-level appeal of basketball. She knows how it's played, but she's out of practice as she hasn't bothered in years. Which means that this fight is a bit of a surprise to her.

Alice walks onto the field from what is probably the batting box. She has a baseball bat and is otherwise completely unchanged from her usual outfit: bikini top, skirt, highly American leg warmers (she picked her best ones because it's the Fourth). She takes up a position at home plate, shading her eyes unnecessarily as she looks over the weird combined field.

"HELLO AMERICA!" she calls, followed by, "AND EVERYONE ELSE!" Her eyes fix on Brett, watching him on the rink. Like she's going to go on there with sneakers.

[BRETT]
Slowly gliding along the rink (that was conveniently placed along most of the in-field starting just in front of the pitcher's mound), Brett watched as his opponent came out...and swallowed a little. Certainly a provocative opponent, but that just makes the rather nebbish ex-pat even more anxious, pacing a bit more on the ice looking like a nerd a foot lesser than he was. Then again, his personality never quite fit with his size or 'jock' status.

"G-good luck, miss!" he manages to call over to Alice while the SNF announcer makes with the introductions. He bowed in a way that would betray his extended stay in Japan...if that wasn't already a nervous tic of his to begin with. The embarrassed lift of his stick to acknowledge his name came, but he clearly was a little less in game-face mode right now than one might hope...

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata has started a fight here.

[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Alice Nakata     0/-------/-------|

COMBATSYS: Brett has joined the fight here.

[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////////]
Brett            0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
Alice can tell when she's setting people on edge just because of the way she acts. She gives Brett her best grin. "Oh, I will," she says, running her hand down the bat before she settles into a batter's stance. "I hope you're ready to do some ball handling!"

And then she breaks it again to pull something out from behind her back. It's a baseball, which she tosses straight up in the air. It gets pretty good distance, but again straight up, where it's not likely to hit anyone. The start bell sounds while the ball is still rising.

Alice lets it go up, up... and then, as it comes down, she swings the bat with a powerful swing! She may be out of practice, but that doesn't mean she can't hit a ball when she's the one throwing it up - and she's aimed to hit it directly toward Brett.

COMBATSYS: Brett blocks Alice Nakata's Small Thrown Object.

[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////////]
Brett            0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
Adjusting himself, and making sure his pads were properly cinched down, Brett lowered down into a face off stance, waiting for the signal to come. As introductions were finished, he...watched rather confusedly as Alice pulled a baseball out from behind her and tossed it into the air. He blinked a little, following it...

And widening his eyes as the thing is hit line-drive straight toward him. Hastily, he turned and brought his padded shoulder and back up to bear in the path of the frozen rope. Thankfully, the pads, and the musculature underneath, are able to bear the shot enough to avoid much damage...but the risky defense definitely gets an 'oooh' from the crowd.

Teeth gritten and visage hidden with his head downcast, Brett remained with his back to Alice. "My turn." Suddenly, with a sharp turn only possible with those ice skates, the hockey star swung around with his stick slapping hard on the ice. The bent apparatus snapped back up fromt he ice as he continued his arc, the force creating a cool blue wave of energy snapping straight toward Alice. And if she had time to see his expression?

Well...she'd see the Game Face was, indeed, On.

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata dodges Brett's Shark Crest.

[  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////////]
Brett            0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
The ball mostly pinks off Brett's pad - which is fine, Alice wasn't expecting it to do more than make him flinch a little. She doesn't exactly normally integrate baseballs to her combat style and she has no particular technique beyond hitting the ball at him.

But she calls that a hit, dropping the bat and running toward first base. She may have only been okay at the baseball part, but she certainly runs well, her long legs (for her height, anyway, she's pretty short) eating up the distance.

Brett snaps an ice wave at Alice, and Alice baseball-slides for that last little bit of speed, wincing because she's doing it in mostly bare upper leg and that is NOT comfortable. But she makes it, springing back up and staying just ahead of the cold wave. "Safe!" she calls, her voice not quite teasing when she adds, "Want another shot?"

