Description: The master of the Kyokugen Dojo has at time used his considerable contacts to stage intricate scenarios to teach his students what he considers valuable life lessons. Hotaru learns the hard way why... You Don't Forget The Tea!
It's that absolutely weird time of the day where daytime seems to intersect with the night, and the moon gets to say hello to the sun as he goes home for some well deserved rest. The setting sun creates a serene amber and rouge color sky while the moon is also bright in the sky. As for rest? Well, not at the Kyokugen Dojo! There were actually some early leaves to rake up outside, falling from the trees aeven as early in the season as it is. Those things can be the bane of one's existence, really, and they can never come too late. Unfortunately, that's not the last of Hotaru's duties.
Cleaning the floor of the Dojo is, of course. You see, you do everything outside before the sun sets, and then whatever's left inside when it's dark out! Time management sure is fun, huh?
Of course, it's poor Hotaru's left to do this by herself. At least there's no ghost stories to be told tonight, right?
The beginning of moonlight shines through from the outside as shafts of light; the main area of the Dojo actually darkened for now to conserve power, be it electrical or candle. It's dark, and it's a long way to the other side of the dojo to turn on the lights. Of course, something is awry. It doesn't feel right. And then, right there, there's noises. Mixed with crickets and rustling leaves. Maybe.. it is rustling leaves?
Or maybe it's shuffling footsteps.
Not just leaves, but a TON of leaves. The dojo is located on the outskirts of a large forest, north of Southtown. While that means it has a somewhat nice, refreshing, local, that also means that the spill over of wind-tossed dead leaves is quite the dread project to account for. Hence the large stack of dark green, environment-friendly, biodegradeable trash bags full of leaves that Hotaru had spent the last few hours raking from the courtyard. The Extended Claw kata, Ryo insisted it was called. Hotaru is pretty sure it's called the 'Student Rakes Up The Leaves' chore, but Hotaru has never sassed Ryo for the word play on the tasks he gives her. She has been doing steadily better as a fighter, month after month, so whatever she has to endure... it seems to have been worth it.
The stack of bags looks precariously ready to topple over, leaning against the outter brick wall of the courtyard, but Hotaru looks satisfied, dusting off her hands and moving over to rest the rake against the side of a wooden shed. Resting her hands at her hips, the girl beams at a job well done. Of course, with the sun setting beyond the treeline toward the west, that just means it's time to go inside and work on the dojo's floor. The Fluid Hammer Kata... also known as waxing.
The small statured, dedicated student extends her arms in a stretch before clasping her hands behind her back. All in an evening's work around the dojo, she tells herself.
Whenever the continuously choring, er, eternally training student manages to make it over to the entrance to the dojo, the sound branches rustling can be heard from inside of the dojo. Wait, branches rustling.. inside?
That... can't be right.
Maybe it's like, uh, you know, ventriloquism? Trees that know ventriloquism! Of course! That theory is mythbusted by the addition to metal scraping and clanging against metal, as the sound of something scraping along the floor of the ever serene Kyokugen Dojo can be heard.
"Raaauuuunnnggg.....orororgggaahhhh...." is another sudden addition to the Tree's vast powers of sound manipulation. It's not long until they evolve enough to use actural words.
"Brrrraiiiiinnnnsss!!!"
And then, bang, the door slides open, even before Hotaru can open it! From the darkness, a creepy but feminine face appears dimly lit, the ghostly white bangs hanging in the eyes of whoever or whatever this is. Maybe it doesn't have eyes? Who knows? A tongue, which you swear is black and white, emerges from the face's mouth to licks its lips, before... SPEAKING!
"Hotaru, I have come... for you! I am the legendary Tanuki known as Shukaku! I haunt this place, I am the scary boogieman of the Kyokugen Dojo's teapot. You did not make the tea this morning... why!? The tea from my pot should be ENDLESS, AS IT WAS ENCHANTED! I AM ANGERED, AND I HAVE COME FOR YOUR BRAINS!"
And then it's all like a flashing light from below, underneath the freaky floating (?) girl's face. The head throws itself up, and creepy red eyes can be seen looking directly at Hotaru, even though the rest.. looks black and white! Trick of the light? Who knows, because suddenly:
"BOO!"
The sound of something moving around behind the rice-paper door is cause for pausing mid-step, though Hotaru isn't immediately concerned. Perhaps Marco came back from his bi-weekly soujourn into the woods to... do whatever Marco does out there. He always comes home with enough scratches and scrapes to suggest that what he does is wrestle with a woodchipper. Which is precisely why Hotaru has never asked. But maybe he's inside right now? Dragging one of his training wrecking balls aroun the floor? Hotaru frowns a little at the thought. It isn't her place to scold the senior Kyokugen Instructor, but that wooden floor is expensive and not the surface for dragging spike-covered steel spheres around on!
