Description: Objective: Showing a new employer what she can do. Obstacle: Elle. Alias: None. Summary: Elle wants to see what the new kid can do and Ayame is happy to oblige. Both combatants are forced to cope with a large arsenal of weapons being leveraged against each other. The outcome isn't a surprise, but as they say, it's not the end, it's the journey there that matters.
Like most 'leaders', Elle likes to test her subordinates. However, unlike most leaders, Elle doesn't do it for the thinly veiled reason of beating the tar out of them for stress releif. For her, it's the best way for her to get a handle on what her people are capable of. The more she understands those in her employ, the better she can assign them to missions.
Asilinn and her new team will be going out on their first mission soon. Some would question sending such a green, untested team to such a dangerous mission, but Elle beleives they can handle it. More importantly, Elle will be there, and she'll know about all their capabilities. Or at leeast, she will after this.
Getting a hold of Ayame shouldn't be hard. Each Blackjack member is equipped with a state of the art phone/PDA that is supposed to be released next year. Between Naerose's odd ability to phone phreak and Elle's ability to find merchandise that falls off the backs of trucks, Blackjack has a secure line with consumer technology that's not even supposed to exist yet.
Just one of the perks of working for such an organization. Bolstered by bits of supplied NESTS tech supplied by Aislinn, Eeven Blackjack's phone system is an amalgamation of the team's abilities.
But that brings Ayame to Elle's location, which is the infamous harbor scene. However, rather than do the standard clandestine battle in the middle of the warehouse, Elle's decided to make things interesting.
As stated in the past, Elle works with a street level fight club promoter, Roberto Gutierrez, aka 'Bobbo', who also acts as a personal assistant of sorts. He takes bets, makes odds, and does a lot of footwork for Elle in the harbor, often supervising things when she's unable to. Today, however, is a real treat for the harbor crowd. Blackjack's 'corporate' employees have already seen and heard of Ayame, one of Blackjack's newest members. Second only to Aislinn in her position as a child prodigy, Elle's called Ayame forth for a match for the fight club.
The reasons are varied, but one is just to see what sort of money a 'real' match brings in. After all, the club draws in a few dollars here and there when it's just dock workers, but the interest in an actual fighters duking it out without any sort of regulations intrigues Elle, especially after goign to to toe with Rust.
So she sits on a crate by the warehouse, the circle forming as Elle awaits Ayame's arrival as Bobbo goes over some of the latest cargo manifests for her. Always at work, that Elle. It's almost as if she doesn't even seem to mind it anymore.
Ayame has never been much of a prize fighter. That isn't to say that she hasn't fought in situations like the one Elle has arranged. But the circumstances have been different. Picking fights against people she knew to be vastly her inferior just so she could roll in the money with scandalous bets on the side... Or on rare occasion when she found she'd met her match, she'd simply run off mid-fight, leaving both her opponent and the spectators feeling ripped off...
Neither factor applies here. She knows Elle is not vastly her inferior. And she knows simply running away when the going gets tough isn't going to fly this time. No, the stakes are different this time. She doesn't have money on the line. Her cause for this match is probably the most 'pure' reason Ayame has ever had to fight. To simply show Elle what she could do.
She draws near at the appointed hour, brown eyes glancing over the crowd, taking inventory in the people here to watch. Literally. She recognizes a few from the warehouse the first night she checked into it. Others she doesn't recognize. But she'll remember their faces for now. She isn't in the habit of showing people all her secrets unless she's using said secrets to take someone down. But she isn't going to hold back on Elle. Her new boss wouldn't stand for that anyway. And so she wants to know the faces of those who might be more savy to her tricks than most. Always paranoid, this one.
The sound of her thick soled Doc Martins and the metallic ringing of the bracelets and chains she wears are impossible to miss with Elle's perceptive hearing as the young blonde gets close. Elle is regarded thoughtfully. If she's nervous, she hides it well. There is one concern though. "I should warn you I'm not very good at friendly fighting." Spars between friends or combat between teacher and student... she's never really been the sort to fit into that scenario. Her techniques are brutal and her blades sharp. But she knows the same can be said of Elle. The woman pulled out a honest to goodness /flail/ against Camille after all.
Her fingers reach down to her adjust second belt - the one that hangs in a lazy loop at her waist, doing nothing to hold her clothing in place like the real belt in her skirk. That one supports a black pouch that anyone from the warehouse trial would remember holds her collapsed staff.