Alice suddenly starts running again - toward Brett. She actually steps onto the ice exactly as she hadn't planned to - well, Alice is very good at improvisation. She slides across the ice toward him, sweeping her foot as she passes him to tangle it in his legs and yank him off his foot - but doing it on ice is risky at best and there's a pretty good chance she goes down too.

If she manages it, though, she kicks off him before he can get back up to accelerate again, pushing herself toward third base where she can get off ice again.

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Brett with Tumble Kick.

[     \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ////////////////////////////  ]
Brett            0/-------/----===|=------\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
Well, that was concerning. The Shark Crest was pretty fast. Slap shots tend to be so. And having it raced away from like that is problematic. Then again, his target racing askew from its path sort of helped. Either way, with teeth set, the hockey player watched his fellow ex-pat warily as she stood on first base. He didn't say anything, simply waiting for somewhere to react, if she got into what amounted to HIS territory on the mixed field. And charge into it she did.

Unfortunately, it didn't go quite as planned for Brett, as her charge came with an entangling of his legs, managing to trip Bret up and then vaulting off him on her charge toward Third Base. HItting the ice hard, the young Mr. Neuer grunted, quickly recovering himself from the tumble and pushing himself back up to his skates. Gritting his teeth, he charged toward third himself. Spinning once he gets near, his stick extends out, chopping outward like a spinning scythe as he tried to smack her down from the very edge of the ice.

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata blocks Brett's Wild Spiral.

[      \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////////   ]
Brett            0/-------/-----==|===----\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
The kick off Brett tied him up just long enough that Alice manages to stay most of the way ahead of him as she approaches third base. She has no skates, but it turns out you /can/ run on ice if you're careful; every step has a certain amount of slip-and-slide involved, but as long as she keeps her balance she'll be fine, right?

Right?

But he does catch up right at the edge of the ice. As Alice steps off it, she spins, sensing Brett behind her. She can't dodge completely - she can't figure out how to jump at just that moment - so she crouches, catching the worst of the blow with her arms and trying to push it away from her.

That stings, a lot. It sends her back a step to absorb the impact, but she manages to rise, hands stinging. "Ow ow ow," she mutters under her breath, but she doesn't need her hands to fight back; she suddenly snaps into a medium-high kick at Brett, trying to impact her heel into his chest and shove him away from her. So that's why she wears a short skirt! "No offense, but I'm going for a triple here, and that means a bit of hands off! Maybe later, if you're still interested."

COMBATSYS: Brett fails to interrupt Heel Kick from Alice Nakata with Hurricane Check EX.
- Power fail! -

[           \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////////   ]
Brett            0/-------/---====|===----\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
Battering at Alice's guard with that spinning strike, Brett eventually comes to a stop, reorienting himself toward Alice with only a minimal trace of dizziness somehow. The ice is his homeground after all. And with Alice's footing seemingly compromised because of the ice, he seems confident enough to try and push the advantage. So when that high kick comes to try and piston into his chest, Brett charges in, intent on bowling the girl over with a hard cross check...

That runs right into the kick and manages to catch it right where the padding stops. The kick gets him right in the sternum, eyes widening as the hockey star ends up sent back and falling back onto the ice, coughing rather violently. That...did not go as planned.

[ALICE NAKATA]
There's a reason Alice is staying off the ice now that she can. If they're going to fight on the boundary that's... actually that's probably harder for her because of the variable footing, but it's still fine. She'll manage.

She lucked out with the heel kick and she knows it, but Alice is not adverse to taking advantage of even the slightest advantage - even when she caused it completely by mistake. So she does, raising her foot even higher - nearly as high as her head! - before bringing it down in a ridiculous axe kick, using the impact (hopefully) to spring herself upward in an evasive maneuver.

"C'mon, keep going! I'm not done yet, and it's just /like/ someone like you to be done early, isn't it? Canadians can't keep up with a good American girl!"

COMBATSYS: Brett blocks Alice Nakata's High Heel.

