Description: The first high profile matchup of the recently openned Seventh Circle underground fighting circuit. Kicking the fighting circuit off in high style, the Ninja Heir Seishirou and Beast of Flame K' show the crowds the meaning of brutality. Behold a mind-blowingly close photo finish that will leave you staring in awe!
To those now standing in the pit, the only sound that greets them is the soft swaying of chains above. An unusually quiet affair, filled with bright spotlights high above and high reinforced concrete walls encircling a bare floor. No doors, no exits. Only platforms that lowered them from high above and raised back up the moment the two warriors stepped forth. Their instructions? Once word is given, they are to engage until one of them is unable to continue standing. By whatever means they so choose.
Beyond the armored, black-tinted windows surrounding the walls high above.. the picture is entirely different.
Dozens of men and women in varying states of formal and informal dress laugh and carry on. Merriment completely unheard and unseen by the fighters below as the one-way windows allows them to oversee what is about to occur. Barely-clad beautiful ladies endlessly bring forth drinks and food of all strata to the extremely high priced clientele. The air filled with cigar smoke and theme music as they await the announcement of the match to begin.
Those on the field, and those observing with Bacchic excess, both witness view monitors flaring to life high above. The image is familiar to very few, but recognized by all.
The hostess of this circuit. Marise Satsuko. Her face framed upon the view monitor, hair pulled back in a beautiful arrangement with a knowing, beauteous smile as her voice echos through the arena. Both in the spectator seats, the boxed seats, and the arena floor below.
"Ladies and Gentlemen. It is my boundless pleasure to submit to you the grand finale of tonight's feature. And the main event! As a special treat for you, our patrons, I present to you two of the finest world-class warriors you may ever rest your eyes upon."
One monitor focuses upon the face of the black-jacketed fellow, "While you may not be familiar with this man, after tonight I assure you that you will see what he is capable of! Weighing in at one hundred and forty three pounds, I present to you.. The man known only as K'!"
The monitor then switches to a dashing, if neutral-looking man, "As a special treat, I give to you one of the rare televised fighting appearances of one of the greatest living Ninja in the modern age! A name of growing importance throughout the world, I give to you, Seishirou Ryouhara!"
And then, the monitors pan back to show both men standing apart from each other in open view. As Marise's face turns into a wicked grin, "I now present to you the moment you've all been waiting for. FIGHTERS. BEGIN."
The irony hasn't escaped him...
Dark brown eyes open to regard the target. Kay Dash. A deadly fighter of some renown. And the primary reason why he bothered to enter. Him and... well. Ryouhara glances up coldly at the familiar image on the viewscreen.
There was someone else who held his interest..
His hands in his pockets, he absently speaks with K', just across the pit. "I've been waiting to meet you for awhile. I've heard you're pretty intense." Taking both hands out of his pockets, he solemnly clasps them together in a single handseal--tora--his eyes focusing dead forward. "Hmnh!"
An explosion from overhead sounds. And.. from the monitors above, it begins to snow in the pit. All over, in fact. Light drifting, comically oversized flakes, some larger and thicker than others, some dropping like hail, others drifting faintly to earth. It's not cold. It's.. just folded paper.
"I'll tell you right now, even though I'm sure I don't have to..."
Seishirou seems hardly bothered by the hail, sprinkling lightly over him. His hands stay twisted in that arcane gesture.
"If you show mercy..if you stay your hand..even for an instant. I'll erase you."
That's when the snowflakes--more appropriately, the heavier packs jammed with some very arcane mixture--begin to explode. Oh, everyone else is fine to enjoy the snow. The effective radius focuses in much of the pit. Namely, most of the parts Seishirou isn't occupying.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou has started a fight here.
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Seishirou 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K' has joined the fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Seishirou's Ninkoujutsu.