Ayame arrives, and Elle stands up, handing the clipboard in her hand off to Bobbo, who quickly retreats, rallying the crowd alread and starting the bet taking. "Okay, you punks! You know the odds! Two to one, boss lady's favor!" Elle on the other hand, doesn't say anything just yet. Instead she moves forward, her steps slow and definitive.
'Friendly' fighting? There's an oxymoron for you. Elle doesn't fight for no reason. The crowd is just there for their bread and circuses. The dock workers are happy, and Elle gets what she wants. She learnes what Ayame is capable of. The people that enroll in Saturday Night Fights and join the Neo League are just publicizing their capabilities to the world, and that's data that Elle eagerly gobbles up, her ravenous mind processing data, always processing information that flows to her like water.
"Nothing I assign you to is ever going to be easy," is the flat, unemotional response. "Treat everything like it's going to kill you, and I promise you that you'll always be prepared for anything as long as you work for me."
She reaches back, and the mace is unlimbered, the heavy ten pound implement of war swinging around once before she slaps the metal head in her gloved hand. "On the same token, you'd better be prepared to take a life in order to preserve your own. That's a lesson I'm going to have to teach Highlander. But I have a feeling you're a faster study." Boots scuff across the concrete dock as Elle falls into a very loose stance, the mace swinging down to her feet, clanging onto the ground. "So let's not waste time. Come and try and get me."
The circle immediately starts cheering, but Elle's not even reacting to the energy around her. Her primary attention is held by the young girl in front of her, although she does nothing, waiting for her to act first.
COMBATSYS: Elle has started a fight here.
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Elle 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Ayame has joined the fight here.
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Elle 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Ayame
'Treat everything as if it's going to kill you.' Ayame nods slowly. It isn't how she had thought before, oft times approaching problems and opponents with a frivilous, playful, sometimes teasing approach just because it amused her so. But to treat everything Elle assigns her as if it is deathly serious... It's a change she believes she can make.
Sewn into her belt are two leather 'pockets', or sheaths, positioned horizontal along the length of it. Each houses its own butterfly knife. Strangely flashy little weapons - quick to draw, quick to put away, and their blades are maintained most meticulously by the girl. It is to those sheaths her hands go first, slipping out the twin weapons with a blur of motion and a clacking of metal as their handles are flicked open and their points exposed.
She likes the feel of them in her hands. They make her hands deadly. She doesn't have the brute force a bruiser might be able to muster. Or even the kind of punching power that martial arts masters can accomplish. But with these two blades, she can go a long way toward making up for it. As if warming up her hands, she flicks the weapons around idly, turning them over, opening and closing them, even flipping them into the air in front of her without so much as looking at them.
It isn't just to amuse the crowd. It's a warning. It sends a message to her opponent: Watch out. I /will/ cut you. "Right," she states as Elle tells her not to waste time. Her hands are warmed up now and she's ready to go, brown eyes tracing every bit of movement, especially aware of how easily the Blackjack leader seems to be able to move that mace around. In her own hands, such a top heavy weapon would likely be a bit clumsy at best. She knows she can't count on that being the case with Elle.
The movement of the knives in her hands speeds up, the clattering of metal being manipulated with expert ease, the knives becoming a metallic blur. And then she makes her move. The knife in her left hand is flicked upward and toward Elle in an arc, almost like some kind of crazy boomerang. And Ayame goes from standing still to dashing forward with remarkable speed, her right hand drawing back as she seeks to lash out against the woman while her other weapon has a chance of drawing attention.
The movement is smooth, fluid - a backward slash with her right that she has committed her entire body to, spinning around with the momentum. Her left hand snatches the flung knife out of the air as she whirls in order to deliver a second follow up slash, tracing the same route as the first. A deranged circus juggler would have been hard pressed to accomplish the feat so smoothly.
COMBATSYS: Elle endures Ayame's Medium Strike.
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Elle 0/-------/-----==|-------\-------\0 Ayame
The way Elle takes hits, it's easy to see where someone might think she's a masochist. Elle isn't such a thing, however. She just knows that pain is part of the process of being alive, especially when you do what she does for a living. As a result, sometimes you just can't avoid getting hit. This is one of those times. Ayame's fast, and her movements are fluid. Quite unlike Elle in almost every single way.