But then comes the sounds as well and Hotaru freezes a second time, hand half reaching to open the door herself. Did something just groan 'brains'? She's pretty sure something just groaned 'brains'. "A-Ano-" And then the door is open suddenly and the young student gasps with obvious fright, eyes widening as her hands come up defensively. "W-what?" she stammers at the explanation, looking incredulous even though... what it says is the COMPLETE TRUTH. She /did/ forget to make tea this morning, having had to jet to school earlier than normal due to wanting to slip a paper beneath a teacher's door before the teacher got there... It was due last night, after all, but hey, as long as it's there in the morning, who knows, right??
"H-how- is this even possible," the girl seems rooted in place... that is until those scary eyes focus on her accompanied by the BOO! She cringes then, lifting her arms, hands clenched into small fists, as if to block some kind of attack.
The head seems to.. turn upsidedown? The hair falls down, too, so.. gravity seems to effect this tanuki at least. Even if the eyes are completely fixated on Hotaru. "You live in a world where one can focus their own souls into energy that not only can harm, kill a man, but also glows into a technicolour brightness like fireworks, yet you question the supernatural!?"
The Tanuki seems to lament, even as the head spins rightside up again- "Human nature. You walk by signs, little things that scream out something is abnormal, but you ignore it like it doesn't matter, in cosequential! But when a real, true to life spirit confronts you in the flesh, you disbelieve!"
And then it lurches forward, toward Hotaru. It reveals itself more. "Well, as flesh as a spirit can be." The figure then... hops out, with something wrattling in the background - not that it's something Hotaru is probably focusing on currently. "Tanuki's are tricksters, true, but our vengence is also swift." Once the 'tanuki' is out, and illuminated by the moonlight, it is revealed to look like... Angel! Only.. black and white, 1950's TV Angel? But those red eyes!
It does make sense a little. If the demon was someone evil, they'd probably appear as, hrm, Kurow? Maybe? While Angel isn't the evilest person Hotaru knows, diamond to donuts she's probably the most mischevious and tricky. But, back to the matter at hand! Her movements are sharp, and grotesque, as she lurches toward Hotaru- she swings around a Kyoketsu Shogi at her side, only attached to a chain instead of a rope.
"This is why... you don't forget the tea!"
Actually, when the diminshing outside light gives her a chance to see the ghostly girl looks... like Angel, it practically makes sense to Hotaru. Angel has been a Tanuki ALL ALONG! That's why she keeps putting her hands over her head all the time. Maybe they're not horns like she had suspected but rather to represent Tanuki ears!
"B-but..." Hotaru protests at first, even though she has to admit there's a fair amount of /logic/ behind the words. How can she dismiss the racoon-cousin's spirit so handily given the things she's seen? Chi vampires, men who can stretch their limbs several feet, green mutants that can cover themselves with electricity. The world is a downright strange place. Maybe she shouldn't be so hasty to disbelieve...
At the sound of the weapon being dragged behind her, Hotaru's eyes widen and she tightens her stance. This Tanuki means business. "I-I- didn't know it would matter so much," the girl gasps, taking a cautious step backward. Part of her wants to aggress, to not let this trickster spirit push her around. But she's also on uncharted territory here. Best to... put that Extended Claw training to use! Whirling around, Hotaru takes two steps over to extract the rake from the side of the shead, weilding it like an awkward bo staff... which she has absolutely no training in, unfortunately.
"Tea or no tea, I'm ready for you, you pesky Tanuki! You can't come around here and haunt THIS dojo!" Kyokugen'ers aren't afraid of /anything/ after all! Bringing the rake up over her head, the girl takes a wild, uncontrolled swing with the makeshift weapon. If this turns out much like all of her other attempts at makeshift weapons in the past, this is bound to go poorly. "HA! Out with you!"
COMBATSYS: Hotaru has started a fight here.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Angel has joined the fight here.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Angel
COMBATSYS: Angel dodges Hotaru's Random Weapon.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Angel
For the "Tanuki's" part, it seems to speak with a intelligence far above Angel's outward level. The tone is also completely different. If it's a Tanuki who pretends to be "Angel", or Angel who pretends to be a "Tanuki", either way she's a good actor. It's kind of creepy, in a way, not to see her all happy and bouncy. How she stalks forward. That sexy hip swagger is nowhere to be found, and the chaps she wears seem to shift at her hips as slowly as the walk is intent.
She doesn't even call her Pancakes!
