Description: Zach, Flora, and Tenma are thrown into a sort of tiebreak match after the three way tie for the title belt. THIS TIME, however, there is a clear winner. Their identity may just surprise you! (Spoiler: Flora)
After the rather inconclusive finish from last time, they were asked to come down again. Flora has been having second thoughts about it, as usual; sure, they drew last time. Can't they just share the belt or something? Being the main event is more stressful than she expected, even if this isn't QUITE the main event due to a second SNF set of events happening.
Still, she's here. She has her bow and her arrows, and she is spending the few minutes before the fight by checking the stringing on said bow. It seems fine to her, if a little... well, it's probably just her nerves, really.
You can't /share/ a title, that's not how it works. There's no sharing in titles, and there's no crying in baseball. Them's the rules.
Honestly, Tenma is still pretty sore about the inconclusive non-finish to the previous match, so he's understandably eager to get to kicking heads in on this second go around. The Gedo swordsman is already present hunkered down on his heels on top of the stone fighting stage, his bokken slanted across his shoulders and held with one hand. The wooden blade is, of course, already alight with blood and chi, a slow drip-drip-drip of red from the thumb of his left hand spattering on the slate underfoot. He's as ready as he'll ever be, psychologically at least. But will it be enough?!
Zach is ready to bust some skulls as well. That last match was insane. Zach bounces on the balls of his feet, and then starts to release that odd purple energy of his. It spills off of him like a fog as Zach surveys the arena again.
Glen sets into a fighting stance, and then waves to the two students. He divides his focus between the two of them evenly while he waits for the start of the match...
COMBATSYS: Zach has started a fight here.
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Zach 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Flora has joined the fight here.
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Zach 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Flora
COMBATSYS: Tenma has joined the fight here.
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Tenma 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-------|
Flora strides in the rest of the way, having satisfied herself as to the stringing of her bow. She probably spends a lot of time checking that, as it's big and bulky and probably goes through strings at an enormous rate.
Then she waits. The bloody chi is still kind of gross. Flora turns up her nose just a little while trying to look like she's not doing it, glancing from one opponent to the other.
Until the cue /comes/ of course. This time Flora is ready. She doesn't even draw an arrow, because she wants to get the first shot off this time; she just draws her bow with her bare hand and fires nothing at all at Zach.
'Nothing at all' is apparently a green, glowing, vaguely arrow-shaped projectile.
Yeah well; Tenma is used to people whose energy simply spills out of them, one of his chief rivals being Pacific High's Luc Schroedinger. Of course, it's not /exactly/ the same, but...
Regardless, the leader of the Guardian Kings remains hunkered down like that, a jaguar waiting to pounce, his dark blue eyes glancing from Flora to Zach, and back again. This time, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of words; this time, after all, there's something they need to settle. Though, Flora's probably not quite as, uh, hypercompetitive as Tenma Kiryuu is.
Tenma's eyes narrow as Flora suddely attacks Zach, and quick as a wink the Gedo swordsman moves as well. He smoothly transitions into a standing position, sweeping his bloody blade through the air as he does so; the bokken leaves an aftertrail behind it, a streak of bloody red, and from that aftertrail is born a crescent of roiling blood and chi, the two so closely intertwined as to be the same thing. The crescent cuts through the air, heading directly for Zach, of course, likely with painful intent. "Haaah!!
COMBATSYS: Zach blocks Flora's Empty Hand.
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Tenma 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Zach slows Dharmapala from Tenma with Warning Shot.
Glancing Hit
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Tenma 0/-------/-----==|=====--\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-------|
Zach halfway expected this. Tenma is more than likely looking to take out the guy he sees as competition. Flora, well, Zach does not know enough about Flora still. Both make with the chi projectiles, the bane of Zach's existance. He whips both arms up, coating them with his own energies to dampen the efects of the bolt. He slides back a couple of feet, and when the purple and green clear, Kiryuu's crescent comes crashing in. Zach twists his arms down and forward, palms facing the incoming attack. "HAAA!!!" Zach fires off a blast of psycho power at the incoming projectile, slowing it down... just enough for the blood-chi to fling him off of the platform with blistering force. It might be a moment before Zach can climb back in the ring...