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K' 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
The invitation K' had received had promised entry into a fighting circuit far more "real" than the commercialized rituals that SNF and the like had become. Whatever 'real' meant. It promised something truer to the dangerous blood sport of old. But frankly, K' sees little difference other than the fact that the girls wear less clothing and the environs are a little more decadent. Sporting combat is sporting combat. It's not anything more or less until there's no complacent audience watching you dance.
Nonetheless, he had come-- if only to scope out, so to speak, this fledging enterprise.
He had cut through the sickening excesses of the aboveground casino without comment, shouldering past the masses without care or apology on his way to the arena proper. Some had recognized him, some had not. He did not go out of the way to draw attention to himself-- did not fight for fame, or indeed for anything save some esoteric sense of self-betterment-- but media and the masses alike had a way of focusing upon those who tried least to be noticed.
It would seem that notice has extended to the watchful eyes of Seishirou. K' looks across the arena now at the Ryouhara, yellow eyes coming into view as those shades come off in deference to the low light. He has no real comment for what Seishirou has heard about him. He has a tendency to prove his intensity through action alone-- he doesn't need to say anything about it. Especially given his first action is simply to stand there when Seishirou explodes the air around him with that paper. As the explosions fade, however, it becomes clear why the boy had failed to move. A faint, fading aura of fire becomes visible as K' comes into view again, that shimmer of fire having managed to guard him from the brunt of the blasts.
"I'm sure," K''s voice replies Seishirou, low and mocking-- he has heard this any number of times. "But you don't have to worry about me doing either." A humorless smile pulls coldly at the corner of his mouth instants before he retaliates, snapping from a standstill to abrupt motion in the space of a blink: a sharp kick angling straight at Seishirou's jaw.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou interrupts Minutes Spike from K' with Medium Throw.
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K' 0/-------/----===|==-----\-------\0 Seishirou
"Heh."
Despite the brief amusement, Seishirou's facial expression doesn't change in the slightest from that cold, efficient deadpan, much to the contrast and accentuation of K's own empty smile. He doesn't say anything more. Now that they've gauged the strength of one another, the fight can begin. And when it begins... speech is useless. Unimportant. Unnecessary.
Most spectators come in through the casino. From there, it's only a fistful of dollars and a meaningful glance that would get them admitted into the back room. K' elbowed his way in. Seishirou was never seen anywhere in the casino at all. For all anyone knew, he's been waiting as nothing more than idea, teased out to play in a shroud of eerie mist when K' made his appearance. Seishirou was not seen at all until he appeared in the pit, standing there as if he'd never been doing anything else.
He doesn't even move when the savage man's snapping motion floods into his personal space, the heat-hazed leather hunter's force of entry blowing back the fringes of his coat.
The Ryouhara shinobi.. blinks once, slowly.
He's fast.
There is a resounding smack as the kick to his jaw is stopped by the gold ring on his sleeve, one hand brought up to the side to break the attack's momentum against his forearm, elbow braced against the palm of his opposite arm. His hands move in blurs. To catch K' by the leathers at his outstretched hip. Seishirou will flip and propell him, with all due diligence, skull first into the concrete sidewalls.
Seishirou.. still doesn't move from his original position.
And he still doesn't say a word. The battle's begun.
Deft. Seishirou is quick to react, a blend of strength and K''s own momentum helping the ninja introduce K' to the wall. He hits, his back soon following suit to slam against the concrete, and then he rolls to ensure his drop to the ground ends up with him on all fours, rather than on his face. First blood. K' grins a little around the taste of it, a harsh sort of expression that comes concurrent with a hint of a growl from deep in his chest as the first stabs of pain come crashing into his senses. The sound is not entirely dissatisfied.
Presently he stretches back up to his feet from the ground, cracking his complaining neck and turning yellowy eyes back on Seishirou: even as a strand of blood spools down from the corner of his mouth. The boy doesn't bother to wipe it away-- or even to talk much. Neither combatant here is much given to verbosity.
He considers Seishirou an instant, fire gathering about his right wrist. The flames are quick to burst before him in tandem with his abrupt upwards swipe. The resultant ring burns nowhere near Seishirou, but it's not the actual attack; the actual attack is the bolt of fire that snaps forward the instant K' whips around and smacks a sharp kick into the entire mess.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou full-parries K''s Second Shoot!