"That's right!" the Tanuki shouts, taking a moment to probably reinforce what she's thinking about, "Imagine, if you will! I mean, seriously, imagine. Do you even know how you imagine, how your brain processes thoughts, or even how it interprets light so you can see? You take it for granted... something as intangible as imagination, yet you know it exists. How could you even deign to deny ME if you can't deny something as mysterious as your own mind?"
"You didn't know it matters!?", it steps forward, another, slow, but deliberate step. "Your sensei had to make the tea this morning instead. What if this made him, or your friends to be late for an appointment? What if that caused him to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and then... crash! Dead..."
It's a sudden, deliberate movement to the side as the rake is thrown. You could swear there's no blurring, it just seem to... move from one place to the other. However, the more fiendish Kyoketsu Shogi? It swings up to clang up against the rake, ripping it out of Hotaru's hands and spinning it around hazardously before winging it back at the poor girl just trying to do her chores.
"ALL. BECAUSE. THERE. WAS. NO. TEA."
COMBATSYS: Angel successfully hits Hotaru with Thrown Object.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-----==|-------\-------\0 Angel
Hotaru is convinced that she's at last seen the tricky Angel's true form. All this time she's been bumping into a Tanuki in strange places, but now the truth is out! The teasing, the taunting, the stealing of her hair ribbons, the word games, the funny stories, the evasive dialoge. It all makes way more sense in this context.
And she's determined the drive the spirit off with that rake of hers, afraid of coming in direct contact... after all, who knows what will happen if she touches the black and white figure. Will she get sucked into some other parallel plane of frolicing, laughing spirits hell bent on tormenting her?
But the Extended Claw ends up not being a very reliable technique at all as the rake gets pulled from her hands, the girl stumbling forward a little before letting go. "Ack! Hey, my rake, give that back!" It's so nice of the Tanuki to be so accommodating, swinging the yard tool around and then right back at the poor student.
"Oof," Hotaru grunts as it knocks her in the arm, causing her to tip to the side a little before catching herself. "Hey, I-I can't be held accountable if something happened just because I didn't make the tea..." She doesn't sound convinced though, picturing in her mind what might happen if Takuma was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and while crossing the street, he notices Todoh-san on the other side, and then stops to glare and shout some kind of lengthy, nonsensical diatribe back at the other man, and then ends up getting struck by a truck because he was standing in the middle of the street. If only he hadn't had to have made tea, then he would have safely made it across that street. Hotaru's expression weakens a little as she starts to look concerned at the imaginary disaster. "C-can I?"
Gritting her teeth and getting her focus back, she decides to still avoid touching the spectral foe. She looks to be made of flesh and blood right now, but those red eyes... the colors that don't look natural... Hotaru isn't taking any chances! Rolling her arm behind her back, her hand lights up with a deep, blue aura while she charges a small projectile. Finally she swings her arm forward, aiming toward Tanuki-Angel before letting the pulsating, shimmering blue sphere fly from the end of her fingers, "YA!"
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits Angel with Hakki Shou.
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Hotaru 0/-------/------=|==-----\-------\0 Angel
A crooked smile on her face seem to get crooked...er. If this is just Angel messing around, she must be enjoying it, but who's to know how a real Tanuki would grin? "KE KE KE KE!"
"Well, you wanted it back." Her head then leads to the side in a sudden motion, and those eyes stare all at her. "HO. TA. RU."
And then just as suddenly, Hotaru's all with the Hakki Shou! It comes flying through the air, and it seems the demon animal.. thing is unprepared for such nonsense. "ROAOAOAHHHHHHHHHHH!" the Tanuki screams. You'd think it would be OWOOOOWOWOWOWOWOWO! right? Well, hmm.
"Ahh, that tickled a bit." the Tanuki intones. "Felt good, like a massage, really. Thank you!" Oh yeah, sure it did. She lets that marinate for a moment, chuckling! It's weird coming from the visage of the usually lively mexican bandita. "Come now, sweet child. You think a measly attack such as that would PHASE ME? That.. energized me!" Oh man, it had no effect! Well, she seems to drop the chain and knife combo, and then...
She throws up the cowhorns.
With the red eyes and the rest of the mood going on, it's not as endearing as it normally is. This is a sign, though. A big sign, because as soon as her hands start to come down, she's already on the move. And this move is... something Hotaru might be familiar with. She aims to grab Hotaru by the neck, long enough to throw her up in the air! Spin around her to the other side with less fancy, more determined footwork than normal, and actually jump into a spinkick which will kick Hotaru INTO THE DOJO. Funny how that works, no? Well, might work.. if it can actually be managed by this so called tea pot ghost. Ke ke ke.
COMBATSYS: Angel successfully hits Hotaru with Mad Murder Roulette.