The tall woman is neither fast, nor particularly graceful. As a result, the blades slash into her easily, but it comes at a price. Elle is not very close to Ayame as she plows forward, the first slash tearing across and arm while the follow up slash grazes across her ribs.
What this leaves for her is an opening. The chance to inflict immediate pain on her adversary presents itself in a very clear fashion. The non-mace weilding hand is reared back, hand clenched into a fist as she slogs forward another step as she plos straight into the girl through the attack. As graceful as it is, Elle's progression is impossible to stop as she swings her fist forward to Ayame's face.
Instead of punching however, the hand stops just short, hovering inches away as her hand opens up with a flick of the fingers. Upon that simple motion, Elle unleashes a /torrent/ of sonic energy, the conic wave causing the air to ripple as she releases a massive blast meant to rupture ear drums, the cacophonic sound going off like a thousand electric guitars attempting to compete for attention.
COMBATSYS: Ayame blocks Elle's Metal Health.
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Elle 0/-------/-----==|==-----\-------\0 Ayame
Most people dread knives. It probably has to do with the stabbing, the slashing, the cutting, the sight of their own blood drawn to the surface by something capable of severing skin and flesh. Elle shows no such sign of fear, however, even as Ayame comes at her with the flashy combination of leaps, spins, strikes, and slashes. The woman doesn't even flinch. All this is taken in by Ayame even as she's in the midst of her assault, and in the next instant she finds herself having to deal with a very real, albeit almost invisible attack.
Her own momentum denies her the chance to get out of the way. She would have had to plan on moving in that direction before even attacking for that to be the case, but she hadn't expected Elle to move forward with such such relentless determination. Both hands come up as Ayame is left literally with no choice but to defend her head from the direct force of the sonic energy unleashed at near point blank range.
Even without a clean shot, the force alone is enough to send the girl staggering backward, her guard shattered, har arms knocked to the side though her hands maintain a grip on those two knives. She lost some ground in that desperate defense, but she isn't rooted in place either. Just before she goes back on the offense there is a flicker in her eyes - a narrowing analysis of Elle. Fluid motions may be wasted on one not deterred by the glint of sharp metal or the blade dance Ayame can perform...
When she rushes forward next, she's leaning hard into her opponent, her arms out at her sides, both of her knives positioned to be able to stab. And try to stab she does, both arms arcing forward at the same time in an attempt to deliver two serious stab wounds to Elle's sides, aiming at a low level that may be tougher to fend off. If undeterred, the girl will follow up by pulling her arms back, flipping the knives upside down in her hand, then stabbing out a second time, her arms swinging from high to low in a more traditional stabbing gesture, targeting both of Elle's shoulders. Her blades have already sampled blood once this fight - and if she has her way, that won't be their only taste.
COMBATSYS: Elle blocks Ayame's Assault and Battery.
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Elle 0/-------/----===|==-----\-------\0 Ayame
Stabbed, sliced, crushed, mangled, slammed, broken, burned, poisoned... you name it, Elle's been through it. It hurts every time, and it isn't any fun, but the fact is that you just kind of get used to it after a while. Sort of how a cook gets used to oil burns, or a mechanic gets busted knuckles from working in tight spaces underneath a car.
Of course, that's a clinical examination of the problem, The fact is that these are knives, and they're cutting into flesh. As Ayame's attack comes in this time, Elle decides to actually defend herself. The knives make the initial cut, but the second stabbing motion is slammed to the side by a wide sweep of the heavy mace, which easily deflects the more devestating assault that would have taken out her arms. The audible clank of metal on metal rings out, and Elle's moving forward again.
Elle's motions are without a hint of hesitation. She presses forward even more, relentlessly trying to bash the girl backwards with the sheer pressure she's pouring on. Eyes flick behind sunglasses, taking in all the information around her. The terrain, Ayame's face, her actions, everythign that could possibly fall into her vision is judged, weighed by an eye that's done too much seeing for such a young age.
Once again, Elle's hand is shooting forward, but this time it's already pulsing a powerful blue. The electrical energy in her hand crackles with unpleasant power as she jams her fingers towards Ayame's face once again. If the young theif is able to handle her sonic attacks, then Elle will go with electrical. The blasting bolt of power is meant to barbecue the young girl mercilessly and blow her backward, opening up some range between them.