[             \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////    ]
Brett            0/-------/--=====|====---\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
Brett could correct Alice and note that he's just as American as she is (unless Canada annexed Duluth sometime during his lifetime and he was never made aware of it), but once he's this deep into game mode, he rarely speaks, ever. He just gets too focused to be very chatty. It's what helped make him a dedicated winger, after all.

But it makes for a terrible fight conversationalist, and right now, neither seems to be helping him in this fight. He's still not down yet though, pushing himself back up just in time to catch the dropping heel with his stick. ANd just as Alice means to bound off with that purchase, the stick twists, Brett trying to turn the butt of it toward the sparsely dressed girl and drive it into her own sternum to cut off any evasive manuever she had in mind.

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata parries Brett's Random Strike!!

[            \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////    ]
Brett            0/-------/---====|=======\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
Spoilers: Alice doesn't really look up half her opponents unless they catch her eye somehow. She thought it was an American-Canadian fight and nobody bothered to correct her. Sorry, Brett.

Alice starts to ascend when she realizes there is a a stick arcing up toward her sternum. She manages to twist somehow, lifting her other leg and actually stepping on /top/ of the stick, balancing there momentarily before it pushes her even further upward, leaping a good ten feet into the air in total. "Time to give you a good screw!" she taunts, trying to keep Brett off balance as she goes up.

That's good, right?

(no)

Alice begins to spin as she descends. She points her feet, descending downward in - well, a drill. It looks like a reverse of Terry's very own Rising Tackle, in fact, except it has a little more impact with gravity on its side. She's likely to divot as her feet drill into the ice if she misses him!

COMBATSYS: Brett endures Alice Nakata's Diving Drill EX.

[                 \\\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////////////////    ]
Brett            1/-------/=======|=======\=------\1     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
Again...Brett tends not to be a chatty person when a match starts. He's too focused on the objective...which probably helps when an opponent tries to put one off balance with innuendo and distracting banter.

The problem is making use of that focus. And that's where the Gorin student is having the biggest problem. When Alice comes down with that drilling kick, he grits his teeth...and simply opens up, letting the blow come. THe drilling kick hits him hard enough that the force penetrates through the padding easily and compromises it and the sternum beneath even more.

But it's a position he's willing to be in if he can make something of it. Arms held open, hands quickly meet back up upon his stick, the weapon upraised to try and meet Alice and spin violently at her like helicopter blades. He took a hard hit, but if he can make something of this, it'll be worth it.

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata blocks Brett's Blackhawk Down.

[                  \\\\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////       ]
Brett            1/------=/=======|=======\===----\1     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
Alice, on the other hand, can't keep her mouth shut. It's a weakness.

"Oh, the silent type? That's fine." Alice can /feel/ her kick hit home, and when she bounces off it's with triumph; she knows she's delivered a solid blow and she just needs to keep following up to bring the victory home for bask -

Baseball. Crap. Wrong sport. Why couldn't they have let her represent basketball??

Alice partially evades the helicopter-like stick blade but mostly absorbs it. She lets it batter into her hands and lower arms, repeatedly, pushing away at the blows to protect her torso. At the same time, with every blow she lets a ripple of chi build up on her arms, spreading down to her fingers, filling her hands with red-yellow spheres...

"Hey, catch!"

Alice lobs the balls of chi - one basically dropping it at Brett's feet, then she backs up, tossing the other one like she was preparing to shoot some hoops. Neither touch him; they sink into the ground, apparently harmless for about two seconds.

Then they explode upwards, great pillars of chi that blast up through the icy rink - the rink itself is fine, the ice churned and broken but not sprayed everywhere, but Brett might get caught in the energy explosion and rising cloud!

COMBATSYS: Brett blocks Alice Nakata's Buster Shoot.

[                     \\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////       ]
Brett            1/----===/=======|===----\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
Feeling his spinning stick batter only at Alice's guard, Brett backs off...which is a good thing when the balls of chi are summoned up, and then dropped short of him. One might think they simply missed or something...but Brett knew better than to assume.