Glancing Blow
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Hotaru 0/-------/---====|====---\-------\0 Angel
What? This demon... spirit... pesky... thing is impervious to her Hakki Shou? Hotaru looks caught off guard by such a convincing acting job, raising her arm defensively with worry in her eyes. If she can't beat this fiend back with her little chiball then she'll have to risk coming in contact with it after al- ack!
While she's swinging her arm to try and intercept the Tanuki's incoming grip, she thought she was going to get punched, not grabbed at the throat. Hefting the girl off the ground is easy enough, what with her not even weighing a hundred pounds soaking wet. But the kid proves to be quite agile, herself, reaching out and grabbing hold of the edge of the dojo's roof with her two hands while she's mid-air.
"Haha!" boasts the girl, dangling there from the roof like that, thinking she's outsmarted the crafty Tanuki-Angel this time... Only, she forgot that there was a follow up to that very technique when she was hit by it before. Angel's foot comes around and kicks the girl right in the rear, sending her flying forward and into the dojo's main training room as was the intent from the beginning.
Hotaru slides along the smooth, wooden surface, coming to a rest on her side some distance away before she gets back up onto her feet. "So! Your ghostly skin isn't made of acid, or dark miasma or anything of the sort. That means you're as susceptible to kicks and punching as anyone else!" the girl asserts, pointing back at Angel, her other hand resting on her hip.
Some of her fear diminished now that /that/ concern is out of her mind, she leans forward to charge back at the young woman, hand pulled back in a fiersome punch. It's a bold, fearless punch. One Ryo would be proud of. It's also not really her best technique by any means.
COMBATSYS: Angel dodges Hotaru's Strong Punch.
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Hotaru 0/-------/---====|====---\-------\0 Angel
As she lands, Tanuki-Angel oomfs slightly as she gets her footing back. Moving to the side to regain her balance. She watches as Hotaru goes flying into the dojo- Into the lightlessness. Those heavy steel-toed boots she wears drags against the gravel lining the walkway outside, scratching, making a heavly walked echo.
"Oh, Hotaru..." comes a sing-songy voice. "Are yooooou innnn here?" There's hint of depravity in there, especially as she continues. "I bet you could never immmmm~agine that one little dinky teapot could do ~all~ this?"
She chuckles in that artful mischievousness of hers you've come to expect.
"Of course, /forgetting/, no, /disrespecting/.. that's a good word, disrespecting my teapot caused all of this mess." Then the punch comes, and Hotaru's master would indeed be proud of how it was thrown in the name of Justice, but the wily tanuki just proves too, well, wily. The other weird thing is there's something a bit "round" underfoot as Hotaru moves to punch forward. It doesn't trip her up, actually, she manages to kick it across the dojo, it sounds like, as it clacks against the wall. Whatever it is, it's too dark to see, and probably not a good idea to go find.
'Course, the "Tanuki" is also lost in the darkness again.
COMBATSYS: Angel gains composure.
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Hotaru 0/-------/---====|==-----\-------\0 Angel
COMBATSYS: Hotaru has saved the state of this fight.
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Hotaru 0/-------/---====|==-----\-------\0 Angel
At first it is easy to see her assailant even though she's in a darkened room, due to the moonlight from outside coming in through the door. Which gave her an easy target to charge with that perhaps somewhat too careless punch of hers. But as Angel moves out of the way and avoids the swing, Hotaru finds herself at a loss as to where the pesky spirit has gone!
She blinks as her foot strikes something and sends it sliding across the floor. The girl has cleaned this room's floor plenty of times in the past to know everything that tends to be sitting on it, but whatever that was she isn't sure. Hopefully it wasn't fragile. Turning around, she scans the black room around her, eyes narrowing as she tries to spend more time listening than looking. Unfortunately, she hasn't had much training in fighting blind, but instincts can get her a little ways, right?
"I didn't mean to leave the tea unprepared," she speaks softly. "I was just in a hurry, that's all. No reason for you to come out here and hassle me about it!" She turns around again, looking in the opposite direction, hoping her eyes adjust to the dimmer room in time for her to better see any impending attacks. The girl waits near the door though, that gives her the most light to see by, even if it isn't a lot. But she isn't about to run off and leave this pesky ghost to hang around and haunt HER dojo! Well, the Sakazaki's dojo. But she feels like it's a little bit hers too!
COMBATSYS: Hotaru focuses on her next action.
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Hotaru 0/-------/---====|==-----\-------\0 Angel
"I'm a little tea-pot, short and stout.. o/~" comes from the silence.