That worked better than Flora was expecting, although to be fair, most of it wasn't her fault. She barely skimmed the guy.
Flora lowers her bow slightly, then raises it again, taking a breath to steady herself. She expects Tenma to come after her pretty soon - he's /onto/ her, she thinks, and Zach won't be happy after that one either. Unsure of where to go, and which to do, she just draws an arrow and pulls it back, slowly breathing in and out to steady her nerves and focus her mind.
COMBATSYS: Flora gathers her will.
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Tenma 0/-------/-----==|=====--\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/---====|
That's pretty much the effect Tenma was hoping for, yeah; the fact that Zach was able to deflect the bloody crescent at all remains a bit troublesome. But, with the Psycho Powered guy knocked clean off the stage, that leaves Tenma alone with Flora - and Tenma Kiryuu alone with a Seijyun student is generally not a good thing. With the bow girl there focusing on her bow staff... Thing, though, the Gedo swordsman demonstrates a bit more caution than one might expect; running in at Flora didn't prove to work too well last time, after all.
"Hey, that was pretty good, huh Stringbean?" Tenma wonders, perhaps hoping to ruin Flora's concentration. "Man, he flew offa the stage like somebody strapped a jet pack to his tiny ass, ha ha!" Pleasant and a joy to deal with as always, the Kiryuu heir lets out a coarse laugh, tapping his bokken against his shoulder. Like usual, the talking is an act, a front; inside, Tenma is planning his next move. He's in it to win it, as they say.
COMBATSYS: Tenma focuses on his next action.
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Tenma 0/-------/-----==|=====--\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/---====|
Yeah, that's real funny, Tenma. You know what might not be so funny? That vertical column of violet psychic energy erupting from where Zach went down. It goes a good ten feet into the air, with slight wisps of crimson intermixed with the purple.
Zach does not leap up right away, but that power signature easily gives away his position.
COMBATSYS: Zach gathers his will.
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Tenma 0/-------/-----==|=======\=------\1 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/---====|
Flora looks down, where Zach is. She can totally hit you from here.
But she doesn't. Tenma is distracting her. It does in fact seem to be partially wrecking her concentration, she looks worried and uncomfortable when he addresses her. She lowers the arrow, sliding it back in its quiver, and switches her grip on her bow to the two-handed grip.
"You don't have to be cruel about it," Flora says, before sliding forward. If Tenma's not going to charge in, /she/ is - or, more accurately, jump in, as she leaps into the air two steps after she starts moving, driving her weapon down in a straight strike for Tenma from the air!
COMBATSYS: Tenma blocks Flora's Leaping Surge.
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Tenma 0/-------/----===|=======\=------\1 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/---====|
"Cruel?" Tenma wonders, his brows raising. "This ain't Little Suzy Homemaker's Happy Fun Bakin' Hour, kiddo." Wait, kiddo? She's like the same age as he is! But it's clear, at least to him, that the hugenormous girl is somewhat lacking in the experience department. Also, Tenma's a jerk. "This is a /fight/!" Which makes all the difference in the world, you know.
All's fair in love and war.
So, the hugenormous girl's hugenormous bow comes swinging down through the air at Tenma, but instead of meeting his comparatively squishy head, it instead impacts with Tenma's upraised bokken, braced across both hands. The sound of impact, wood on wood, is violently sharp in the air, and a stinging numbness runs down Tenma's arms... But it's not enough to do any serious harm. "And if you ain't got a thick enough skin for it, just..." For the moment Zach, horrible impending doom of building energy and all, is ignored; Flora is, after all, in Tenma's face. Before she can land properly, before she can /recover/ properly, he hopes, Tenma twists his waist to the side and kicks out, thrusting his heel right at the Seijyun student's gut. "...GET OUT!!"
Zach uses this exact moment (mostly by luck) to retake the stage, taking a high leap and resembling some kind of purple fireball. He arcs, and drops toward Tenma with a single fist pulled back. All of that rampant psycho power pulls in towards the chambered fist as he continues his descent. "Or perhaps you could learn to be civil, Kiryuu-kun."
Zach slams his fist towards Tenma, looking to strike... and =then= release that blast of energy at the impact point. "BUSTER WOLF!"