COMBATSYS: Elle successfully hits Ayame with High Voltage.
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Elle 0/-------/--=====|======-\-------\0 Ayame
If Elle was able to only pick half of Ayame's sequence of strikes to defend against, she picked the right set of stabs. The twin strikes aimed for her shoulders were targetted to debilitate. Hefting around a weighty mace is tough to do when one's arm muscles fall limp at their sides. It is in that decision making process that Ayame gets a glimpse at how critically fast Elle can make a call. And she suspects such prowess doesn't only manifest itself in how she fights, either.
All of that realization takes place in an instant in time. In the next instant her arms are trying to recover from having been struck aside from the impact of the woman's mace against her knives. The small weapons are still held but Ayame is beginning to reconsider the in-close game against Elle's style of fighting. She might need to fall back to something better suited for dealing with this problem.
She is already starting to backpeddle when Elle's hand shoots forward, believing the attack being sent her way is not unlike the last one. A close, cone of potent sonic energy. All she needs to do is put a little distance between herself and the focal point and she can spare herself a pair of bleeding ear drums.
The cry of pain and the sound of energy blasting against a body ear marks the burst of electricty striking home. Ayame spasms, her muscles clenching as they react to the energy coursing through her. But it doesn't quite deep fry the girl as she fights back, focusing her own chi to combat Elle's power before it completely debilitates her. Elle will see the change take place, as the girl goes from helplessly convulsing to gradually regaining control through sheer manipulation of the energies at play. That focus keeps her on her feet albeit several yards back from Elle, having lost ground to the sliding of shoes and staggering backward.
The two knives are flicked closed and returned to their sheathes in a blur. The initial ground lost was due to Elle's attack. But now Ayame is falling back even more, hopping backward as her focus once again returns to her opponent. Her right hand slips into the black pouch at her side, fishing out one of three heavier objects within it. Her left hand brushes alongside her belt on the left, dislodging a small coil of deceptively thin cabling with a metal ring on the end.
Still playing hard to get for a moment, the girl fastens the weight onto the metal ring and then uncoils the rope quickly as she spins around once, drapping the cable over her shoulders in the process, revealing the new implement at her disposal to be a rope dart that she plans on using against the dangerous woman now. The weight of the rope dart is dangled at her side now as Ayame has finished setting up the ancient Chinese styled weapon, replete with the red, distracting cloth a couple feet from the end.
It takes a second to get her breath back, but then she strikes, hopping backward to keep her distance while swinging her foot out to her side, kicking the small conic metal dart out toward Elle, aiming to strike her in the forehead with a solid smack. Though insignificant in size, with the way Ayame whips it out and adds force to the dart with her kick, it's flying in with a serious amount of momentum behind it.
COMBATSYS: Elle fails to slow Medium Fling from Ayame with Large Thrown Object.
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Elle 0/-------/=======|======-\-------\0 Ayame
Elle's reponse is quick. The mace is stowed with a smooth reaction, and her hands return with a torrent of throwing spikes. Unfortunately for Elle, she misjudges the angle and direction of the flying weight, and instead takes a sharp, quick blow to the head, the needles clattering uselessly to the ground.
Not one of her smarter moves by any means. As the weight connects, Elle's head jerks to one side, the sharp hit having drawn blood that trickles down her temple and across her cheek.
Elle's still far from out, although she's not in the position she'd like to be in at the moment. Ayame's attack does give her one advantage, however. Elle's relentless attacks have ceased for the time being as she tries to recalibrate her bearings after taking the shot to the head. Forced to focus again on her objective, it might give Ayame enough time to turn this around.
Completing the spin after her kick, the girl draws the rope dart back with the greatest of ease, wrapping the lengths of the thin cable around her shoulders and under one arm as she 'holsters' the strange weapon for a moment. Some might expect her to hang back, flail away with the small, deadly projectile over and over while keeping her opponent at bay. Ayame is no where near that predictable.
She spies the spikes as they clatter to the concrete, her eyes straying over the moment before focusing back on Elle. There's a lot she could learn from the Blackjack leader with regards to stowing a variety of weapons on hand. Spikes. Interesting idea, those. She tucks the idea away in a corner of her mind, refusing to be distracted right now.