You knew it was coming. You had to know. This is a teapot demon, and what song is more associated with teapots than this one?! And it's presented as singsony and as it is creepy- Nothing else but the sound of some psycho Tanuki singing. Oh yeah, and one other thing. You see Hotaru does have a bit of an advantage, being that she can at least hear the chains on Angel's chaps jingle and jangle here and there. It's slight, almost faint right now, but..!
"Here is my handle, here is my spout..! o/~"
It sounds like she's circling, maybe? Hrrrrm. The chains are definitely getting louder! Keep those ears sharp. Even though she's normally unpredictable, it's even worse now. At least Angel never talked about eating Hotaru's brains. At least, not recently, anyway. "When I get all steamed up, hear me shout..."
And then those chains get louder. So loud... for a second, and then it sounds like something's ripping through the air. The shafts of moonlight reveal that Tanuki-Angel has thrown one of those chains like a bola through the air at poor Hotaru!
COMBATSYS: Hotaru fails to reflect Thrown Object from Angel with Kobi Kyaku.
- Power fail! -
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Hotaru 0/-------/-======|===----\-------\0 Angel
Having had her say, Hotaru falls quiet after a moment, letting herself listen to the sounds of her only company in the room moving around. She thinks she has the direction down, and Angel might notice that she's mostly facing her as she tries to circle around. The singing kind of helps too, admittedly. In fact, she gets a confident little smile, certain that the sounds of the chain will make it easy for her to account for whatever comes next. Heh heh. She'll show that Tanuki that playing around in the dark isn't going to turn the tide here!
And then it comes. The chain flying through the air and Hotaru is even completely certain of the direction. Not even waiting for some kind of visual cue, the girl swings her foot out in a reverse roundhouse, a swath of blue chi trailing behind her foot. It's going to form the perfect shield against which the chain will bounce uselessly and maybe even reflect back and end up wrapping right back around that pesky Tanuki!
At least, that's how it played out in her head when she steps forward into the kick. Only, her left foot comes down on an errant wooden geta that a student had unfortunately left out from earlier in the day. The obstical causes the poor girl to stumble, her kick not on the mark at all. In fact, the chain ends up wrapping around her ankle, just as her other foot slips out from under her.
Both of her feet off the ground, Hotaru flails for a split second before crashing down to the wooden floor on her back, landing with a bit of a thud. "Ermph." she grunts, one leg still held up in the air, the chain around her ankle. One hand raises slowly, "I meant to do that," she claims, sounding a little winded. She's kinda lucky it's dark or the ceiling might seem a little blurry right now.
The chain was only a distraction, really. It's all about the setup, and if there's one thing, Angel knows how to set people up. Take Dan for example; She had him convinced earlier this week that not only had they met before, but that he managed to beat her in a fight. In the process, she drummed him up business!
It's moments later that Tanuki-Angel appears above Hotaru, laughing almost silently at the whole affair. She didn't even expect that to hit. She does the teapot dance for a moment, scooting around Hotaru in a circle while going through the steps until she gets to the end, finishing the words she started prior:
"Tip me over and pour me out!"
You know what's coming, right? Yeah, it'd make sense. Angel produces a teapot, held up in her right hand. She hums, now, almost matronly. Doing her motherly duty of holding said teapot above, and... pouring it all over the girl! Mothers do this all the time, you know.
It's a bit scary for a second, really, as the tea flits through the air as-if in slow motion. Hot and burny scolding tea attack! Is that steam or is that the blurry ceiling!? Ahhhh!
Luckily for Hotaru, the tea is all cold. Cold, and a bit disgusting and old. Like that squicky feeling you get when looking into a toilet and imagining what taking a drink of water from it would be like. Ew.
COMBATSYS: Angel focuses on her next action.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-======|===----\-------\0 Angel
Still just getting her bearings, Hotaru is in the processes of putting her sit up exercises to work, starting to crunch up to a seated position when she finally makes out Angel up close. "I'm a little teapot, yeah, yeah." mimes Hotaru in a mumbling sing-songy voice, her tone sounding annoyed by now. What she doesn't realize is that Angel is getting to the grand finale of the song with a cold, old, tea drenching - the residue of another day's tea pot no doubt.
It pours down over her hair and onto her shoulders, dripping all over that nice, expensive, custom tailored vest of hers. Hotaru quickly scrambles up to her feet, hands coming up to her face to wipe the tea out of her eyes and brushing her soaking bangs off to the sides of her face as she glares at the prankster spirit.
"Why you..." the girl growls, lunging out to try and snag hold of Angel's forearm, hoping to get a tight enough grip to snatch the teapot from her. Considering she's already had the contents of it poured on her, it's a bit moot at this point, but one less thing the Tanuki can use to throw at her is progress in her mind!