Which is good, because he's able to hunker down, and use his stick to shield himself further from the sudden pillars that burst up from where those spheres sunk in. Gritting his teeth, he feels the rink underneath him rendered away...and despite bracing the best he could, they still buffeted him more than was healthy.

Realizing how far on the backfoot he was, Brett let his guard down, and....backed off. Without the benefit of the ice anymore, and the fact that he had zero clean hits to show for all his work, he knew he had to make every hit count now. And that meant picking and choosing his spots...

COMBATSYS: Brett circles, trying to pick up speed and momentum.

[                    \\\\\\\\\\  < >  ///////////////////////       ]
Brett            1/-----==/=======|===----\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
There's still some ice. Just not where the pillars were. It has a tendency to clear that stuff out.

Alice is starting to overextend, but it takes her a few moments to realize that she's breathing harder than she was just moments ago, that that took more out of her than she was hoping; she needs to pace herself and she almost doesn't.

But Brett going on the back foot, to a preparation position, reminds her to do it too. She stays back for a moment, catching her own breath, and when she does advance it's a short and less wildly energetic advance; she doesn't rush, but slips forward, using her (relatively) long legs to try a thrust kick at Brett. The heel kick worked so well before: why turn down what seems to be a winning strategy?

COMBATSYS: Brett interrupts Thrust Kick from Alice Nakata with Sir Stanley's Crush.

[                     \\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////                ]
Brett            0/-------/-------|=======\-------\1     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
That time to prepare himself gives Brett some room to maneuver. Not quite in the sense of being actively evasive. Rather, it means that when Alice starts to come forward again after some wariness, he has time to prepare a proper response.

And when that thrust kick comes, much like the last time, he's ready, the stick flying up to hook around the back of Alice's neck and snag her. A hard yank comes, pulling the blonde forward toward the taller boy...and that's where the rest of the ice comes into play, the Gorin star kicking hard off the ice as his stick is retracted, and slamming forward with a dashing elbow straight to Alice's face. It'd be a 5 minute penalty in a proper game, but here?...it's what amounts to Brett's last ditch push for a goal.

[ALICE NAKATA]
The nice part about hockey is that some of its maneuvers just work so /well/ on the battlefield. Also, they're legal.

Alice got a lucky shot with a similar move before. She thought it might be a weakness in Brett's responses, especially if he is so hockey-focused; in a hockey game, nobody is going to lift their foot to chest height before trying to plant it in your stomach. Elbows, tackles, sure, but high kicks?

Turns out it wasn't and she just /was/ lucky before. This time she isn't. The elbow connects solidly with Alice's cheek, causing her to recoil in pain and from sheer impact - and, having put her foot on ice, she actually goes down in a heap, knocked down into a messy pile.

She gets up quickly enough that it's clear she's not out, but it's certainly not as fast as she was moving previously. Alice looks a little dazed, but when she's dazed she tends to lash out in all directions and that's what she does now - a whirling kick, a wide sweep that she puts her whole body into the pivot of, trying to clear space around her again so she can finish her recovery. "Ha~aaa!"

COMBATSYS: Brett dodges Alice Nakata's Roundhouse Kick.

[                     \\\\\\\\\  < >  //////////////                ]
Brett            0/-------/-------|=======\-------\0     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
Plowing over Alice with that charging elbow, Brett kept up the momentum, charging on afterwards and keeipng mindful of the rather large holes in the ice that he had to maneuver around, as well as the cracks that resulted as well.

Still, with momentum on his side now, he's able to reel around rather than aimlessly chasing after her. This gives him the berth to actually slip underneath the pivoting kick that she sweeps out toward him. With his body low, he actually continues charging, trying to sweep Alice's planted leg out from under her with a hooking shot toward the back of her knee.

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata blocks Brett's Power Strike.

[                    \\\\\\\\\\  < >  ////////////                  ]
Brett            0/-------/-------|=======\-------\1     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
Alice's defences remain on point, at least. Momentum is on Brett's side, not Alice's, which puts her in a worse place, but she at least sticks gamely to her battle plan.