COMBATSYS: Flora blocks Tenma's Random Strike.
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Tenma 0/-------/----===|=------\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
Flora is not fully recovered. If she was, she would've tried to dodge. Instead she lets go with one hand and catches the foot in it; it still hits hard enough to make her hand tingle, but at least it doesn't hit her stomach at full force.
Letting go of the foot quickly, Flora backs up a couple feet to make sure Zach doesn't accidentally hit /her/ with that blast, too. She keeps her mouth shut; it seems to be made of nothing but failure when she opens it, so maybe it's better if she just stays quiet. She delivers one straight strike - not to Tenma, again, but past him once the energy blast dies down, at Zach. He doesn't get enough attention.
COMBATSYS: Tenma dodges Zach's Burst Strike.
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Tenma 0/-------/----===|=------\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
There's a faint chuckle of amusement and a smirk from Tenma as Flora manges to deal with the brunt of the impact of his foot. He doesn't really have much time to enjoy the moment, though, as he's got Zach barrelling at him with enough power that it makes the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Dark blue eyes slide to look directly at the shorter man, and then there's Zach's fist... Which comes close, real close, to hitting Tenma right in the head.
But it only hits air.
Tenma flips to one side, a single-handed sideways cartwheel that puts him out of the range of the rest of Zach's assault, and at this point, the arrogant boy shrugs his shoulders. "Sorry, I ain't gonna be anyone but who I am," he says, which is mildly ironic since he's a teenager, and in a lot of ways NOT being who he is.
Tenma's next step, though, is to lunge directly at Zach, bokken grasped two-handed, and slash downwards, a vicious diagonal stroke. At the 'bottom' of the slash, the momentum played out, Tenma suddenly reverses the wooden blade and slashes back upwards, creating a shallow V-shape, ideally right across Zach's torso. "Uryaa-!!"
COMBATSYS: Zach blocks Flora's Power Strike.
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Tenma 0/-------/----===|==-----\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
COMBATSYS: Zach fails to interrupt Ungyou from Tenma with Third Stance.
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Tenma 0/-------/-======|======-\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
And again with the double team. Zach gets /plenty/ of attention. He'd argue that he gets too much, really. He gets an arm up to block the incoming arrow, allowing the projectile to rebound to the side. Zach pivots slightly to try and deal with Tenma's strike, throwing a hand upward as the youth swings his bokken.
A quick wave of psychic energy blasts wide of Tenma as Kiryuu's attack picks him up off the floor of the arena in a slight arc. Zach crashes down on his back a moment later, his shirt shredded into pieces revealing an ugly scar dead center of his chest. He stays down for a moment.
Flora feels bad, momentarily, for Zach. There's not a lot she can really do about it, though; there's no time for her to run over and give him a hand, and in any case that would not be in the spirit of the match. She /does/ want to win, even if she normally appears kind of indecisive and wishy-washy and uncomfortable.
She pulls back instead, drawing an arrow and nocking it in the same motion, hesitating one breath, and then firing it at Tenma. It is very precisely aimed, more than her usual; she's aimed at a specific place in his shoulder, and if it hits, he's likely to feel it wrenched a little and possibly slightly numbed.
Don't gang up on Zach! It's mean.
COMBATSYS: Flora successfully hits Tenma with Pressure Point Shot.
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Tenma 1/-------/=======|======-\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/=======|
It's honestly very rare that Tenma feels bad for anyone, especially in the fighting circuit; if they're here, he reasons, they should be able to take the punishment. In a way, the Gedo swordsman's repeated attacks on Zach are kind of a show of respect, that he believes the shorter man to be enough of a threat to want him out of the way first. But with Zach knocked down, Flora is free to grab the lion's share of Tenma's attention, her sudden arrow striking him painfully right in the shoulder, eliciting a hiss of pain from the lean Japanese youth.
"Okay, Stringbean, you want some trouble?" he wonders, springing into a forward lunge at the bow-wielding girl. His next step is a relatively simple one, fully extending his bokken in front of him and slashing from the wrist, clearly favouring the arm that /didn't/ just get jacked up by the girl's bowshot.
Zach kicks his legs back past his head, forcing him into a roll to his knees. He watches the exchange for a moment. He grins faintly as rubs his chest absently. At least he's not leaking, he considers.