With one more coil, the rope dart ends up looped around her waist, dangling from her side, clearly in a position to pulled out again swiftly when the opportunity presents itself. For now, however, Ayame is switching tactics. Her right hand comes down to click the clasp of the oversized belt she has looped at an angle at her waist only to have the lengths of it slip easily off once the clasp is undone. The belt reveals itself to have been a twice coiled chain whip that the girl now wields readily in her right.
While Elle is left having to recover from the blow from afar, Ayame is chaging in again, her long hair trailing out behind her, her black hair ribbon fluttering in the wind as she leaps into the air, right arm cocked so that she can deliver a swift lash with the whip, the sound of it tearing the air providing only a miniscule amount of warning of the incoming attack. Aimed high, she seeks to batter Elle's arms again, quite familiar with breaking down an opponent's ability to fight by depriving them of the limbs most vital to their style.
COMBATSYS: Elle endures Ayame's Quick Strike.
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Elle 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\0 Ayame
Left to recover from her failed retaliation attempt, Elle's unable to avoid the incoming whip with any kind of speed. Nevertheless, the attack in't left unregarded. Rather than let moth her arms get injured, Elle offers up one of them, the whip snapping around her left arm, cracking against the armor plating of the gauntlet that Elle wears.
Elle's eyes narrow ever so slightly as she's forced to make a swift decision based on what's available to her. A hand grasps at the whip, and she tugs at it firmly. It's moving to quick fo her to get a good handhold, but hopefully it'll be enough to keep the young girl off balance while Elle goes in for a strike.
Boots pound over the pavement as she rushes foward to meet the young girl head on, her one arm reaching behind her to reveal the punch dagger from before. The single bladed katar rears back, trailing an afterimage as she charges it with the deadly sonic chi she's known for, transforming the blade into a weapon capable of slicing through steel.
The weapon lances outward as she closes the distance, attempting to ram the deadly edge into the young girl's wiry frame and show her precisely the kind of power that she can bring to bear.
COMBATSYS: Elle successfully hits Ayame with Ace of Spades.
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Elle 1/-----==/=======|=======\=====--\1 Ayame
Attacking Elle is a strange challenge to the girl. She's so used to opponents cringing, leaping out of the way, or desperately trying to evade the attacks she sends their way. But the Blackjack leader reacts instead by accepting the pain she seeks to deliver and using the windows of opportunity created by simply standing still to strike back through moments of vulnerability most fighters would miss.
The agile girl finds her whip snared for a moment - not pulled out of her hands, but simply jerked in a way it wasn't supposed to go. Her mind speeds up, trying to recalibrate accordingly, making minor corrections for the change in physics at play in that moment of time between heartbeats. Her balance is restored just in time - or so it almost seems from the perspective of those observing.
Both feet slam down against the concrete and Ayame crouches, ready to lunge back, her eye having only caught a hint of the powerful attack coming in at her next. But Elle gets there first and the jump to a safe distance never makes it. She's been skewered by metal weapons before but nothing compares to /this/. The stab alone is severe but the pulse of sound driven to a frenzied level by Elle's power knocks the wind completely out of the girl as if the savage stabbing wasn't enough.
While Elle can weather attacks like these, Ayame cannot. Her torso speared by the katar then subsequently blasted by the chi surrounding it, she gapes silently as she is driven back right off the weapon and send sliding back several yards. It looks as if she might just completely lose her balance, but she pulls through in the end, leaning back then pulling herself forward to compensate.
Her eyes wide as she tries to ignore the way her own blood now pours down her front, a red stain spreading out from the gash through her blouse, Ayame's hands remain busy, acting almost on autopilot. One hand reaches over to the rope dart, applying pressure to the clip that keeps it attached to the metal ring on the end of the cable, allowing the weight to drop to the concrete. At the same time her other hand pulls out one of her knives and flicks it open before clipping it to the ring via a small modification she had made to both knives...
Both of her hands get busy affixing her other knive to the opposite end of the rope as Ayame struggles to keep distance for a moment and maintain her focus on Elle. She does /not/ want another injury like that...
And then the modified weapon is finished and she swings the entire length of the rope up over her head, spinning it rapidly, a sharp knive affixed to each end of it. Breathing in then holding her breath, she charges Elle again, brown eyes narrowing, jaw clenched as she swings out both of the knives in rapid strikes, one after the other. Swift but savage stabs, slashes, slices, with no break between them. No mercy. No holding back. The sheer sight of the blade dance could free an opponent solid with indecision until it's too late and no action will be enough.