COMBATSYS: Angel dodges Hotaru's Quick Throw.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-======|===----\-------\0 Angel
The "spirit" thinks this is hilarious. I mean, tea, poured from a pot, onto someone's head? The height of comedy! Well, it is pretty funny, really. Hotaru isn't hoity-toity per-say, but she's also not one to get down and dirty either. She's a bit proud if Thailand was any indication, so this is a lesson.. within a lesson!
"You better get used to it!" the silver haired "demon" laughs, holding the teapot over the highschooler's head, weaving it around in the air in the most taunting manner ever. "You come into this world a bloody and disgusting mess, and go out spending time with your good friend--"
It's a comedy of errors as Hotaru tries to throw Angel, though. When she reaches up, grabs the pot, and attempts to flip Angel over. Instead, she grabs the pot out of the mexican bandita slash racoon spirit's hand, and, falls to the ground onto her butt, yet again? Her butt seems to be meeting the floor a lot tonight!
"Dirt...?" The "Tanuki" puts hands on her hips, and looks down at Hotaru with a quirked brow and a mouth agape. "What the heck was that!? C'mon kid, it's like you're not even trying here! I mean, shoot, I could just use this-"
Tanuki-Angel then looks over at her hand for a second, and then back down to Hotaru, and then back to her hand, "HEY!" Oh yeah, it's dawning on her. "MY POT! GIVE THAT BACK! THAT'S MY HOUSE!!" She slides in a bit, shuffling her feet, and then, bang, aims to kick the teapot out of Hotaru's hands!
COMBATSYS: Hotaru dodges Angel's Formalist Blue.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-======|===----\-------\0 Angel
Well, the tormented girl was raised in an austere, wealthy home, where dirt was scarce and humor even more rare. So even just the thought of getting her normally pristine white clothing drenched with brown, staining tea is practically mortifying to Hotaru.
And it's not helping that she's slippery now too - feet on a damp, smooth wooden floor and wet hands sliding along Angel's forearm. It's no surprise that the flustered girl ends up seated on the floor again with a grunt. But hey, she's got the teapot. Who has the power NOW?!
When Angel goes on the offense to knock the teapot out of the Kenpo artist's hands, Hotaru finally gets moving again, not risking trying to get back up on her feet since she's likely to just slip again. Instead she lies down flat and rolls swiftly to the side, allowing Angel's foot to fly past the teapot, missing it by inches.
Using the momentum of the roll to spring back up to her feet some distance away, Hotaru lands in a graceful fighting stance, legs spread apart, arms out at her sides, one hand grasping the handle of the tea pot. This lasts all of one second though as she realizes that she pulled of stealing the pot and just starts to laugh, "Haha! Too bad for you! I've got it now!" She spins around in a circle, arms out at her sides as if putting the teapot at risk of being flung across the wooden floor to an untimely demise.
But the spin is just a moment of amusement for the girl as she turns around to charge the Tanuki back, hopping into the air and striking out with her foot in a lateral jump kick that Kyokugen'ers are notorious for using. "HA!"
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits Angel with Light Kick.
- Power hit! -
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Hotaru 0/-------/=======|=====--\-------\0 Angel
The "Tanuki" points at Hotaru much like a Power Ranger would, "You, hey, you! You better give that back! You wouldn't want to feel my wrath! It's very.. wrathy!" She moves forward, footing a bit more sure due to the tea all over the floor, wailing back and arm trying to strike the neat freak! "You wouldn't dare hurt my house!"
Only, the gods smile upon Hotaru, and give her happy gumdrops and rainbow farts and all of those nice things for once. That is to say, she pulls off some crazy stuff that's a bit hard for Angel to follow.
"Wait, wha--" OOOF! One blow, straight to Angel's forehead! The "demon" is definitely solid, at the very least. She reels back, and slipping and sliding on the floor until she smashes back into the really thin, paper-like wall. The wall bows outward, and barely manages to hold her up!
A bit of blood trickles from Angel's cheek, and when she looks up, and tries to get her bearings again, she orientents her lips so she spits a bit of the blood at Hotaru. For one, it's blood. Who wants to be spit blood at? Two, it's Tanuki blood. It could be like acid! Either way, that's not her attack.
All that tea on the floor, how can she not use that to her advantage? She pushes off the wall, careful not to try and break it anymore than she probably already did, and then runs forward. When she makes it to the tea, she uses it to skid, pick up speed, and use that extra momentum to jump into the air and bring out something a little different. First, as she's sliding, she punches the ground all right-fisted. You would swear flames sprewed up from the area, but the shaking of said ground is more disorienting than the momentary flame! Secondly, the disorienting is only a cover, really, as she uses the momentum to lean back and deliver a really hard punch to the gut with her left. Will Hotaru make it out alright!?