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K' 0/-------/----===|====---\-------\0 Seishirou
He turns slowly, his hands ready and loose at his sides as K' slams into the wall, the weights on the ends of his coat following the motion with the sound of fabric in the heated wind of the man's passage. In that instant, they meet eyes. The difference is in attention. For Seishirou's own end, his detached mind is figuring the swiftest way to harm the young man--to take him apart. Piece by piece. For K'--
Well, it's self explanatory, isn't it?
The rolling firestorm floods towards the Ryouhara shinobi without preamble, leaving the ninja's fingers to splay open as one hand turns forward before the other to turn back--the ninja throws one hand into the hard concrete with nary a call or even any kind of martial force at all. His fingertips hit the concrete and .. alight there. But for the scattered paper all over the arena, it is as if the entire earth jumped six inches. Coalescing around a formative haze which erupts from the earth around his fingers, the nearby paper shreds flood over the incoming fire wave.. triggering what few explosive packets haven't detonated yet. The concussive force and the burning paper disrupts the attack's force of form in a plume of smoke as if it hadn't existed at all.
Thus, the real intent of the paper snow.
And through the curling smoke and mist.. a single knife is thrown. Despite the obvious blindness that shroud would afford, it flies true, a flaming kunai flying dagger straight, unerringly aimed for a weak point in the Beast's lung. If K' doesn't move, it will land. Unerringly, cauterizing itself in in pure heated steel.
Then, an instant later, it will detonate into fragments with grenade force.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits K' with Kunai Critical EX.
- Power hit! -
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K' 0/-------/=======|===----\-------\0 Seishirou
Attention. There are varying degrees of it-- and various types of it, on top of that. Seishirou's is the attention of a surgeon-- critical, precise, and calculating. As for K'... there is a reason he has such a name as what is written across his shoulderblades. He has his own brand of cunning, but it is a bestial sort. His calculations spring from instinct. Occasionally, instinct leads one astray.
The firewielder finds himself caught by a trick he himself has utilized several times in the past: blinding the opponent with smoke and the flash of fire. His eyes-- susceptible to the light of Kusanagi fire, a false wielder of the bloodline as he is-- rip away instinctively from the burn, and turn back to settle on smoke. He lunges, attempting to present a moving target and attack simultaneously, but to a boy who has built his style on precision... such obstacles are trivial.
The blade slides home, so heated by his own fire it doesn't hurt at first. Then it -shatters- with enough concussive force to send K' skidding backwards in a long, bloody slide, the boy already starting to feel the breathlessness that comes with a grazed lung. His eyes flick down towards the half-cauterized ruin of his chest, mouth already coiling into a sneer of pained contempt, and he digs straight into the wound with a twitch of a brow: yanking free a few shards and letting them drop to the floor with a slow uncoiling of fingers. The opened wound bleeds profusely.
His bloodied hand drops to his side. Another lick of fire crawls briefly up his right arm, the fringes of it flickering against the ragged wound in his chest and stanching some of the bloodflow. K' hisses out a breath at the sharp burn, but otherwise seems accustomed to it. He certainly moves as if ignoring it when he rips into motion again, never seeming to learn his lesson: trying to close with Seishirou in an attempt to seize the ninja, hold him -still- a second, and then whip his elbow around in a sharp and stunning blow at the back of the neck.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou blocks K''s Spot Pile.
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K' 1/-------/=======|====---\-------\0 Seishirou
At this point, K' should be operating on almost pure instinct by now. By Seishirou's eye, he's not the type to become unwieldy or sloppy in the face of pain, creating windows of opportunity. No. Ryouhara could read it in the man's face like a book. For this one.. he holds pain close, like a friend or lover.
Hmph..