In the end the girl lets the entire rope go, flinging the length of it at Elle in hopes that it will entangle the Blackjack leader - the cable is wire thin yet strong as steel, and getting tangled up in it would certainly put a fighter in a rough spot as merely struggling against the cable might end up cutting themselves into a bloody, shreaded mess. For her own part, Ayame backs off, exhaling that held breath, perspiration rolling down her cheeks and side of her head after such an incredible expenditure of energy...
COMBATSYS: Elle blocks Ayame's Entrapment.
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Elle 1/---====/=======|=------\-------\0 Ayame
As Ayame skids backward from the impact of her weapon, Elle flicks her arm to the side, the knife spattering blood across the concrete. Her face is exressionless, her motions still solid and deliberate. She continues forward, heedless of Ayame's preparatins for her arrival.
Eyes flick over the girl's actions, and Elle takes a moment to evaluate what exactly is going on. Fighting another weapon user is one thing. Battling one that seems to make things up on the fly is quite another. Elle gets by on sheer power. She doesn't have a lot of finesse. The speed and alacrity that Ayame displays when fighting is almost bewildering.
Almost.
By the time Ayame's rope knife assembly is completed, Elle is already on the girl, ready to strike, when the newest member of Blackjack explodes into a fury of motion. The razor edged dance of death has an lmost hypnotic effect, glittering blades swing out in sharp acrs, held together by a nearly invisible gossamer wire. It's a rapid but graceful display, and reaction to such an attack isn't easy.
Unfortunately, Elle's prepared this time. The reaction to the attack is almost as unbeleiveable as the attack itself. The first swing is deflected by the katar, the blade's triggers pulled into it's tri blade configureation. The sparks fly as Elle deflects the first set of blades. Then the lower blade whips downward, an attack that clangs off the head of her mace as she rips if free from it's moorings across her back.
The deadly spin takes her up once more, and she jerks to one side, one blade slicing a furrow across her shoulder and another at her thigh as she twists her body, whipping a kick at another blade, her feet landing heavily with her pinwheeling motion. The katar cracks against another cutting edge and the mace deflects a critical hit, instead letting the blade tear into her forearm rather than her neck.
And then the toss. Elle whipps her mace into the air, the swirling razorwire getting caught on the length of the heavy crushing weapon. The knives whip around it, forcing Elle to rotate her arm in an effort to get the blades to wind up around the shaft faster as well as keeping it clear of her body.
The knives meet with a definative clank, and Elle stops, head snapping to look at Ayame. Her chest heaves with the effort of exertion, but the attack, while deadly, doesn't outright destroy her.
The response is equally as brutal, if not less spectacular.
Elle's mace is whipped forward, the weapon's head extending in a chain as she whips the weapon towards Ayame. The chain whirls through the air as Elle seels to catch the girl by her leg. If it grabs hold, the iron chain will be the conductor of a deadly shock as Elle sends a lightning bolt down the length. But that's just the distraction. Upon a successful electrocution, Elle will then whip the girl about as if she was the end of a whip, smashing her into the ground, crates, walls, anything that Elle is near before being flicked into the air like a rock from a sling.
COMBATSYS: Ayame fails to counter Slayer from Elle with Bright Renewal.
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Elle 0/-------/------=|
COMBATSYS: Ayame can no longer fight.
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Elle 0/-------/------=|
Elle's reactions to the frenzied attack gets her by with having only had to suffer a fraction of the strikes intended for her. Ayame has never met an opponent capable of defending against such a wild, nearly impossible to predict attack before and as she backs up there is a flicker of surprise in her eyes. It doesn't last long as she is literally immediately on the move once more. Her rope discarded has been discarded, along with the knives and the whip she dropped in the midst of preparing the combination attack.
She still has options. But most of her smaller weapons... the kunai, the needles, the crossbow... hardly seem effective enough for the likes of what Elle is going to send her way. Instead she falls back on the weapon from their last engagement, hand darting into the pouch at her side to withdraw the half foot long tube that by now Elle knows to really be a staff. With a hydraulic hiss, the weapon extends to its full length and the girl charges back toward the Blackjack leader even as the mace is whipped forward. Both hands gripping the long weapon, it's clear that she intends to use the reliable, sturdy, titanium polearm to act as both defense and offense, blocking the mace at the shaft and then continuing on with her momentum to deliver another solid strike...