COMBATSYS: Angel successfully hits Hotaru with Repunkamui.
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Hotaru 1/----===/=======|=======\====---\1 Angel
Landing after her fantastically timed and well placed jump kick, Hotaru comes to a sliding landing, her shoes not doing all that well at finding traction on the floor even when they weren't damp on the bottom. But she has her balance all the same, turning around to watch her target fall into the wall. The entire time that Angel spends leaning against the bowed out paper wall Hotaru is holding her breath. It's the Rule around the Kyokugen Dojo. You slam someone through a wall, you fix the wall.
But the wall holds true and Hotaru whews. Her lucky night! Well, aside from all the horrible luck she's been having! The girl twirls the teapot around her finger then, antagonizing the teapot spirit with reckless abandon! "Haha. Now you should scram before something happens to this teapot. You wouldn't want your house getting- whoa, whoa!" Her eyes widen as she begins to scramble backward from the incoming Angel-Fist. The pot twirling lazily around her finger flies off into the air into a slow, flipping arc while Hotaru flails backward, finding she doesn't quite have the friction she'd need in order to make a last second daring acrobatic escape.
This leaves her dead open for the glowing, fist attack of death... but just as it looks like it's about to end very poorly for her, the pot falls right down into the path of Angel's incoming hand. Propelled on by the evil spirit girl's fist, the pot ends up being what strikes the girl in the stomach instead of the fist, dispersing some of the strenght of the blow over a larger area, reducing the pain a little.
Pot-cushion aside, it's still a very solid hit, bending Hotaru forward as her eyes widen, feet doing nothing to keep her from sliding back swiftly into the opposite wall from which Angel sprung. The wood-framed paper creeks and bends, straining against the teenaged-projectile... But unlike the other wall panel, this one just doesn't have the Might to hold her and after a precarious second of being smashed into it, Hotaru ends up falling right through it, back to the outside of the dojo. "Ugh..." groans the girl, still hugging the teapot that got slammed into her stomach as she lies on her back. Looking at the dishware, she blinks. Not a scratch, crack, dent, or any sign of damage whatsoever even after such an impact. "Huh. This really /is/ a special teapot," she muses before slowly getting back up to her feet to glare around the hole torn through the paper wall, "Hey! You have to fix this! That's the Rule!" she exclaims. Why she thinks the mischevious spirit would do anything of the sort is anyone's guess.
Hopping back into the room, Hotaru grrs, gritting her teeth. She takes a half-step forward, then freezes, realizing that what she's going to do doesn't work if she's charging into battle bearing a teapot... so she sets it down on the ground next to her feet... then turns back to resume the crazed charge back toward Angel, hopping into the air to gain spinning momentum before landing and lashing out with a series of rapid, persistent, determined strikes, trying to find an opening in Angel's defense in order to deliver even more palm strikes, each swing accompanied by a small spark of chi to add a bit more to it. "Sou-shou.... Tengrenge!" Because hey, shouting out move names is fun!
COMBATSYS: Angel counters Sou-shou Tenrenge from Hotaru with Unknown Victim Consciousness.
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Hotaru 1/-------/=======|====---\-------\0 Angel
Think about what you're saying. You're actually INVITING Angel BACK here, and asking her to actually stick around longer enough to rebuild the wall, even! It's not as bad as it sounds, maybe? Maybe she's bring pizza. Mmmn, pizza! But the Tanuki, well, she holds her hands to her hips as Hotaru fumbles to the ground. She steps over to the edge, and is illuminated by the light once more, looking down on Hotaru with those devilishly red eyes once again.
"You have to be kidding me!! I'm a racoon spirit, like I have money! First, I mean, dang! Racoons. What racoons do you know that have money!? All they have is like an assload of nuts or.. I dunno, garbage! Secondly, GHOST! Spirit! Hello! Jeez! Only corporial, sometimes haunt a single person?" .. "I mean, where the heck would I work anyway? A deli? All late at night? Here's some cheese for you, at 3AM! Yeah, sure. And I bet you're going to buy all my cheese so I can afford to rebuild this wall!" She waves a hand off in dismissile of Hotaru, "You're crazy kid, how could you even think of me working in a deli, huh? That's like bad sitcom material right there, right up with 'My Mother the Car.' You'd never be successful as a TV writer, kid."
And then Hotaru has her teapot, and she moves to try to snatch it back, but is unsucessful, "Hey, give me my baby back! You're luck I didn't dent it up!" She then leans to the side, and it's kind of weird looking to Hotaru. It looks like she's about to apologize? Only, well, she addresses the teapot. "I'm sorry, house!!" She DID punch it into Hotaru's chest, after all. Poor house.