Seishirou hasn't time enough to stop K' when the beast floods in and grabs him in a deadly lock, holding him immobile. So he simply chooses to slam both of his hands together and roll his torso to the side, his arm placing leveraged pressure against K's side--
The man takes Seishirou's head off with the elbow.
With the sound of bone brass clanging against the ground, Seishirou's skull rolls across the concrete, settling to a stop and regarding K' with a open rictus grin, headlights open to the world.
Wait--that's not Seishirou.
Rubbing the back of his head furtively, the ninja stands some ways from K', frowning. He managed to deflect the elbow away from that nerve cluster and more into the back of his head as he broke free at the last second. From that point onward, replacing his head with a Seishirou Prototype skull wasn't difficult. Doesn't mean it didn't /hurt/ though.
The skull was only a distraction, holding K's attention long enough for Seishirou to escape. That, and the giant Ryouhara sigil of swirling leaves that the beast currently stands in to be activated. The seal glows.
Then, with a ground-shaking blast, it will explode in a corona of hot, intense fire, cracking the concrete around it. If K' doesn't move, he'll be engulfed. It's no accelerant-based fire or explosive, like before. It's something .. else.
KATON - Ryuuouin.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Seishirou's Ryuuouin.
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K' 1/------=/=======|=====--\-------\0 Seishirou
Pain is what made K' into the walking weapon he is now, and it contributed to the erasure of his memory. It's something he feels every day, whether it be in the burn of his stolen fire in his blood, or in the sporadic tingle of the suppression current beneath his skin: little flashes of impulse, which push down attempts by that Kusanagi fire to burn free of its unintended vessel. He learned a long time ago how to ignore pain-- how to use it to his own end. It's just another motivator. Another emotion to leverage to steel his will.
He ignores the pain now, even though Seishirou's bracing arm presses clear against his wound. His attention is fully upon the ninja in his grasp, focus sharpened down like a razor upon his target. That intent focus is why he's caught by surprise when Seishirou deftly switches out before his blow can connect. K' only spares a glance for the decoy before he whirls unerringly on Seishirou, some sense other than sight alerting him to Ryouhara's location. His motions call to mind a disgruntled cat that's finally lifted its paws expectantly after a pounce, only to discover that tempting bit of string has danced clear behind him.
It is about that time he notices the seal. K' knows in an instant it's too broad to simply duck out of. He braces abruptly, a swarm of fire flaring to life about him, the conflicting energy serving to deflect some of the force of that 'flame.' For a few moments, he is lost to sight-- possibly immolated by the force of Seishirou's jutsu and his own fires alike-- but then, abruptly, he reappears. At several hundred miles an hour.
K' rips a line of fire towards Seishirou straight out of that blaze, fast-moving enough to be nothing but a streak of black. The sacred fire he had used to defend himself now bursts before him, as K' tries to simply ram a blow straight into Seishirou: Kusanagi fire-first.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Seishirou with Heat Drive.
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K' 0/-------/-------|=======\==-----\1 Seishirou
POW!
--POW!
-- P O W ! !
His limbs splaying outward like a ragdoll, from 6 different replayed angles his ruin is displayed on the overhead monitors. As K' is shot from the blaze like a cannonball, he catches Seishirou almost unawares, the ninja flying across the arena from the impact, his hands gripping arond the man's fist, and causing Seishirou to slamming into the concrete barrier with a sickening crunch of the Beast's pure power, sending bits of scrolls, wood and steel all over the arena from the impact as he lands on his satchel. Most importantly, there is blood.
Lots of it.
Sliding down the concrete barrier with a wet sound, the ninja smirks, a tint of red at the corner of his lip.
Grim satisfaction?
"Good one," he admits, one eye squinches one cold eye focused on the Beast of Fire.
One hand slowly raises, wiping the blood from the scorched and ripped wound at his chest, drawing a circle over his coat at his heart. That circle glows. A set of handseals later, the ninja breathes evenly, getting to his feet slowly and laboriously.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou focuses on his next action.