But the head of the mace detatches from the handle and while her staff strikes against the handle just as she had intended, it does nothing to stop the extended weight from looping around her leg. In that instant she realizes she's caught, eyes widening as she follows the length of chain down to where the head of the mace has entraped her leg at the ankle. It is in a desperate attempt to stop the inevitable that the girl lunges toward Elle all the same, using the long bo to make up for her inability to close distance due to the weight on her leg.
But the surge of energy gets there first, paralyzing Ayame just moments before she would have had the chance to swing. "A-ya!" she cries out in pain, frozen stiff as her muscles refuse to obey for a long moment... And then comes the thrashing as her light weight body gets flung around by the Blackjack leader. Against the ground, into the wall, through a wooden crate. With some of the landings, she twists, trying to catch herself to prevent some of the pain, but the momentum driving her into each impact is far too much to be so easily slowed.
There is one last swing of her staff just before she crashes through a second crate, sending the long weapon spinning through the air like a helicopter blade gone AWOL directly for her tormentor, but the weapon goes high, clanging against the wall instead with a loud, metal reveberation before clattering to the ground harmlessly.
There is no struggle after that as the girl is flung up for one final ascent before crashing down against the ground. Covered with scratches, cuts, and scrapes a plenty, she doesn't make any move to get up when it ends, merely lying on her side, one arm over her stomach, her other arm laying flat against the concrete as she labors to get her breath under control. She's lucky she's got such a light frame when it came to the nature of the assault. A heavier body would have been more broken, undone by its won weight, whereas Ayame gets off merely severely battered beyond continuing. She'll recover.
With the sound of metal on metal, the chain retracts into the pommel of the mace and Elle stores the weapon away. It seems that Ayame's a tenacious little beast, and fairly skilled at what she does. A split second of mistimed reactions, and the fight would have been much different.
The most important thing is that Ayame went all out. She didn't hold back, and didn't look like she was taking any moments to overthink a situation. Bad decisions are one thing. Indecision is another. Oftentimes things that are inaffective are at least beneficial to someone else when teams with a competant commander. Nonaction is suicide by surrender.
The circle of workers has grown, and money is changing hands like a wildfire, Bobbo scrambling to settle the clamoring crowd that has formed to watch the best fight that they've seen since Rust arrived on the scene. It's an interesting spectacle. There's money in these sorts of things. SNF and Neo League is proof. But the real draw seems to be based on the sheer deadliness of the combat. Knives, maces, polearms, razorwire... none of these are pretty weapons. It's mentally jotted down as Elle trundles over to where Ayame lay. She looks over the girl impassively for a moment or two before fishing out a small plastic bag from her belt. The mercenary tosses it, the baggie landing squarely on Ayame's stomach.
"Painkillers, bandages, disinfectant swabs and a small tubs of Tran's salve," she says matter-of-factly. "It'll clean out the wounds, stop the bleeding, and dull the pain. If you need to get stitched up, talk to Bobbo. He knows some docs in the box that owe me some favors."
The mercenary gives pause for a moment before continuing. "You're a lethal peice of work. Aislinn is lucky to have you on her squad."
The arm over her stomach shifts, her hand plucking up the small baggy of first aid basics provided. She'll need all of the above, probably. Her whole body hurts, driven to a limit then a little beyond. Normally infuriated at loss she muses at the difference she feels regarding this one. She'll go over it a lot in her mind. The trajectories, the timings, the nuances to Elle's style of weaponry and how it differs from hers. But she won't mope about it.
"Thanks," she murmurs, the word sounding foreign to her tongue. Of course she's spoken it countless times when cajoling favors or money from an unsuspecting target, or disarming an otherwise potentially hostile foe. But to say it and mean it. That feels weird.
She rolls the rest of the way over to slowly push herself back up to her feet. She has a lot of stuff lying around to collect up and she'll do that before she starts tending to her own wounds. Each piece of her arsenal has been custom modified by herself and she's loathe to lose any of it. And if anyone thinks to make off with a souvenir from the weapons filled battle before she recovers her tools, they'll quickly learn that even when beaten and exhausted, the thief still knows how to break a few fingers.
COMBATSYS: Elle has ended the fight here.
Log created on 01:53:35 11/07/2007 by Ayame, and last modified on 13:02:59 11/07/2007.