"Like I said, unhand that, or be defeated and wrath and, arg. I don't believe you kid, you're the worst mark ever, like, I'm a spirit, I live in the teapot, I've dropped tons of hints! My power is the teapot, arrr! Pirate! Most people over the years here have been pretty quick to go and make up some tea or something! You know, if I take the teapot and set on a pot of tea, maybe it'll fix the stability of the.. uh.. mystical.. whistical..." She waves some hands around. ".. stuff." Her head leans to the side as she looks down at Hotaru with one eye open, "Sorry, got away from me there."
Holy shit, somewhere in all of that Hotaru started attacking her. The Tanuki scrambles to block, and block, and keep trying to avoid all of these punches, even if a few get through. It only takes her a few moments during this barrage to get the timing down. In a sudden movement, she snaps up Hotaru's wrist in her hand! Uses the momentum of that punch and pushes Hotaru so she spins backwards, leaning back slightly to allow the entire arch to complete. As soon as she's turned around, and confused enough, Angel finishes up with an elbow drop that would make The Rock proud. That is, she whiffs it a little just like the professionals do.. though it's still real enough to have an effect.
Grr! Stupid Vengeance Spirits all up in her dojo with their VENGEANCE. Hotaru only caught half of the Tanuki-Angel's diatribe. She's much more concerned about teaching her a lesson for kicking her around and pouring a pot of cold tea on her, completely ruining a set of clothes and making a mess of her hair to top it off. Tea-drenched bangs stick to the side of her face as she swings rapidly, finding each of her attempted strikes rebuffed artfully by the wily opponent. This of course just makes her try and swing harder, driven by frustration in attempts to land the hits she feels Justice should entitle to her by now!
Lunging harder only makes it all the worse when she finds her wrist snatched out of the middle of a swing, bringing her assault to a sudden stop. "Ano-" the girl blinks, twisted around into a backward arch so fast she's not even sure what just happened. Erk, and then there's the elbow drop and Hotaru is driven back down to the ground, gasping with a squeak, curling up a little before relaxing back into a sprawled out posture, arms out at her sides as she stares back up at the young woman with a very confused look on her face.
Sometimes it just takes a good thumping to clear one's mind, and that's kind of what happens here. It's not too hard to see the gradual dawn of comprehension settle in, one eye narrowing, eyebrow twitching slightly. "So just how did you get your eyes to do that, anyway?"
The question is kind of meant as a distraction, because while she's laying flat on her back, Hotaru's right arm lights up with a bit of flash of blue light at the same time she swings her hand up and toward Angel, attempting to lob a small, shimmering chiball much like the one before. It's hardly something she's any good at doing while lying on the floor, but maybe with a bit of distraction, it just might get her a little bit of payback in the end!
COMBATSYS: Hotaru can no longer fight.
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Angel 0/-------/---====|
COMBATSYS: Angel endures Hotaru's Hakki Shou EX.
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Angel 0/-------/=======|
Tanuki-Angel actually wanted Hotaru to 'win', really! Learn a lesson, get a little confidence. However, she.. doesn't, technically. Aww. At least she can fake it though! A little more aware of the situation than Hotaru is currently, she grabs up her Teapot, which, she assumes is easy to grab at the current moment!
Woosh woosh woosh, she pretends to BLOCK the chi-ball with her teapot, but mostly just ends up enduring the pain, gritted teeth and everything. Ow that hurts. Ow ow ow ow ow ow.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" she plays it up, with all the extra o's and everything. "AHHHHHHHHH!" Okay, so the groan in pain isn't played up too much. Okay, okay, okay, ow. She moves, now, to stand up above Hotaru, back inside the new hole created on the side of the dojo! She hops on one foot for a moment to shake off the chiball a bit. Ow. But afterwards, she's all about pointing. Down, and stuff. Dramatically, even! Though, kinda defeated like? Well, she is holding her arm, hunching over a little.. looking very much like the villain running away.
"Remember what you saw here tonight! This is what happens when you forget the tea!"
And then, with that, WOOSH! She vanishes, in a puff of smoke! Or.. something. The teapot is left there on the floor of the Dojo that also just happens to be right near Hotaru's face. It slowly comes to a hault, rattling and spinning there for a moment. It's pretty typical of how mystical stuff works in the movies when a demon is trapped back into its cage, but the interesting thign is it does knock into something... else.
You see, the interesting thing is a flashlight - that for some reason was on the dojo's floor - is sent rolling off of the lip of said dojo's floor. It flops into the grass, right by Hotaru's face... the slight drop flipping it on! Huh.
Log created on 01:45:57 08/16/2007 by Hotaru, and last modified on 05:45:24 08/17/2007.