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K' 0/-------/-------|=======\==-----\1 Seishirou
Rock Howard, it would seem, is not the only one with a certain talent for bursting, white-hot flashes of abrupt strength. K', heretofore almost low-key and boring in his performance, abruptly flares forwards with a snarling assault, nailing Seishirou to the far barrier of the arena. But where K' usually slakes off his momentum after such a strike by skidding past his opponent, he has no room now to do so. His solution? It's simply to work off all that speed, cruelly and efficiently, into the focal point of Seishirou's -chest-, his pinning metal-sheathed fist crushing coldly into the ninja's chest as K's stance opens-- his other hand slamming into the concrete to further kill his speed.
K' backs off quick after that. He might be missing memories of the vast majority of his life, but his memory isn't so bad he doesn't remember how quick and painful Seishirou can be. He half-circles warily, pacing like an animal, as Seishirou recovers and takes a moment to paint that circle. The sole acknowledgement of Seishirou's admission is a huffed breath of amusement, a slight pull at the corner of his mouth which could be construed as a humorless smirk.
What else is there to say? There's only one purpose K' is interested in, here. Besides... he's not good at compliments. Whether accepting or giving them.
Eventually his steps draw to a halt. K' twists abruptly once he thinks Seishirou's had long enough, fire streaming from his loosely-clawed grasp as he swipes a ring of flames at the other combatant.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou interrupts Eins Trigger from K' with Level 5.
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K' 0/-------/--=====|==-----\-------\0 Seishirou
He was pretty beaten up. K' couldn't hit him often--but when he did, Ryouhara felt it in spades. That last one was the most consequential, a single blow to his midsection, destroying his ability to eat for probably the next two days. There was a reason he preferred sweets to anything else. All of that force blew directly into his midsection, pucturing his lung and causing massive internal bleeding and a great deal external bleeding.
It hurt, by a lot.
It's no different when K' sets him on fire.
Burning and growling with the searing pain of it, the ninja does his best to turn away the fire with what seems to be a pure heat haze around his arms, still just barely standing. That's about when something /explodes/ at the ninja's hip. And he disappears into a curling smoke--rolling, and filling the arena.
All is silent for but a moment.
"Mantis Type Lancing Matrix," orders an all too dispassionate voice, echoing off every wall in the tight concrete confines. An instant later, a ratcheting sound can be heard before, across the entire arena, a sword-thin /spire/ of telescoping segments will look to pierce through the beast's body, at a point right underneath his neck. "Release."
That telescoping lance will lift the man into the air and above the haze, harpooned like a fish in front of the eyes of hundreds from an undetermined place below.
Then, every piece of equipment that was scattered during the battle--even the skull--will orient on that predetermined point, a function of some unearthly jutsu remaining obscure in the haze. Every piece of equipment will fire steel. Every piece of equipment will open fire on K' in that instant. From single-shot needle spitters hidden in bits of wood to steel shards that self-propell, to even the skull that spits a hail of needles, it all focuses on K'. Seeks to turn him into a living pincushion. Worse yet--each bit of steel is marked with an ominous sigil.
A flash of red chi floods down the lance into the wound.
And every bit of steel will explode, clearing the ominous haze below in an instant.
There is no more blood on the ground (was it part of the technique?) only Seishirou, still bleeding, but detaching the six foot lance segment--or at least, what's left of it--from his sleeve grimly.
It's perhaps for the best K' didn't hit Ryouhara more often than he did. For Seishirou, at the least. But despite that, the ninja still shows a surprising hardiness in the face of the Kusanagi fire. K''s hand curls, flames intensifying as the boy's eyes harden. Distracted by Seishirou's attempts to ward off the flames with his arms, K' notices a split second too late the actual thrust... so to speak... of his opponent's attack.