However, he hurts all over, and is feeling a bit winded. So instead of pressing an attack, he hangs back for a moment to catch his breath.
COMBATSYS: Zach gains composure.
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Tenma 1/-------/=======|====---\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/=======|
COMBATSYS: Tenma successfully hits Flora with Light Strike.
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Tenma 1/-------/=======|====---\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 1/------=/=======|
Ow ow ow ow ow.
Tenma hits harder than Flora was giving him credit for; the slash, light as it may appear, hits her side pretty hard and causes her to stumble, breaking her good posture and sending her reeling for just a moment. Although Flora recovers fast, she remains hunched down slightly, unable to straighten quite all the way up until her gut stops aching.
She lashes out with a hooking gesture toward Tenma's leg, trying to trip him and bear him to the ground. That's really about all she can manage until she getes a moment to recover.
COMBATSYS: Flora successfully hits Tenma with Quick Throw.
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Tenma 1/-----==/=======|====---\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 1/-----==/=======|
With Zach busy doing what Zach is doing, Tenma is pretty much aware that something bad could be coming in the near future from the shorter man, but Flora is the focus of attention right at this moment. A brief glance towards Zach is all the Gedo swordsman spares, but it proves to be a little too much; trying to avoid Flora's trip comes a half-second too slow, and he ends up dumped right on his ass, rolling with a grunt.
Don't worry though, he's not finished yet.
Kicking back up, Tenma lunges at Flora again, this time with a punch, swinging with the arm he was previously struck in; his bokken is held back and out of the way as he strikes, following the first punch with a series of fast ones, each carefully placed, trying to herd the tall girl back and put himself in a strategically superior position...
Zach pulls himself to his feet, and considers for another moment. He glances back and forth between Flora and Tenma. Tenma is definitely the hard-hitter of these two, but Flora is a pretty crafty opponent in her own right. He weighs his options for another second.
And then he dashes in, closing with Flora quickly. He takes a risk, and tries to get a couple handfuls of the taller girl's outfit before using a burst of psychic energy to lift and throw Flora across the arena in a startling display of strength.
COMBATSYS: Zach successfully hits Flora with Quick Throw.
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Tenma 1/-----==/=======|=====--\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 1/-======/=======|
COMBATSYS: Flora fails to counter Flow Breaker from Tenma with Phantom Step.
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Tenma 1/---====/=======|=====--\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 1/-------/=======|
All of a sudden a lot of things go wrong for Flora.
Flora sees Tenma coming but expects to be hit with a strong, fast swing from the bokken. That it is a fist catches her by surprise when she goes to stop it with her staff, and the punches whistle right by and into her gut. She is herded back successfully, near the edge. It /would/ be a good position for Tenma except for one thing.
Zach moves her from it. Flora's outfit has, unsurprisingly, a lot of cloth; she's big and so is her shirt. It's easy for Zach to get a handful, and aided by his psychic powers, she goes almost the whole way across the arena, landing and rolling on the far side.
It takes her a few moments to get up after that one.
Whoa, Tenma dodged a bullet there, didn't he? Lucky for him he went with a change up from his usual method of attack, managing to trick Flora into zigging when she ought to have zagged. The Kiryuu heir looks a little shocked when the gargantuan Seijyun girl ends up hurled helluva far by Zach, but one supposes that just clears the field a little bit. "Sure sent her for a trip, didn't ya?" the Japanese youth wonders of Zach, smirking as he usually does. "Gonna havta end this show soon."
True to his word, Tenma seems inclined to put a swift finish on things, grasping the hilt of his bokken with both hands, he rushes directly at Zach, slashing diagonally upwards in a powerful stroke, and using the momentum to /keep twisting/, whirling around in an attempt to kick the psychic right in the head, with the heel of one sneakered foot.
COMBATSYS: Zach dodges Tenma's Deep Strike.
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Tenma 1/---====/=======|=====--\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 1/-------/=======|
Zach leans back from the strikes, a grin flickering across her face as the foot passes him by. "It's a gift," he says vaguely as he recoils himself back in close to Tenma to fire a hard elbow to the midsection. Zach won't stop there, however, as he tries to follow the elbow up with a double-palmed burst of that psychic power to the chest. It will most certainly sting should it connect!