Well. Inasmuch as she has a plan. With Alice sometimes it's kind of plan-as-you-go.

Brett does in fact sweep Alice's leg out from under her, hooking the one she's balancing on with a sharp yank and sending her to the ground (well, ice). But she rolls with the impact instead of taking it solidly, like she expected him to do that or at least managed to accomodate it once she saw that he was going to.

Planting her hands flat up by her head, Alice vaults upward at a really uncomfortable-looking angle with a grunt of effort. She's trying the same spiraling kick before, but instead of going down it's going up at an angle; she tries to catch Brett before he can back off too far for her to throw herself at him, using the power of her arms to make her entire body the projectile!

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Brett with Rising Drill.
- Power hit! -

[                         \\\\\  < >  ///////////                   ]
Brett            0/-------/---====|=======\-------\1     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
The sweeping strike manages to take, but not enough to completely bowl Alice over, and that ends up a rather big problem. Normally, it might not be so, but Brett clearly wasn't expecting the rather violent rise up from Alice, eating a painful drill kick to the face that takes him completely off his feet in turn and dumps him on the ice again until he hits the crater left by the earlier chi pillars.

Groaning, and momentum suddenly gone, Brett finds himself at a loss of which direction to go now. Breathing heavy, he's forced to push himself back up with the butt end of his stick until he's in a proper crouch. Gritting his teeth, he grips the end and goes to bat. Even if it wouldn't do well against a baseball, the stick chops out toward Alice's side, heel first just the same.

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata parries Brett's Crushing Strike!!

[                        \\\\\\  < >  ///////////                   ]
Brett            0/-------/---====|=======\===----\1     Alice Nakata

[ALICE NAKATA]
Alice only brought one baseball and she's not holding it. It's currently... actually, where /did/ that baseball get to?

Halfway across the field, the baseball that bounced off Brett sits, having rolled past second base and towards outfield. It glitters, slightly damp from ice shards sprayed towards it. It is forgotten.

Either way, Brett doesn't have to try to bat one of them, only Alice. Unfortunately, Alice is at least as hard a target to lay a solid hit on as a baseball is. He swings strongly, but Alice isn't there; she's vaulting /over/ it, momentarily getting one hand on it and pushing over, hurdle-style. She's putting her entire body into another pivot -

Which may explain why her foot is blurring as it scythes through the air, a mighty vertical blow as she spins her body!

COMBATSYS: Alice Nakata successfully hits Brett with Thundercrack Kick EX.
- Power hit! -

[                             \  < >  /////////////                 ]
Brett            0/-------/=======|=======\=====--\1     Alice Nakata

[BRETT]
With the swing hitting nothing but air, Brett stumbles a little, and loses track of Alice in the process of recovering. It's a problem that resolves itself not too long after.

It just happens in a way that Brett will regret later, as he finds himself slammed down hard from above with a vertical kick that crashes into his head, slamming him down face first into the ice hard enough to break it even further with further spreading spiderwebbing across it.

Once the ice settles, Brett doesn't seem to move, at all.

COMBATSYS: Brett takes no action.

[                 \\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Alice Nakata     1/--=====/=======|

COMBATSYS: Brett can no longer fight.

[                 \\\\\\\\\\\\\  <
Alice Nakata     1/--=====/=======|

[ALICE NAKATA]
Alice Nakata only feels slightly bad about that. All's fair in love, war, and combat contests.

"Be right back," she says to Brett, still breathing hard. Whatever it might have looked like near the end, that was a tough fight, and she's not exactly in perfect shape herself. But she has something to do.

Alice trots toward home base like she hadn't ever stopped around third to fight. She jumps on it, pumps her fist, and yells, "HOME RUN!" (It's sort of true. She only hit the ball once.) "Baseball victorious! Winter sports need to stay in the winter!"

Then she trots right back, probably with the SNF crew in tow, to check on Brett.

Log created on 20:12:04 07/05/2016 by Alice Nakata, and last modified on 09:47:25 07/07/2016.