Pinned in place, the boy is presented-- and shredded by a sudden firing of seething, rattling steel. K' bites clear through his lip choking back a sound of pain, letting his mind blank to anything but fury-- the only way to endure that assault of piercing metal and flesh-rending explosions. Dropped in the wake of that concussive blast, the boy hits the ground on hands and knees in a pool of blood, dark skin networked with a pattern of open, lurid red wounds. And yet... even that seems insufficient to black him out, shockingly enough. His breathing rasps wetly, but regularly. And presently, he looks up. His yellowy eyes fix upon Seishirou with a mindless, bestially instinctive sort of malice: half-bared teeth parted in a voiceless snarl.
A hand paws up to a riddling of jagged shrapnel that protrudes from his right shoulder. It closes around the broken-off fragments of needle, ripping the steel clear with some effort. The explosion had propelled the piercing lancets deep enough to rive them clear into bone. That left hand moves again, extracting other shards of metal that had blasted inwards rather than outwards. They hit the ground, impact dulled by the spreading blood he stands in.
A hint of fire flickers about his wrist, bangling there innocuously. It spreads soon, coiling about his figure, immolating the blood he's standing in: burning his countless bleeding wounds into a blackened stillness. The piled steel on the floor glows redly in the heat.
COMBATSYS: K' gathers his will.
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K' 1/-----==/=======|==-----\-------\0 Seishirou
Solemn, silent, the shinobi steps forward, in the direction of the ravaged beast. though blood and sweat course over his brow, dirty and ragged his bangs might be, the ninja's eyes still study the beast. Interested in that force of pure will and savagery he is able to leverage.
Ryouhara was working him over pretty hard, but K' hasn't dropped yet. It's a subject of intense interest to the ninja, but his practiced eye can tell. The man.. hasn't a lot left. But a cornered animal is the most dangerous.
.. But if the shinobi has his way, it won't matter.
"This fight.. is over," Seishirou notes, coldly, a hand sliding into his pocket, while the broken spear is held loose in the opposite. He doesn't tell K' to give up, though. That much would simply be worthless nonsense for someone like K'. It's not Ryouhara's job to teach, nor is it his job to lecture. His eye has already read what will come of the battle. It'll be close. But now, his jutsu will decide the course of the match from here on.
He steps forward even closer. As he does, and as K' cauterizes his own wounds shut, he might notice that the temperature around him is starting to rise, that Seishirou's form is becoming progressively harder to see for the flickering and waving in the air. The ambient temperature in the concrete arena is slowly rising, causing steam to hiss at the edges of Ryouhara's boots. Has K's power grown beyond his control? .. No. It's some kind of a defensive technique the shinobi is using. He is heating every surface, every mote of air in the tight confines with a large quantity of his chi. He'll add to K's internal fires. He'll heat them, stoke them. And add to them until the already weakened K' can't take it anymore. To disrupt focus. To choke. To oppress. That is the nature of Seishirou's heat chi.
That heat will become unbearable for anyone weak to stand, radiating out in bales from the arena like an open oven.
He doesn't even need to say a word to complete his thought. You see, Seishirou intends to strangle K' into submission. And he intends to not even have to lay a finger on the Beast while doing so...
COMBATSYS: K' endures Seishirou's Katon - Shinrou Kiritsu.
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K' 1/----===/=======|====---\-------\0 Seishirou
K' regards Seishirou as the shinobi steps closer, addressing him. The runaway experiment is largely silent-- not because of physical inability to speak, but simply because he is no longer in a frame of mind to do so. It's clear in the one amber eye that is visible past those blood-riddled bangs: the gaze of it direct, uncomprehending, and feral as a bird's. When all coherent thought has gone from K''s mind, the boy will still run a little while longer on pure instinctive ferocity. It's that force of will, that refusal to bend, that caused him to break from subservience to the Cartel in the first place.
Nonetheless, there is little mere will can do in the face of that chi. K''s silver head dips, eyes veiling away and stance briefly withering, and the NESTS runaway experiences a sensation he is not accustomed to feeling. Overwhelming, unbearable heat. The crushing heat is sufficient to stifle sound, dampening out the chance for any noise: whether defiant or desperate. A long breath hisses past K''s teeth, and is not recovered.