Flora gets left alone for a moment which is what she /needs/. She hurts.
Flora picks herself up, slowly, and then bends down to scoop up her bow afterwards. She debates just firing a cluster of arrows in indiscriminately at the crowd, but does not, instead just remaining where she is and trying to get past the pain from her landing. She never was good at the whole 'landing' thing.
COMBATSYS: Flora gains composure.
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Tenma 1/---====/=======|=====--\-------\0 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
COMBATSYS: Tenma interrupts Fierce Punch from Zach with Dead End Breaker.
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Tenma 0/-------/---====|=======\=====--\1 Zach
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
"Yeah, I got a gift too," Tenma says, grinning from ear to ear. When Zach attempts to elbow him in the midsection, Tenma actually steps /into/ the attack, gasping loudly as the air rushes out of his lungs. He staggers, just a little, and then when Zach attempts to blast him with Psycho Power - at the /exact instant/ - Tenma swings his bokken in a single powerful slash, cutting the blast in half and striking Zach right across the chest, and he declares: "TOO SLOW!!"
A series of further bokken slashes follow, brutal repeated attacks smashing into the smaller man over and over again, peppered with the occasional punch or kick... Before the assault ends, with Tenma lunging forward head first, smashing his forehead into Zach's face, hard enough to blast the psion away. "Raaagh!!"
Zach tumbles and spins away, unable to regain his balance after the overwhelming assault on Tenma's part. He slides back on his stomach as he skids to a halt. Glen seems beaten, but unwilling to simply stay down. He wobbles a bit as he sets himself. And then Zach grins.
Purple energy wraps around him like a sort of second skin as he leaps towards Tenma. He lands, bent forward over his knees for a moment before wrenching himself up right. The energy that he had collected forms a sort of bubble around him before opening up in another of those vertical columns towards the sky. He is, however, pretty point blank on Tenma when he cuts loose...
COMBATSYS: Zach can no longer fight.
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Tenma 0/-------/---====|======-\-------\0 Flora
It is a mess over there. By the time Flora catches her breath, she's sure she doesn't /want/ to run back over and start beating up anyone.
So she doesn't. Flora stays right back where she is, draws one more of those blunted arrows, and fires it at Tenma without much fanfare; a second one comes out a moment later and is fired toward Zach, although it actually misses him because she jerked it away just as she released it, seeing that he was down and having no particular interest in beating him up more.
COMBATSYS: Zach successfully hits Tenma with Storm Flare.
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Tenma 1/----===/=======|======-\-------\0 Flora
COMBATSYS: Tenma dodges Flora's Strong Shot.
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Tenma 1/----===/=======|======-\-------\0 Flora
Surely, as telegraphed as the attack is due to the beating Zach has taken, Tenma should be able to avoid it entirely... But maybe he's expended too much effort himself this fight, and witness as things turn around really fast. What looks to be a clear advantage for the Guardian King leader dissipates as he doesn't manage to get out of the way of Zach's attack, instead getting rather solidly blasted by that Psycho Power.
By the time he's landed somewhere, there's a freaking arrow coming his way, and he simply bats it out of the air, glaring at Flora with one dark blue eye, his other closed due to getting blood in it. "Tch," Tenma says, wobbling a bit. "Enjoy it while it lasts, Stringbean."
Then he kind of falls over, the bloody aura around his bokken dissipating. That kinda hurt.
COMBATSYS: Tenma takes no action.
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
COMBATSYS: Tenma can no longer fight.
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Flora 0/-------/-======|
Don't expect Zach to do anything. He's on his back, passed right the heck out.
Flora was not expecting that. At all. She was braced for getting smacked around, just like last time. Wouldn't it be funny, she thinks, if it ended in a draw /again/, and she had to do this again. Maybe they're so evenly matched it would just be a never-ending chain with nobody ever getting the belt -
But then Tenma doesn't do anything at all, and Flora stares for about fi ve seconds before half-slumping, wishing she dared catch herself on her staff and use it as a prop. She lets a large breath of air out. How did /this/ happen...?
Log created on 18:08:56 07/09/2008 by Zach, and last modified on 15:12:39 07/21/2008.