But it is not in K''s nature to give up quietly, regardless of the impossibility of his situation: regardless of injury. That stubbornness-- and the maddening effect of an increasing lack of oxygen-- is perhaps what drives him to move again, lunging abruptly at the nearby shinobi to carve into him with a snap and whirl of fire. When he lands, it will be on hands and knees-- his strength insufficient to carry a proper landing.
COMBATSYS: K' can no longer fight.
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Seishirou 0/-------/---====|
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Seishirou with Heaven Drive.
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Seishirou 1/------=/=======|
"GH!"
That K' is able to move through the intense, consuming heat is unsurprising to Seishirou. It takes a lot more heat than that to crush someone. Seishirou should know. What gives him considerably more pause is the intensity and force from which K' is able to leap through the haze and directly into the corona of heat. He can see every closed centimeter of motion from the Beast of Flame, but despite the defense he brings to bear... it... very slightly, is not enough.
The ninja is laid into with a massive strike that knocks him clear off his feet. The world briefly turns upside down for him, and he hits the ground. Despite the literally red-hot scalding surfaces of the concrete arena, Seishirou lands upon them with relative little reaction of his own, beyond the vague sizzle of some kind of a reaction. He is grounded, in a pool of his own hissing, bubbling blood, and lays still...
Until the point of his spear plants into the ground.
In truth, it is only by virtue of his centering technique that he even survived that much, but when the ninja rights himself to sit on the scalding concrete with his back to the wall, he breathes hard and open, looking onward at the rogue experiment. Warily.
The air begins to clear. The floors begin to cool a little.
And the ninja reaches into his satchel (what's left of it) .. and withdraws a bottle of water.
He drinks, controlling his breathing through sheer force of will.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou takes no action.
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Seishirou 1/------=/=======|
COMBATSYS: Seishirou takes no action.
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Seishirou 1/------=/=======|
As the unspeakable violence of the unfolding battle dies down, the arena floor can hear nothing of the accolades of the crowds behind armored, one-way glass. Shouting and hollering their approval as the unfolding battle was every inch the carnage-filled spectacle it was billed up to be! Immediately the results of the battle show themselves onto view screens, announcing the resulting point spreads of the fight as the bets are finalized and transacted. While Seishirou seems to be the victor, the fight was extremely close with heavy damage on both sides. K' actually won many of the sub-bets placed upon his performance, just as Seishirou exceeded many of his. Records made for hardest impact as well as fastest strike. Many details and values of the battle were bet upon than simply who was left standing. Of course, to the victor goes the lion's share of the spoils.
The image of Marise's lovely expression fills the main monitors as her voice fills the air, "Was that, or was that not a riveting performance ladies and gentlemen? By a hair's breadth, only Seishirou Ryouhara remains able to fight!" Those gold eyes almost seem to stare through the monitor directly at the fight's survivor. An expression perhaps entertained, but tinged with something altogether different.
"An impressive display!" Her attention seems to become less focused as she regards the hidden crowds in general, "Will the mysterious K' survive his injuries for a rematch against the Ninja heir? With this astonishing finish under his belt, can Seishirou overcome the challenges that await him in this hallowed circle? Return to us soon and find out.." That luscious smile spreading to devilian proportions as she closes, "On behalf of the Seventh Circle, we thank you for your patronage. Please return later in the week as the best is yet to come.." The image then flickers out, leaving the crowds cheering in the stands or booing in dismay. Depending on who bet on what.
The arena glass windows slowly fade to black, cutting off the audience from the image and sound of the fighters yet within the pit. Mostly so they cannot see the medical teams and stretchers descending from platforms from the ceiling. The ring-side medical attention is top-notch. At least for the fighters who's billing brings in considerable wagers. These two fighters have performed well, and will be treated well.
The question is if tasting their earnings for the fight will bring them back for more.. Potentially riskier fights..
Time will tell.
Log created on 22:48:00 11/25/2007 by Marise, and last modified on 21:22:44 11/26/2007.